Business texting can bring a fantastic return on investment to any business. Here are nine ways that business texting can benefit your company.
Texting has become the preferred form of communication for many Americans, yet businesses frequently overlook it as a marketing and communication tool. In doing so, they’re missing out on a wide range of benefits that can lower costs, expand customer relations, and improve bottom lines.
Text communication for business opens up convenient yet personalized opportunities for spreading news, offering deals, and maintaining customer relationships. In this piece, we’ll discuss the nine best business texting practices, paired with streamlined texting services, that can benefit your company.
Business Texting Opens New Doors
For quite some time, sms texting has become the preferred form of communication, especially among younger generations. In comparison with emails, text messages are viewed and responded to at a higher rate.
When determining whether an interactive texting marketing campaign is the best fit for your business, consider these facts:
People open emails only 20% of the time and only respond to 6%
People open text messages (officially called “SMS” messages) 98% of the time and respond 45% of the time—a nearly five- and eight-fold improvement, respectively, compared to email
Industry-Specific Texting Benefits
Some texting benefits are universal to all businesses, but others apply more to specific industries, which include:
Healthcare
The ability to communicate with patients in a manner that discourages the spread of certain diseases has proved valuable in recent years. Instead of requiring patients to check in or make appointments in person, they can now communicate with healthcare facilities directly through their mobile device, and the facilities can do the same. Text communication and automated updates are effective when reminding patients of upcoming appointments or vaccine updates.
Hospitality
No industry is quite as intimate as hospitality. With text updates, hotel management can communicate with guests to deliver messages regarding check-in, cleanings, and any closures to the facility. Additionally, restaurants can use text alerts to update visitors on reservations and table availability.
Legal services
Business texting reduces the cost of no-shows. By automating schedule reminders to clients, legal-services providers can cut down on the number of potential clients who forget about their meetings while also providing an easy way for clients to cancel their appointments. Business texting to customers also empowers legal-services providers with the ability to rekindle and maintain long-term relationships with clients and business partners.
9 Ways Business Texting Can Benefit Your Company (No Matter What It Is)
The best business texting practices are more direct and personal than emails but less intrusive and time-consuming than a phone call. Business texting offers a middle ground with some of the best benefits of both worlds.
The nine ways business texting can improve your company include:
Versatility
Direct customer engagement
Customer availability
Cost savings
Wide reach (no internet required)
Streamlined enlistment
Speed
Convenience
Efficient communication management
In the sections that follow, we’ll delve into each of these categories in greater detail.
1. Versatility
Texting practices can include both fully self-contained messaging or links to expanded massaging. As such, text messaging can be used for just about any business communication needs, including:
Providing customer support
Sending reminders of upcoming appointments or nudges for customers to initiate such appointments (such as scheduled dental cleanings)
Sharing updates and information regarding products, services, or personnel
Promoting products and services
Generating new customer leads
Distributing coupons
Maintaining contact with old customers
Inviting customers to participate in surveys or contests
Sending out birthday wishes, holiday greetings, and other personal messages that build and maintain long-term relationships
2. Direct Customer Engagement
Receiving a direct text creates a personal experience for the receiver. Rather than clicking on an online advertisement or receiving a mass email communication, your business text message goes directly to the recipient’s mobile phone.
In the case of two-way texting or sending a follow up message to a client, customers can actually communicate with the business directly by asking questions and providing their responses. The feeling of being engaged in real-time with real people adds a level of trust that can’t be gained in other forms of marketing or business communication.
3. Customer Availability
Pew estimates that 97% of Americans own a smartphone. On top of that, consider some of these stats regarding cell phone behavior:
80% of Americans check their phone within 10 minutes of waking up
47% look at their phone while on dates
70% look at their phone while on the toilet
To that end, as a business owner, you can ascertain one important fact: people are almost always on their phones. On top of that, millennials actually prefer text communication and sms marketing.
4. Cost Savings
A single business sms message can reach every customer and potential customer in fractions of a second. It significantly reduces the number of phone calls that would need to be placed to achieve the same purpose.
Business texting can also reduce or in some cases eliminate costs of:
Billboards, internet ads, and other forms of traditional marketing
Inbound and outbound call staffing (much of that communication can be done more efficiently through text)
Time spent coordinating the dissemination of your message through third-party media providers
5. Wide Reach
Text messages are rarely sent using an internet connection. This means that text messages can reach people whether or not they are within wi-fi range. As such, you also don’t have to compete with the internet for their attention.
Once a person opens a text, they are looking, even if only for a second, exclusively at that text. In an age characterized by distraction, that kind of attention investment comes at a premium that’s hard to overstate.
6. Speed
With business texting, a concise, simple text can reach a wide swath of people. In a matter of seconds, a business can significantly reduce the time spent:
Drafting elaborate press releases
Writing website posts
Constructing business emails
Calling every customer individually
Speed is particularly important in highly competitive industries where multiple businesses vie with each other to be the first to get the news out. With business texting, you can get the jump on all your competitors.
7. Convenience
A customer that isn’t in a position to talk on their mobile phone may be in the right place to respond via text. How many times have you received a call during a meeting or social event, wished you could respond, and then forgot to entirely? Business text messaging grants the convenience for customers to easily respond in such situations.
This same convenience, of course, extends to the business side of the equation. Depending on the scale and nature of your business, the ability to converse quickly and easily at precisely the moment the customer expresses interest can be the difference between a new client and a lost opportunity.
8. Simplified Enlistment
Signing up to be on a texting list is easy. It can be initiated with something as simple as replying “yes” to a text or quickly filling out an online form.
As with any sales funnel, the more steps required to get to the action point, the less chance there is of a customer following through. Business texting streamlines the process and removes the friction.
9. Efficient communication management
Business texting can be used to streamline the management of your entire communications system:
Regularly scheduled maintenance reminders can be automated on an individual basis according to each client’s unique timeline.
Time normally spent on customer phone calls can be significantly condensed via texting.
Questions that require simple “yes” and “no” responses can be fully automated without losing any functionality.
One-Way Versus Two-Way Business Texting
When devising your business texting plan for how to text customers, be aware that two forms of business texting exists:
One-way – One-way texting generally consists of automated messages that promote products, provide service updates, and relay text message reminders to clients of scheduled appointments. They can also add a personal touch with things such as happy-birthday wishes.
Two-way – Two-way texting is where your customers respond to businesses in real time. These communications vary from text prompts to robot services (i.e., type “yes” if you want to be registered for this promotion) to actual conversations with you, your staff, or a business-texting service.
Upgrade Your Business Text Services With Nexa
Implementing a business text strategy into your business operations can significantly increase customer satisfaction, retention, and loyalty, while also saving your company money and time in the long run.
Partner with Nexa to elevate your business communication. We can help plan, organize, and execute business texting campaigns and services with care and professionalism. With state-of-the-art technology, you can ensure your business text messages reach the right people.
In addition to text message services, we also provide 24/7 new client intake services, virtual receptionist services, web form lead responses, Spanish support and translation services, appointment scheduling, and outbound call services.
Nexa Receptionists Holdings, LLC (“Nexa”) welcomes Pravin Chandrasoma as its first-ever Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for its two brands: Nexa and Alert Communications.
