Here’s Why Your Business Needs a Text Message Service

When you own a small business, you need to keep costs down however you can. So can you really afford to implement a text message service?

Actually, text message marketing is extremely cost-effective and typically outperforms other channels. You have the opportunity to add value for your customers to boost their engagement with your brand and draw in more members. Because they have to give express permission for you to market to them via text, customers tend to trust marketing texts and even look forward to them as a chance to get a good deal.

Text Message Marketing Is Effective

Do you know how often marketing emails are opened? Typically, they have open rates of about 22 percent, and conversion rates are even lower. But text messages have a 98 percent open rate, which is astounding in comparison.

Perhaps it’s because people like to engage with their favorite brands via text — it’s convenient to be able to make or cancel appointments, make restaurant reservations, or receive order status updates via text. Besides, text message marketing is highly regulated by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act. This means that customers who opt to receive mobile marketing texts from a company have done so after explicitly requesting to be added to the list, usually by responding to a keyword campaign. This regulatory environment fosters a high degree of legitimacy for marketing texts. Customers know that companies can’t spam them with unsolicited texts, so they’re more likely to sign up for marketing lists, and they want to engage with those texts when they arrive.

You don’t have to rest on vague assurances that your text message marketing campaigns are effective. It’s easy to collect hard data on read rates, response rates, and conversion rates, so you can always have full visibility into how well your mobile marketing campaigns are working and where tweaks might be needed to make the campaign more effective. Because people tend to respond to texts within about 15 minutes, you can measure the success of your campaigns in real time and collect highly detailed data about members of your customer base.

Customers Want to Engage Via Text

A text message service for business is a great way to engage with customers, because it offers you a direct connection to what may be the most treasured device in most people’s lives. Your customers reach for their smartphones as soon as they wake up in the morning, and they usually keep them nearby throughout the day. You have the opportunity to grab your customers’ attention with timely marketing messages advertising flash sales, lunch specials, or exclusive discounts.

Customers love that text message services deliver exclusive information and deals, but they also want a platform that they can engage with for other purposes. Customers want to use text messaging to book and cancel appointments and reservations, ask questions, and receive information. Make sure your service can accommodate all of your customers’ needs.

You Can Stretch Your Marketing Budget Further

Text messages are personal and can create a sense of urgency that inspires higher engagement rates and more sales conversions. It’s a great way to get more out of your marketing budget, especially since it’s easy to expand your text marketing list with a keyword campaign that targets customers who are already interested in your products and willing to buy. Within your customer base, you can use text messaging to send targeted communications to specific categories within your customer base.

But you shouldn’t plan to replace your current marketing channels with text message marketing. Mobile marketing works best when it’s integrated with other channels like social media, email, print, and video. You can use those other channels to drive interested customers to opt into your marketing list, and you can use some of your marketing texts to encourage customers to engage with your brand on another channel, like social media or email.

If your business doesn’t yet have a text message service, it’s time to change. Give your customers the chance to engage with your brand via text, and you might be surprised at just how much they’ll appreciate it.