Business Text Messaging: A Complete Guide

Introduction To Business Text Messaging

The era of digitization has created room for a world of possibilities with respect to the way business owners communicate with their customers. From online shopping to instant tracking and fast shipping, convenience has reshaped customer expectations and as such, buyers expect quick, seamless communication at every stage.

Business text messaging plays a key role in meeting these expectations by providing fast, direct, and reliable interactions. With reviews, chatbots, and instant texting at their fingertips, customers demand quick resolutions, and businesses risk losing potential buyers by not making text messaging the new standard for modern customer engagement. 

If you are new to business texting, then in this guide, take a look business texting definition, its benefits, use cases, legal compliance, use of AI, best texting tool for businesses, and more.

What is Business Texting?

Business text messaging is the way businesses interact with their customers across various communication channels. For this, businesses deploy the most favorable communication channel to share reminders, updates, answer queries, and constantly keep their audience engaged. However, one of the top channels that businesses use for marketing and text message automation is SMS, thanks to its high open rate. 

Today, instead of using personal phone numbers, businesses are increasingly using business texting platforms such as Emitrr that allow them to:

• Send one-on-one messages (for customer support replies, reminders, or order updates)
• Bulk messages (for alerts, announcements, marketing)
• Automate communication (such as confirmations, follow-ups, and drip campaigns)
• And integration with CRM tools

Benefits Of Business Text Messaging

Business texting service allows instant communication

With business text messaging, you can easily reach out to your customers. The conversational nature of certain business messaging channels makes it easier for businesses and customers to connect easily, creating an environment for real-time one-on-one communication. 

Business text messaging improves customer engagement and satisfaction

Business texting service acts as a platform for businesses to connect with their customers, drive more active conversations, and make them feel valued. When businesses offer instant solutions to their customers, the customers feel satisfied and trust the business. 

Business texting is cost-effective

When compared to phone calls, text messages are considered to be way more cost-effective than phone calls and emails. With business text messages, you don’t need to be billed per minute and can save a lot of money. While customer service calls cost around $16 on average, text messages cost somewhere between $1-$5. 

Business text messaging saves time

Text messaging for business allows you to save 3-4 hours of daily time as you can schedule text messages for later, send group and mass texts, set up autoresponders, and even respond to customers across different channels from one centralized dashboard. 

Texting platforms for business facilitates better response rates

Since a majority of customers prefer communicating via text messages, the open rate of text messages is 98% and the response rate is 45%; which is quite high compared to the open and response rates of emails.

Learn how text messaging can help you achieve the most important goals of your business:

Which Industries can use Business Texting Service?

Almost all industries can use business text messaging. Here’s a quick breakdown of the same:

Retail

SMS for retail businesses can be used for plenty of use cases. They can use it to share sale alerts, discounts, and promotions, order confirmation, and shipping updates. They can even use it to notify customers about restock items, new arrivals or can run text-based loyalty programs, among many other things.  

Healthcare

HIPAA-compliant texting for healthcare can be used to reduce no-shows and improve doctor-patient communication. Via SMS, you can notify your patients about their prescription refills, automate appointment bookings, and send out appointment reminders. You can even use it to share health tips or notify patients about health drives and events that you may host. 

Home Service

Home service businesses, be it plumbers, HVAC, or cleaning services, can utilize business sms messaging to confirm appointments with their customers. To send invoices or payment links, to share seasonal maintenance reminders, or to collect feedback after their service to boost the online reputation of their home service business. 

Law Firms

Text messaging for law firms can be used to send appointment reminders for consultations or court dates, or to share case updates or document status. They can also use it to share secure links for document signing or send payment reminders and follow-ups.

Educational Institues

Using a business messaging system, educational institutions such as schools can improve communication with parents, faculty, and students. For example, school texting can be used to notify parents regarding holidays, exams, events, emergencies, PTAs, and more. It can be used to share tuition fee reminders, enrollment deadlines, exam schedules, and so much more. 

Small Businesses

Text message marketing for small businesses can help immensely improve customer engagement and sales. For this, they can use small business texting app to share marketing campaigns, product launches, or updates, to share onboarding info for new clients, to empower customer support, or to send surveys or feedback to measure CSAT. 

