Want to reach your customers every hour of the day?
How about every 5 minutes? With continually increasing cell phone usage around the world, it’s never been easier to reach people today than with a simple text message. In fact, the average American checks their phone 262 times per day. [1] For millennials, checking their smartphone has become a part of their daily morning routine, with 66% of younger Americans checking it before even getting out of bed to start their day. [2]
People love their cellphones, so what? Higher usage equals more engagement. Every time your customer glances at their cell phone, it is an opportunity for you to connect with them as a marketer or business owner. That’s once every 5.5 minutes per average customer! It’s no wonder that more and more businesses are adopting text messaging in 2021.
But just because you text-enable your business phone number and start filling up your contact list, it doesn’t mean you’re ready to thrive with business messaging. Just like any other communication tool out there, it takes an informed strategy to succeed as a business with SMS. Here are a few ways to develop your business’ text messaging strategy and take advantage of the most responsive communication channel there is.
1. Understand where text messaging shines
Whether sending a booking confirmation to an individual client or promoting an upcoming sale to tens of thousands of your customers, SMS allows for fluid, direct communication. Unlike email marketing or social media, text messaging is also a much more personal way of communication. While this does lead to some “gotchas” when creating your text messaging strategy (see section 2), it also enables your business to create more meaningful, personalized connections. The high trust rate consumers have in SMS provides key opportunities for your business to get a better ROI for your marketing spend.
When it comes to open rates, SMS is king. Your customers are 78% more likely to open a text message from your business than an email and will probably even open it within the first 90 seconds of receiving it.[3] When you compare text messaging to the click-through rates of other traditional marketing channels like pay-per-click advertising (2%) [4] or social media [5], there is even less of a competition. SMS is hands down the most direct way for your business to reach its audience.
The high engagement rate found with text messaging doesn’t just stem from typical text-based SMS messages. MMS (Multimedia Messaging Services) allows businesses to connect with their customers more by sending highly interactive content like photos, videos, GIFS, and more. With MMS, it’s easy to send engaging visual content typically found in email or social media marketing but through the fast and reliable channel of text messaging.
MMS also can be used to streamline your typical customer-related interactions. Need to show where your delivery driver hid a package? Just send a picture of the delivered package. Offering customer support over text? Sending a picture can help your customer solve whatever problem they may be facing in a flash rather than sending lengthy, detailed written instructions.
2. Know the rules of the SMS landscape
We mentioned the high trust rate consumers have in SMS earlier, however this trust doesn’t come from nowhere. The text messaging and telecommunications industry as a whole is fairly regulated. While this regulation may seem scary at first, it actually is a part of what makes business messaging such an efficient tool for communication. Thanks to the regulations in place, consumers are protected from SPAM messaging, and businesses have a reliable way to connect with customers directly to their most personal device, their cell phones.
When strategizing for your text messaging campaigns, one of the most important things to keep track of is customer consent. For any text messages you send as a business, it is essential to ensure that you have proper consent from your customers and a solid understanding of what messaging activities classify as SPAM. If a customer hasn’t opted in (formally consented) to receiving SMS or MMS messages from your business, your messages can be marked as SPAM and your phone number even blacklisted. Likewise, it is always essential that your message receivers have the option to opt out of receiving messages from your business. To get a good base understanding of consumer consent and the do’s and don’ts for business messaging, we recommend checking out CTIA’s (Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association’s) comprehensive best practices guide.
We at Tychron also advise businesses on how to develop successful and regulation-abiding text-messaging campaigns as well as provide insights for how to maximize your customer engagement. Developing the right text-messaging strategy for your business can seem overwhelming at first, but with the right guidance business messaging can be a powerful tool for customer engagement and increasing conversions.
Another key step for setting up your business messaging strategy is understanding The Campaign Registry. It is the latest shift in the business messaging landscape and presents new requirements for businesses that benefit from text messaging. Essentially, businesses are required to register their messaging campaigns (use cases) with the official Campaign Registry or a registered campaign service provider (CSP) like Tychron. To get a better understanding of the Campaign Registry, read our previous blog on business texting in 2021 and visit our campaign registration page to register your messaging campaign and get access to useful resources like our use case selection guide.
3. Optimize your message sending
Just like managing email marketing, PPC, or social media campaigns, the work never truly “ends.” The more you prepare for your text-messaging campaigns, the better. But there will always be things that can be tweaked and improved. If you are looking to get a better ROI with your business messaging and lower your overhead, consider supercharging your messaging strategy with informational services like Enhanced Location Routing Number Lookup (eLRN) and Message Carrier Lookup (MCL). They are two powerful tools that give businesses more control over their messaging and provide insight into how to save on messaging.
Beyond giving you a better understanding of where your message traffic is coming and going, MCL can be used to audit your billing. Ensure you are being charged the correct amount for your messaging by both your network carrier(s) and messaging service providers.
Of course, the easiest way to save on your business messaging is to partner with a messaging service provider that offers transparent pricing. Tychron provides messaging services on a dynamic and intelligent global network without installation, text-enablement and fluff fees. Book a free consultation or give us a call today to learn how Tychron customers save an average of 35% on their messaging costs. Communication is tough. Tychron makes it easy.