Want to launch SMS campaigns with real impact? You’ll need to go beyond sending your customers the occasional text reminder.
Effective short messaging service, aka texting, outreach demands consistency, planning, and strategy. Text messaging may have a reputation as being an impulsive, spur-of-the-moment communication style, but that doesn’t work for branding. Here’s how to enhance customer experiences by using your SMS application programming interface with direction and purpose.
A Crash Course on Successful SMS Campaigns
The most important thing to understand about SMS outreach is that it shouldn’t be completely spontaneous. Yes, you want to respond to inquiries as they arise, but your outgoing messages must be planned.
Scheduling your messaging campaigns can have multiple benefits. You can use standard texts to send SMS reminders that coincide with big events. You can communicate more rapidly without losing that personal touch via customizable templates and even lighten your outreach workload with autoresponders. Your customers will feel more appreciated, your brand will stay top of mind, and you’ll improve your overall return on investment.
Intentional SMS campaigns also help you cater to your audience’s psychology. For instance, your consumers might hate receiving texts on weekends or want to spend less time waiting for responses. Planning a campaign around a structured timetable and flexible behavioral rules lets you forge ahead without losing audience members along the way.
The Value of Proactive SMS Outreach
Your customers shouldn’t have to wait a long time for support ticket help, nor should they feel like no one is listening to them when they have product questions.
The solution? Be more proactive. This is a good rule of thumb for all business communication, and it’s even more relevant with public-facing outreach methods.
If your customer service practices are strictly reactive, that can create additional challenges for the consumer. As Gartner points out, you’re now making them do all the work — including hunting down the best channel for resolving their concerns.
The proactive alternative, where you find better ways to reach out rather than waiting for unhappy customers to contact you, leaves clients much more satisfied. It also narrows your operational blind spots.
When you reach out to consumers with SMS surveys, you learn more about what your audience wants. When you send SMS reminders about dropped carts or uncompleted orders, you gain insights into client behavior. Taking the initiative is mutually beneficial for you and your customer base.
Harnessing the Power of SMS
Most companies use some form of SMS API or gateway to manage their campaigns. The API approach is highly customizable, but it may require more work to get started. SMS gateway tools let you hit the ground running, but they may lack the level of free-form control you desire.
Which option suits you best? It’s not always clear and can depend on where your company is in its growth journey.
The best advice is to approach your SMS API or gateway deployment in a goal-oriented fashion. You know you want to resolve issues faster and establish deeper connections. You also know you want to personalize your SMS reminders and texts to keep people engaged — and reengage those who aren’t active shoppers anymore. The question is how to achieve these goals in a way that aligns with your business model.
Is your company driven by creative outreach, like guerilla marketing or original digital content? An SMS integration that meshes with your existing visual workflow tools might be the easiest way to self-promote. Or maybe you’re a franchise owner who focuses on providing services. A simple dashboard where you upload corporate-approved marketing materials might be your best bet.
Finally, remember: SMS reminders can make life infinitely easier and more convenient for consumers — and using them should simplify how you do business, not complicate it. Learn how to keep your SMS campaigns manageable by chatting with a Mitto expert.