Churches & Non-Profits

Last but not least, texting for churches can be used to send reminders for services, prayer meetings, or community events, or to share daily verses. Nonprofit texting can be used to share updates regarding charity drives, coordinate volunteer schedules, and pass on any updates or information to the members.

Use Cases Of Text Message for Business

When customers engage with businesses, what they want is a seamless communication experience. They need faster response times and prefer human beings for communication instead of self-service-enabled chatbots. 

It is business messaging that can help you offer such an experience to your customers. Let’s dig in further and observe how you can use business text messaging: 

Appointment Booking

Incorporating texting platforms for business eliminates the manual hassle of scheduling appointments and managing schedules. 

Your customers can easily book appointments with whichever channel they prefer on your business messaging platform, and you can direct your focus on growing your business. 

You can also schedule instant appointments by integrating live chat with your calendar. 

Text messaging can especially be a great way for dental practices or healthcare practices in general to communicate with their patients, as texting service for small business has a high engagement rate.

Reminders and confirmations

You can use business text messaging to send automated appointment reminders and confirmations to your customers. If you run a service-based business, then it is natural that some people might miss out on their appointments. This will lead to an empty slot and lost income for you. To avoid the same, you can send appointment reminders and confirmation messages at frequent intervals. 

Customer Support

As a business owner, your priority must be to serve your customers and assist them right from making an inquiry about your services to their post-purchase concerns.

With a simple ‘message us’ button on your website, you can address your customers’ concerns or queries in real-time, thereby gaining their loyalty in return.

Business messaging can help you transform customer support for you in two ways: 

• SMS for business will help you respond faster to queries
• You can analyse the messages that have come across and direct those to the right agent for addressal 

Sale Conversions

To be able to convert potential leads into customers, you must have a stellar website that is optimised for SEO and has compelling content.

In addition, you need to have a business texting service platform in place to be more accessible to your audiences.

Having a live chat integrated on your website and including excellent imagery during conversations are some ways to promote and increase sales. 

Enabling Notifications

Notifications are an excellent way to engage and re-engage with your customers, which can further help you drive conversions and retain customers. You can make use of business text messaging to stimulate user engagement by sending them updates in real-time.

You can utilise SMS for business to send personalised offers, news updates, and even reminders. Also, notifying your customers about some special offers, urgent updates, or any last-minute deals is another great way to use business messaging. 

Social Engagement

It is your accessibility to your potential or current customers that decides whether you’re a business that can be trusted. The more reachable you are, the more credible you’ll be considered. Having a social media presence is as important as having a website in an era where more than half of the world’s population uses social media.

Have people reach out to you through simple Direct Messages, and open your business to conversations that are not time-sensitive. This will make people trust your brand and will also help you land conversions. 

Marketing Efforts

Business messaging allows you to interact with people, present yourself as a brand, and enhance your online presence. With business texting, you can easily use data to segment your users and also improve interaction by providing them with personalised content. You can also engage with your customers by incorporating Google’s Business Messages into your business text messaging strategies. 

Google’s Business Messages are a real-time chat service that assists users in getting in touch with businesses through their Google Business Profile listings. It is a free service that allows people to approach businesses through Google Search and Google Maps. 

Best Practices For Business Messaging

As you make the most of business text messaging to seamlessly communicate and engage with your customers, it is important to ensure that you’re utilizing business messaging the right way. Here are some best practices to help you with the same: 

Get consent before sending business text messages

Getting consent from your customers before sending text messages to them is a crucial aspect of business text messaging. That’s because if you don’t get the written permission of your customers, you are demonstrating non-compliance with the CTIA and TCPA laws; and essentially inviting trouble. Make sure to get express written consent from your customers before sending them any messages. 

Keep the cadence of business texting in mind

Did you know that the TCPA laws vary across states in the US? For example, In Arizona and New Jersey, marketers must obtain prior consent before sending messages. In Florida and Oklahoma, marketers cannot contact a customer more than thrice a week outside the hours of 8:00 am and 8:00 pm. In Virginia, the marketers must identify themselves in the messages. Hence make sure that you are well-versed with your state laws when you send business messages. 

