Texting has the power to grow your small business by promoting your products or services, gathering valuable customer feedback, and helping you connect instantly with your customers. With a high open and read rate, it’s a must-have communication tool for any business, especially when you’re dealing with time-sensitive inquiries.
Before you start texting your customers, you need to make sure that they’re opted in to receive texts from you. It’s as simple as getting customers to:
- Text a keyword to your business number such as ‘SUBSCRIBE’
- Agree to receive texts via a contact form
- Text you first, for customer service, sales, or anything else
Once customers have opted in to receive texts, you’ll elevate your communications and improve relationships with your customers. Here are five ways your small business can use texting to do that.
1. Use texting to boost your customer service communications
Texting is how most consumers prefer to communicate with businesses for customer service. Instead of waiting for help in a phone queue or through a chat bot, customers can send a text to your team and get help almost immediately.
In fact, 77% of people want to text for customer service for things like:
- Two-way conversations about products, services, or accounts
- Support-related questions
- Placing orders and making payments
- Scheduling trainings or calls for additional help
Enable customers to text you for support by:
- Implementing an SMS chat widget on your website
- Advertising the option to text through your in-store and online marketing mediums
- Simply inviting them to send you a text if they prefer to communicate with you there
Texting enables customers to reach out to your business at their own pace, creating an overall better customer experience.
2. Schedule appointments and send reminders via text
Booking and keeping more appointments is key to increasing your revenue. Texting will help you book faster and send reminders to prevent no-shows or last minute cancellations.
Anyone who wants to schedule an appointment via text can just text to request a calendar link. From there, your team can figure out the individual needs of each customer. Use texting throughout the entire appointment process, including:
- Initial booking
- Sharing calendar links
- Confirming appointments
- Any important updates
- Last minute openings
Scheduling appointments can apply to a variety of situations, such as setting up a meeting, an interview, a service, a check-up, and more. Use pre-written text templates to make it easier for your team to send out and scale appointment texts.
3. Send and receive payments via text
Simplifying the payments process helps you get paid faster while creating better customer experiences. You can do that by texting invoices (as PDF attachments) and links to pay online. Just send the bill after services are completed. So how can texting help you get paid faster?
You can implement a text-to-pay service that enables customers to pay through text. Customers can use texting to pay on the go, and it can all be done from their phones without having to download an app.
This is how the text-to-pay process can work for your business after completing a service:
- Text customers an invoice with link to pay
- They can follow the link and pay securely via a third party payment processor, which is connected to your business’ bank account
- Afterwards, text them a receipt to prove that you received their payment
You can also opt to send a payment request if the customer isn’t physically present, or when you’re trying to enable contactless interactions.
Customers love the convenience of text payments, and that helps you increase customer response rates, streamline account access, and improve collection rates.
4. Run SMS marketing campaigns
Boost your brand and keep customers coming back for more by sending promotions and special offers. An effective SMS marketing campaign can do wonders for your small business, especially since texts are more likely to be read and engaged with before an email or a social media post.
Text promotions are a great way to build urgency around a product or service, encouraging customers to initiate a purchase sooner rather than later. Send out promotions like:
- Discount codes
- A link to a recently discounted product or service
- Photos of products on sale or new items
- Seasonal promotions or reminders to schedule services
An example of an effective promotional text can look like this:
“Flash sale alert! Only 10 of these discount [items] are left. Check our e-commerce store details. [image]”
Keep your promotions brief and straight to the point. You want to avoid being pushy or spammy, so stick to one call-to-action (CTA). Customers are only interested in information that’s relevant to them, so keep that in mind when crafting your SMS promotions.
5. Text to get more online reviews
A high number of reviews are essential for your online reputation, especially when you want your business to stand out among the competition. Potential customers rely on Google searches to find the best business to suit their needs, and reviews are what help you rank higher in searches.
After a transaction, text customers a quick thank you along with a link to leave a review. Your text can say something like:
““Hi, [First Name]! Thanks for choosing [Your Business]. To best serve you and others, would you mind leaving us a review? Here’s the link: [URL]. Thank you!”
A text review request has a higher chance of being seen and acted on compared to other channels because of how regularly people already use texting. It’s also a good idea to use other supplemental methods to gather reviews, such as through email or by asking in person. Just be sure to make the review process easy to navigate, and you leave room to gather more reviews over time.
Enhance your business communications with texting
Incorporating text messaging into your business’s communication strategy is not only a necessity, but almost expected by customers in today’s communication landscape.
Ready to start texting for your small business? A well-equipped business texting software can help you forge stronger connections with customers, boost your brand presence, and further your business growth.
Jessica Ayre is a content marketing specialist at Text Request, a national leader in the business texting space. If you want to start texting with customers through your business, Text Request can give you all the tools and resources you need to create a safe and successful text messaging strategy.
