SMS as a Business Service Channel. SMS …or text messages have been around since 1992 when the first message was sent. It’s barely changed much at all since then in the way that we use it, the fundamentals are still the same. And yet it’s still more popular than ever, especially for business!
In this article, we’re going to tell you all the ways you can leverage SMS as a powerful medium for your business, along with the multitude of advantages it offers.
First, here’s a quick roundup of why you should use text messaging for your business, then we’ll head into some more detail and our list of benefits!
Why you should use SMS as a service channel? Aside from the reliability of SMS messaging, texts are quick, cost-effective and results can very quickly be analyzed. It’s efficient, simple to set up and use and has an almost immediate impact on responses and sales opportunities. SMS has advantages over email and other marketing activities.
Text messaging has overtaken the use of direct calling, yet still provides a 2-way personal conversation. According to mobilesquared, 90% of text messages are opened and read within 3 minutes. That kind of attention to marketing material is gold dust to businesses.
As a marketing tool, SMS has really grown in stature, in recent years businesses have found a way to adapt SMS and optimize SMS for use as a service tool. In the main, because of its many advantages!
Using SMS text messaging for your business can help to:
- Increase customer retention
- Develop greater brand loyalty
- Provide immediate communication
- Attract new customers
- Increase overall sales
- Provide a profitable ROI
How does SMS text messaging work as a service?
For those customers who opt-in to your services and provide a mobile number, you can use that detail (with permission) as a communication and marketing medium.
For many programs run through service providers, you can assign keywords, as well as a subset of keywords to any particular customer in your database. You can also segment these customers into groups, by product, or interest, etc. Contacts can then opt-in to receive specific messages from your organization.
Adding in the SMS module into the CommBox platform is easy, and it then enables you to integrate SMS into your existing CommBox account and enables you to communicate with your customers and or team members through the CommBox smart inbox. For instance, when customer sends an SMS message to your company phone number you can receive it and reply through the CommBox smart inbox. More on how to set up an SMS module and how it works shortly.
Text message marketing reduces costs
Because SMS is digital information, it can be analyzed in immense detail. Providing you have segmented your communications effectively, for example, service texts, promotion texts, news-related texts, etc. Then all SMS messages sent to your customer can be:
- Stored
- Tracked
- Analyzed
- Measured
This kind of analytical detail, that is also pretty instant! Enables your marketing department to see what’s working, and leverage successes more easily, refining messaging until it’s optimized to gain the widest sales opportunities and greater ROI.
This kind of easy to handle medium saves valuable time and clearer assessment of results/ROI when compared to some other marketing strategies, such as billboards, TV ads or leaflet drops.
12 benefits of using SMS for business
So let’s dive into our 12 reasons you should start using SMS text messaging for your business, then we’ll go on to tell you how you can easily integrate this platform alongside your other existing communication platforms to create an omnichannel approach to servicing your customers.
1.Immediate delivery
As far as delivery goes, SMS is pretty quick, and it’s also efficient – taking only seconds to reach a vast audience. It’s rare to get such a quick and fast personalized message to an audience with that kind of speed.
2. Immediate results
You will instantly be able to see those who have received it, along with other analytical data such as those who have opened it, read it and of course, the important one, which is those who have responded.
3. Personal
Because it’s directly sent to each individual client, SMS is a very personal message. Mobile phones are very personal devices, so people will often respond with more personal immediacy. You can improve this still further by delivering it as a personal message to each individual. This is sure to grab their attention.
Potential customers are far more likely to give you an email address than they are their mobile phone number, so yes you need to keep an email list too. But this demonstrates how personal most people take their phone number to be. Once you have a phone number, it’s likely that customers will be more responsive to your messaging because they invited you in.
4. Cost-effective
Text messages are cheap especially if you buy them in bulk. No other marketing method provides such affordable results, particularly if compared with traditional marketing methods, such as TV, radio or print media.
5. Simple and easy
Due to its simplicity and reach, SMS has become a globally adopted communication channel. Everyone knows how to open, read and text a message. Moreover, thanks to the limitation in length (160 characters), messages are small, direct, concise and go straight to the point. And who doesn’t like it sweet & simple?
6. Global marketing
Text messages are designed to reach anyone who has a reasonably modern mobile device and a cell phone signal. So you can reach millions of people in an instant, anytime, anywhere.