Always make sure to personalize your business messages

Texting app for business is not just about sending messages to your target audience; texting service for small businesses is also about building lasting relationships with them. To build engagement, you must personalize each message that you send across. Make sure to tailor your messages based on your customers’ preferences and needs. Not only will you garner better engagement, but you will also see significant improvements in customer satisfaction rates. 

Make use of SMS templates to ensure operational efficiency

Always have a repository of SMS templates ready with you. With templates, you can save a lot of time that can be directed to other important tasks at hand. With this, you can ensure faster delivery of messages to the right customers at the right time. Are you looking for some templates specific to your use case? Check this out – https://emitrr.com/sms-templates/ 

Be responsive with your messages

When customers reach out to you or get back to you, do not ghost them. Have some automated responses ready to ensure that none of their messages get ignored. If there is a customer that needs to be addressed immediately, you can simply assign that conversation to a team member, and they can take it forward from there. If no one is available, then at least an auto-reply message will help ensure that every customer is being taken care of. 

Future Trends for Texting for Businesses

AI for Business Text Automation

AI is the latest trend in business sms messaging. Business texting platforms like Emitrr are now offering AI features that help you generate messages using prompts or enhance an existing message to match the tone of the use case. AI in business text messaging is also being used to personalize messages based on preferences, user behavior, and lifecycle stage. Text message automation is coming into the picture to create more automated workflows for drip sequences, follow-ups, predictive engagement, segmentation, and more. 

Take a look at what you can do with AI in texting with tools like Emitrr:

AI Chatbots for Business Texting

SMS chatbots are another trend that is rising currently. These chatbots essentially help you automate responses to repetitive customer queries, offer 24/7 support, and even book appointments on your behalf, among other things. SMS chatbots can be trained easily using your knowledge base and existing data to simulate contextual conversations with your customers. 

Interactive and Transactional Messaging

Businesses are increasingly adopting interactive text messaging by incorporating interactive elements in their text messages, such as quick replies, polls, buttons, etc. They are even offering text-to-pay or click-to-pay features to allow customers to settle their payments online directly through text messages.  

RCS Messaging takes center stage

Rich Communication Services (RCS) is slowly switching the way traditional SMSs are being sent by allowing users to send high-resolution media and by offering interactive buttons and verified sender credentials. RCS messaging, be it in one-on-one or group texting, is helping businesses create an app-like experience to boost trust and engagement.  

Multilingual, & Time-Sensitive Messaging

With an understanding of cultural relevance, time zones, and local language preferences, automated business messages are becoming more advanced. Many automated texting services are now offering these advancements for a better and more nuanced messaging automation. 

Texting as Customer Service Channel

Rather than emails, businesses are now implementing business sms solutions as a customer service channel. This is because of the speed and convenience SMS offers, and now with AI in the picture, customer service automation via SMS is also possible. 

SMS Compliance Gets Stricter

Because of the use of AI and other advanced features, SMS compliance is going to get stricter, be it GDPR, TCPA, HIPAA, or 10DLC regulations. And because of this, businesses will need access to a business texting service for better built-in compliance, consent management, data protection, and validation. 

Omnichannel Messaging

SMS won’t be standalone anymore; they will be integrated with email, WhatsApp, website chat, messaging apps, and your CRM tools to facilitate seamless handoffs, maintain consistency, and improve coordination in communication across teams. 

Change in SMS Pricing Models

Business texting services might also change their pricing models and move away from per per-message or credits model to more outcome-based, value-based models. They might start to charge on the basis of bundled services / “conversations” rather than credits.

Compliance & Legal Considerations of Business Texting

• The legal requirements for a group texting app for business are contained within the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) of 1991
• Compliance with the Act is overseen by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
• With a lot of improvement and changes, the Act has frequently been updated—most significantly following the passage of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003.
• Organizations are also ordered to follow the Mobile Marketing Association’s Code of Conduct – even for non-commercial purposes
• This code of conduct is responsible for maintaining best practices to protect the mobile channel from abuse and limit consumer backlash
• Along with TCPA and the Code of Conduct, phone carriers (the telephone companies that carry and deliver text messages) impose their set of rules on what can be included in group texts
• Most carriers will block messages containing illegal drug use, violence, adult material, profanity, hate speech or inappropriate content.

