Odds are that you frequently get SMS marketing messages from companies that you’ve purchased from before. The things you receive along these lines usually include coupons, sales, and events. Now think about how many times that a business has had a real person text you and offer you the ability to respond and actually hold a conversation. It wouldn’t be too far fetched to say that this has never happened— and that’s the problem. So many businesses have embraced SMS marketing because it’s extremely effective and allows you to get a great return on investment; however, it’s often missing an essential piece of the puzzle— the actual customer. Two-way SMS marketing is really all about the customer, and the results speak for themselves in terms of how it can grow your business.
What Is Two-Way SMS Marketing?
Two-way SMS marketing is like the texting that you’re used to doing on a regular basis -- two people holding a conversation and responding to one another directly through short messages. This is in contrast to many other types of SMS marketing that only involve the company sending out messages to the customer with no way for the customer to respond. These methods tend to focus on selling and gaining revenue quickly.
On the other hand, two-way SMS marketing can help you sell things now and help build long-term relationships and promote customer loyalty that will help grow your business well into the future. So while it may be tempting to just take the easy way out with one-way SMS marketing and not actually interact with your customers, this really isn’t a great long-term strategy. Since every business is always looking out for their own long-term success and sustainability, two-way SMS marketing is really the way to go.
How Can Two-Way SMS Marketing Grow Your Business?
The first way that you can use two-way SMS marketing to grow your business is by using it to recover abandoned shopping carts from your website. Shopping cart abandonment is a huge problem for pretty much every eCommerce retailer out there. After all, how many times have you gone online just to look around, put a couple of interesting things into your cart, and started to check out just to see how much it would all cost? Did you ever think about the cart again? No. And most people won’t! That’s where abandoned cart recovery services come into play.
Companies like Cart Text will utilize two-way SMS texting to put your customers in touch with a live representative that will remind them about their purchase, ask them what happened, and provide them with solutions needed to complete the sale. Not only will this give customers a good impression of your business, but it will actually lead them to make the purchase and put more money into your pockets as a result. In fact, companies like Cart Text are generally able to recover 21% of abandoned carts for a small commission.
If you’re still not convinced, let’s throw some real numbers in there to show you the real value. Let’s say you have 100 abandoned carts with an average value of $40 each. Instead of getting $0 from those items, you will be able to get around $800 just from those customers alone! In the business world, even just a small amount of money is still worth its weight in gold when you think about how you can use it to grow your business. And two-way SMS marketing can definitely help you do this!
The second way you can use two-way SMS marketing to grow your business is to provide excellent customer service to your potential customers. This is especially important for eCommerce businesses that totally rely on their virtual methods of customer service. There’s really nothing worse than experiencing poor customer service from a business that you would have otherwise patronized. This is especially true these days when it’s so difficult to actually get someone on the phone in many situations. So when you offer customer service through two-way SMS messaging, you are really catering to your customers and showing them that you value them and are here to help them out.
A lot of the time, people have questions when they are shopping online and don’t quite know who to ask. They might look around for some toll-free customer service line with crazy long weight times and representatives outside the United States. If they see this, they might not even bother with the hassle. However, if they see that they are able to live text with a customer service agent, they’re more likely to reach out, get their questions answered, and end up making a purchase as a result. This is definitely an impressive service that every business should offer if you’re trying to grow your customer base, revenue, and reputation!
Finally, the third way that you can use two-way SMS marketing to grow your business is to send out customer satisfaction surveys through SMS messaging! Even though you can offer automated SMS surveys or even online surveys, nothing quite compares to actually interacting with a real person so that you can ask better questions and get better answers as a result. Real people are able to offer a level of personalization and specificity that automated messages simply cannot. So if you are really looking for the best responses when it comes to customer satisfaction surveys, then you should try implementing two-way SMS texting. When you have better quality responses, you are able to make better adjustments to your business and help it grow to reach its full potential.
How Can You Use Two-Way SMS Marketing Effectively?
Two-way SMS marketing might sound way more complicated than traditional one-way SMS marketing because it’s so much more customized, but it’s really not that difficult to figure out. The first thing that you need to do before you send out any SMS messages to people is to make sure that you have received their consent to send them messages. It’s really important to be diligent and upfront about this because there are steep penalties for violating this policy. So it’s always better to be safe than sorry when it comes to getting your customer to opt-in to receiving messages from your company.
In order to use two-way SMS marketing effectively, you need to remember that it’s really all about the customer here. This means that you need to be totally dedicated to providing top-notch customer service to each and every person that you correspond with. It also means that you need to listen to the customer’s concerns and read between the lines a little bit. Communicating via text message with someone that you don’t know can be a little bit challenging. However, as long as you remain patient and willing to help out the customer with their problem or question, you’re definitely on the right track.
Finally, you need to be speedy but thoughtful and professional all at the same time. This might seem near impossible! However, there are professional services out there that can communicate with your customers for you. After all, do you really want to spend your whole day glued to your phone, texting tons of different people back and forth? Probably not. You have better things to do— like running a business. Professional services, on the other hand, have trained professionals who can provide top-notch customer service in a timely manner. They will be able to handle all of your customers’ questions and concerns with speed and class.
Speed is a huge factor in two-way SMS marketing that shouldn’t be underestimated. If your response times aren’t up to par, then you could end up leaving the customer with a negative impression of your company’s dedication to customer service. Conversely, if you provide accurate, helpful, and prompt answers to each and every one of their questions, they will be totally impressed with their interaction with your company and will be more willing to make a purchase, refer a friend, leave a good review, etc. Overall, it’s not difficult to provide your customers with a good experience, but that doesn’t mean that you should slack off and take your time responding with short and unclear answers.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, investing in two-way SMS marketing, and doing it correctly is really a great way to grow your business in the long term rather than the short term. Instead of getting quick sales, you are building relationships with your customers who are then more likely to continue to buy from you, tell their friends about your amazing products, and become loyal customers. In a world where it costs so much more money to get a new customer rather than to retain an existing one, these are the people that you need to focus on. You can truly give your customers the royal treatment by implementing two-way SMS messaging into your overall marketing strategy.
Sources:
- https://www.shopify.com/partners/blog/reasons-for-an-abandoned-cart
- https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/provide-excellent-customer-service
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2018/03/01/top-ways-for-businesses-to-build-customer-loyalty/#69c14da2627b
