Business leaders have long tapped into text messages to make an impact on their organization whether its big or small, run from an office building or a home. While most entrepreneurs understand the vast opportunities business texting can uncover, few are utilizing short message service (SMS) to its full potential. Home-based businesses are well-suited to utilize text messages just as larger organizations are even if budgets are drastically different. In fact, once texting campaigns are inititally implemented, tested and analyzed, text messaging campaigns can be difference-makers for home-based organizations looking to grow.
Think for a moment about how your business currently utilizies text messages. If you’re like many home-based businesses, you are only sending text messages to clients or prospects to confirm appointment times and reservations. Appointment confirmations are a meaningful way to utilize text messages, certainly, but they are far from the only way. No matter what industry you’re operating within, there are plenty of ways to better utilize text messaging to engage with your customers more fully, enhacing their experiences, while increasing business opportunities.
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Provide Shipping Updates:
If a physical product is being sold, use text messages to update customers on shipping. Provide tracking numbers or keep the recipient up to date with any shipping delays or changes. This leads to less phone calls with angry customers and more time focusing on what your business produces.
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Offer Product or Service Education:
If someone has purchased an item, send a message explaining how to utilize it before it arrives at their door. For example, if you are selling a wall mirror, you could text a link to a video that shows how to install it. If you’re a service provider and someone hired you to paint their kitchen cabinets, you could send a text with instructions on how to prep the space for the project before the contractor arrives. Using text messages to offer this kind of information is helpful and gets customers more excited for the product or service to come.
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Seek Out Repeat Business:
Texting is a great way to re-engage previous customers. For example, if you provided garden plotting services for someone in the last year, texting them in January to ask if they are in need of your services this year may lead to more business. For nearly every kind of product or service, a future text message can promote another purchase or booking.
After someone utilizes your home business, following up via text can show your commitment to customer care. Ask if a custom art piece looks great in its new home, or inquire if a customer’s tax return came if you provided tax prep assistance. Checking in once purchases are made will boost your customers’ loyalty over time.
Thinking of running a sale on a product or service? Utilize your message list to promote it. Branding the sale as “a text message subscriber exclusive” will make people feel like they’re getting an insider’s deal. Use a coupon code to measure the response.
Not long after a customer receives your product or utilizes your services, send a message to solicit feedback. Putting together a quick customer satisfaction survey is a good, quick way to gauge how the experience went. Be sure to promptly address any negative feedback people provide.
Now that ideas are hopefully flowing for new text message content ideas, it’s a good time to review some basic business texting best practices. Unlike texting friends and family, business texting requires compliance with communications rules. Most importantly, text message recipients must have opted-in to receive business messages (except for 2-factor authentication) and must be able to easily opt-out. Additionally, it must be clear who the message is from each time you text someone (even if it isn’t the first time), so using your business’ name for each send is a good idea. Finally, if you plan to send a link, avoid using a public link shortener that removes the URL of your website from the link, the URL should be easily recognizable and correspond with your business name.
Keep in mind that text messages should not only be used to land a sale. They can be used to improve customer relationships, boost engagement and brand awareness, and inform prospects and customers. As summer approaches, now is a good time to think through your strategy to see what new ideas could be implemented to get more out of text messages during the later half of the year and beyond.
Tom Sheahan is the CEO of Red Oxygen, a leading business SMS solutions provider that serves home-based businesses, SMBs and enterprise companies alike in the U.S. and beyond.