These restrictions apply to both SMS and MMS messages.

AI For Business Texting

What was earlier a simple SMS message has now transformed into personalized and interactive two-way messaging, thanks to artificial intelligence in business text messaging. Let’s take a look at what AI-powered features are now business texting platforms offering and also understand their use case. 

Features of AI-Powered Business Texting

• Smart contact segmentation & management: AI business texting platforms can auto-sort contacts in the relevant group or folder on the basis of their roles, location, preferences, purchase history, or past interactions to help you find and manage chats better. 
• Context-aware messaging: AI understands context, time zones, urgency, and sends messages accordingly. For example, urgent messages go instantly, while others are scheduled. 
• Personalization at Scale: AI can tailor messages, suggest edits, and generate replies, helping businesses improve communication with their customers. 
• Automated Summaries & Highlights: AI can generate conversation summaries or highlights, so that you or your team don’t have to scroll through so many messages. 
• Data Protection & compliance: AI detects sensitive data and alerts you instantly to prevent it from being shared with a group. 
• Analytics & Engagement Insights: AI in business SMS messaging gives analytics and performance on which text message marketing campaign is performing, how many messages were opened, replied to, etc., helping you improve your marketing campaigns. 
• AI spam detection: It filters spam, toxic content, or off-topic chatter in open communities or customer groups.
• Predictive messaging & smart scheduling: AI can now predict the best time to send texts for higher customer engagement and even suggest proactive reminders (appointments, renewals, reorders) to be sent.
• Two-way conversational AI: AI has context-aware, human-like conversations, two-way conversations with customers. They even handle FAQs, bookings, and status checks without human effort.

Use Cases of AI-powered Business SMS Messaging

• Reminders & appointment scheduling: AI text messaging can be used to reduce the handling of repetitive queries and to manage appointments. They can even be used to send appointment and prescription refill reminders by integration with your EHR/EMR/CRM systems to reduce no-shows.  
• Sales & lead nurturing: Businesses can use AI in text messaging to boost sales and nurture leads by vetting leads, asking follow-up questions, scheduling meetings, and managing handoffs to agents. 
• Marketing & promotions: AI can boost your marketing efforts by segmenting your customers on the basis of their preferences & behaviour for sending personalized offers and promotional business messages. 
• Payment & billing reminders: AI can automate payment reminders and even send payment links to due customers, helping you collect due payments without spending extra time.   
• Feedback & survey: AI can automate feedback and survey collection by sending an automated feedback or survey form to the customers via SMS upon their purchase or appointment, helping you boost your business’s online reputation. 
• Customer support & FAQs: AI chatbots can handle common queries related to pricing, services, shipping updates, etc., answer FAQs 24/7, helping you improve CSAT without compromising on budget.  
• Team communication: Lastly, AI in business sms can be used to communicate with the team and to send automated reminders and messages regarding shift changes, emergencies, or any other announcements. 

How to use Emitrr AI for Business texting

Emitrr is one of the best AI-driven business texting software that you can choose for your business to drive more sales, improve communication, and over all revenue of your business. 

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how you can use Emitrr AI for business texting:

Step 1: Go to Emitrr’s dashboard and click on “New” to create a new message.

Step 2: Select a location and add contacts in the recipient box. Either choose one or multiple recipients for your business SMS message.

Step 3: Now, either write a message yourself, select from a number of templates, or give an AI prompt to generate your business SMS marketing message.

Step 4: After writing the message, click on apply and send, and your message will be delivered to the recipient. 

If you want to run a business marketing campaign, then here’s a video showing how you can automate text message campaigns using Emitrr:

Business Text Messaging FAQs

Conclusion

In a world where people prefer texts over calls, it is absolutely crucial that you use messaging to your advantage to acquire more customers and ensure customer satisfaction.

Establishing and being active on multiple customer touchpoints is necessary in order to generate more customer conversations and keep building that sales funnel. 

If you are new to business messaging, then Emitrr’s capabilities will surely help you engage seamlessly with your customers. So book a demo and get ready to transform customer engagement.