9 unique ways to grow your business with business text messaging

The new business essential 

Text messaging is the new business essential. While phone and email definitely aren’t dead, they’re hopelessly oversaturated. Email inboxes are overflooded. Customers and businesses both will often miss emails. In fact, 56% of people say they receive anywhere from 25 to over 100 emails a day, yet nearly half report reading between zero to five emails per day. 

Meanwhile, businesses often find themselves playing “phone tag” with their customers. That means they leave you a call and get voicemail. Then you leave them a call and get voicemail. It’s not a particularly enjoyable experience for either side. With texting, you can avoid all of these problems and reach the customer right away. Here are a few stats showing the importance of text:

-98% of texts are opened, compared to 40-50% for emails 

-89% of customers prefer to interact with businesses via text message rather than a phone call

-1 in 3 consumers have tried to text a business and never got a response back 

How are businesses using text messaging? 

A few years ago, almost no business was using text messaging. It was seen as a casual medium that was only used between friends. But the landscape has shifted. Our exclusive report, The 2021 State of Experience Marketing, found that a whopping 63% of multi-location marketers are already texting directly with their customers, with 28% of marketers saying their business sends personalized SMS marketing messages every day. 

Of course, not every business is using text in the ideal fashion. It’s been estimated that around 88% of businesses use personal cell phones to text their customers. Unfortunately, this often leads to a fragmented customer experience. Luckily, there is a way out of this problem, we’ll come back to it at the end of this guide.

7 Marketing text messaging best practices 

Before you fire off texts to your customers, there are a few things to keep in mind. 

-Make sure that your customers can opt-out 

-Time your texts carefully 

-Add relevant CTAs 

-Use URL shorteners 

-Personalize messages 

-Keep it short 

-Have a conversation and respond in real-time

1. Make sure that your customers can opt-out. 

Remember, nobody likes getting unsolicited texts. Plus, almost all countries have anti-spam laws that state that you should only send texts to people who opt in. Make sure that you are only texting customers who have opted-in to receiving communication from you via text. Be sure to include an opt-out method in all of your messages. All your customers have to do is just click the button so they won’t receive any more messages.

2. Time your texts carefully. 

Texts are more intrusive than emails. If you send a promotional text offer at 3 AM, your customer will not be happy. Make sure you time your texts during normal ‘awake’ hours. We’ve seen that different times of the day work for different businesses. Experiment with different times and figure out what works best for your business. 

3. Add relevant CTAs. 

Remember, the whole purpose of text message marketing is to motivate your customers to take relevant actions. To do this, it’s important to have a call-to-action at the end of your text. This can be something as simple as “Buy Now” or “Leave a Review”. Just make sure that your CTAs are short, to the point, and immediately understandable.

4. Use URL shorteners. 

In your texts, you can send your customers to review sites, social media profiles, and your business website. However, sometimes these URLs can be absurdly long and will take up a ton of space. To make these URLs more convenient for your customers, use a free URL shortener online. Services like Bitly can create free short URLs for your business.

5. Personalize messages. 

When customers get messages that are tailored specifically to them, they’re more likely to convert. In fact, 72% of consumers only interact with personalized messages, so be sure to personalize your SMS marketing messages. You can do this by addressing each recipient by name, sending offers/information based on their location, and mentioning recent activity with your company, like recent purchases, cart abandonment reminders, shipping updates, and more. 

6. Keep it short 

A text message is not the appropriate channel to send customers an entire novel. You only have about 160 characters to work with. So, keep your text messages short and to the point. Start off with something attention-grabbing, like the amazing offer you have to share. Adding a phrase like “SPECIAL OFFER” to the beginning of your message will pique interest, encourage them to keep reading, and drive them to conversion.

7. Have a conversation and respond in real-time 

60% of consumers want to be able to respond back to SMS messages they receive. Give them the opportunity to respond to your texts with 2-way texting so they can share valuable feedback on your products and services. They may tell you how much they love your brand, act on a coupon to make an immediate purchase, or start a productive conversation.

How Birdeye can help 

If you’re using text messaging to regularly interact with your customers, you need to consider using business texting software. Birdeye Messaging can help you manage all your conversations on text, web chat, Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms all in one place. 

In addition, your team won’t need to use their personal phones to send text messages. Birdeye integrates with your existing landline number so your customers can easily recognize who they’re talking to. 

Download the complete guide to learn the nine ways your business can use texts to grow.