Introduction To Business Text Messaging
Business text messaging is the way businesses interact with their customers across various communication channels. Businesses deploy the most favorable communication channel to share reminders, and updates, answer queries and constantly keep their audience engaged.
The era of digitization has created room for a world of possibilities with respect to the way business owners communicate with their customers. This digitization has brought with it the ability to shop from the comfort of our homes, easy tracking and quick shipping these experiences have transformed customer experiences at large.
This has also led to a significant change in consumers’ expectations from any business they engage with. The business text messaging strategies that a company deploys have a major role to play in meeting these expectations and ensuring a good customer experience.
Did you know that 66 percent of customers would not mind paying more for products or services that are supported by business messaging?
People today, have access to reviews, chatbots, texts and various other ways to communicate with a business, and potential customers like to have quick resolutions to their initial queries otherwise your company might immediately fall out of their consideration set, as a result, an effective business text messaging system has become the ‘new normal’ for both consumers and service providers.
Benefits Of Business Text Messaging
Business texting 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 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.
Business SMS 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.
Use Cases Of Business Text Messaging
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 SMS 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 it has a high engagement rate.
Reminders and confirmations
You can use business text messaging to send 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 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 business SMS 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 decide 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
Business text messaging is not just about sending messages to your target audience; it 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 customer’s preferences and needs. Not only will you garner better engagement but 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.
Business Texting Apps
If you are a business owner, then business text messaging goes a long way in helping you achieve your business goals. To be able to make the most out of business text messaging, you need a business texting app.
A business text messaging app is a customer experience solution that offers seamless communication between businesses and their customers.
Aimed at building interactive customer experiences, business texting platforms or software are equipped with integrated development environments and APIs. A business texting platform is not just your usual SMS; it is a step ahead.
We’re talking about audio and video content, chatbots, carousels, and quick replies. are a couple of factors that you should consider while choosing a business text messaging solution.
How To Choose The Right Texting Service For Your Business?
These are the prerequisites of choosing the ideal business text messaging platform that caters to your needs:
- Check Pricing: Understand the features that you want for your business SMS campaign. Check the price for each feature and make sure that there are no hidden costs involved.
- Check Features: What goals do you seek to achieve through the messaging platform? Do you want it for marketing, sales, or customer support? Ensure that the features you select align with your business goals.
- Access to API: Having access to API is a way to achieve a better user experience. Make sure you have this in your messaging platform.
- Channel support: What all channels of communication does the platform support?
Check out this list to geta comprehensive understanding of the top business texting apps to consider in 2024- https://emitrr.com/blog/business-texting-apps/
Why Is Emitrr The Best Business Texting Platform?
Emitrr’s business text messaging capability allows you to seamlessly respond to messages from various channels such as Google, Facebook Messenger, and SMS, form a single interface.
You also have the option to text-enable your landline from your present business number to send and receive text messages.
Emitrr’s business messaging feature also offers templates for you to easily respond to FAQs. Also, you can create reference notes, set up call forwarding, and even assign conversations to your internal team through this feature.
Check out how one of our customers is using business text messaging for their business needs.
Book a demo to understand how you can multiply conversions and build revenue in a short period of time.
Business Messaging FAQs
Depending on the type of message you want to send, a business text message should have the following components:
1. First name of the customer
2. Reason for the text (promotion, reminder, alert etc)
3. Appropriate call to action
To automate business texting you need to invest in a business messaging platform. A business messaging platform like Emitrr will be able to send automated texts to customers by syncing with your CRM.
A business message is a message sent by a business to its customers through various communication channels such as text, email, phone, social media etc.
The four types of business communication are: Upward, Downward, Lateral and External.
Many businesses use text messaging for customer communication as well as team communication. Text messages can be used to send marketing campaigns, promotional offers, reminders, alerts etc to customers.
Business SMS can also be used to send schedule details, important updates etc to employees.
Business SMS allows businesses to have two-way conversations with their employees as well as customers. With business SMS, businesses can easily reach out to prospects, thereby opening doors for improved engagement. As a business, you can get your existing number text-enabled and seamlessly communicate and engage with your customers.
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.
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