It’s estimated there are up to 7 billion mobile phones in daily use today, so SMS is one of the few technologies that are universally synced between all of the global mobile phone operators. You can reach the world with text messaging.
7. Direct delivery
SMS is among the most direct ways of communicating with clients, besides meeting face-to-face and a direct phone call. Since the other 2 can be complicated, time-consuming and expensive, it’s clear who’s the winner!
8. Precise
Once you have your audience segmented, then you can accurately target groups of customers with a variety of marketing messages. Understanding what works and what doesn’t means you can refine your approach to maximize sales potential.
9. Efficient
The ability to schedule text messages means that you can save time in planning your campaign, you don’t need to write each message individually, so groups of people can be targeted with scheduled texts.
This then provides more time to spend on other areas of the business, or indeed, managing the bulk of sales opportunities that will come back from your SMS delivery very soon after sending.
10. Trackable and analytics
SMS can easily be trackable too, most providers offer delivery reports which can be a great source for interrogating what successes you’ve had with your SMS deliveries, so you can fully and accurately rate the success of your campaigns. You can then take lessons learned into the next campaign.
11. Reliable
Mobile phones don’t generally come with a spam filter, let alone a spam box. Mostly as mobile phone SMS messages are generally safer than email which can deliver all kinds of shady attachments. Plus, delivery occurs within a 48 hour period to allow for phones being switched off or out of range of a signal.
So, for the most part, you know delivery by SMS is a reliable form of inboxing your customers. At worst, you might get your phone number blocked. But then that can be down to your message and your audience.
12. SMS vs email
SMS text messages have a far higher “open rate” than email. Plus, with email, you could be sending your emails to clients that long assigned your name to the junk box. If your text messages aren’t delivered, then there is feedback on that through the medium.
Emails, of course, have their place and are still extremely effective in communicating with customers and increasing sales opportunities, as people say, “the money is in the list!”. But SMS is actually quicker, and safer overall.
Armed with those undeniable advantages, let’s assume you like the idea and are probably wondering how you would go about setting up this system. So let’s dive into that next…
How do I connect an SMS module?
You should use CommBox to help you deliver and manage your SMS messaging with your clients. Once CommBox is set up and running, you have access to a wealth of modules that can be added based on your customer focused platforms.
Simply go to the CommBox modules store, Locate and select the SMS module among the wealth of modules available to you. Implementation is then easy as it synchronizes with your other channel delivery services and becomes available to use. All modules in the CommBox platform works in a complete harmony to deliver the ultimate omnichannel experience for your business and customers.
How does an SMS module work?
Through SMS messaging, our SMS module offers two-way communication with customers.
In fact, every communication channel that you open represents one phone number of your organization. It’s that simple. Now you can effectively begin to communicate directly by SMS with your customers
Then follow our steps above to maximize the potential you have using this new platform to provide great customer service to your customers. Your customers will then respond to your text messages, from there your agents or representatives will be able to continue the conversation via the CommBox smart inbox.
The CommBox SMS module is an asynchronous module, this means it can vastly improve both the customer experience – and the efficiency of your agents in responding to those customers.
The SMS module integrates seamlessly with existing interactive voice response (IVR) technologies, which means you can reduce the load on the contact center simply by directing customers – who are waiting on the line, to the SMS service.
Alternatively, you can customize and personalize your SMS text messages and send them to customers who have disconnected the call while waiting for a representative, dealing with possible abandonment. This module can be used as a catchall for those responses you cannot get to immediately.
Reply management is also a feature of the SMS module. Enabling bulk SMS marketing, so your customers can reply directly to the SMS messages you send them. The SMS module also supports MMS messages and images too, so the need to use fax machines is almost completely antiquated technology.
Finally, our SMS module can also easily transfer customers between and to other communication channels within your organization – within the CommBox itself. Such as colleagues, forums or chat, etc.
So finally…
We hope this article provides a comprehensive guide to using SMS messaging for your business. The momentum on using SMS messaging is growing, it’s important not to miss out on what could be a very profitable means of communication with your clients.
And what’s more, it doesn’t have to be yet another platform to have to manage, using CommBox you can easily integrate it into your existing package. It’s almost too easy!
If you’re looking to encompass all of your communications into one area, then CommBox is the way to do it. TO start your journey, then why not request a demo?
