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Grow Your Brand with SMS CRM Marketing

Communicating with your customers is fundamental to maintaining a strong relationship and ensuring repeat business. Today, there are numerous ways to not only maintain and improve your client relationships but also leverage historical data to better understand trends in customer behaviors to promote reputation growth.

In addition to email, SMS (short message service, better known as texting) is by far the most common and effective way to communicate with your customers. Whether you are promoting a new product, sending reminders about upcoming appointments or asking for feedback, SMS is an ideal communication vehicle all businesses can and should utilize to grow their business and reputation. When integrated with a business CRM (customer relationship management) system, SMS becomes even more beneficial with automated processes and data collection and organization.

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5 Benefits of SMS

Some of the top benefits of SMS communication include:

  • High engagement and fast results. Texting is one of the fastest communication tools we currently have at our disposal. SMS has a remarkable open rate of 98%, whereas email has an average open rate of under 20%. That does not mean SMS is the only tactic to use, but it does prove to be a powerful and accessible tool that should not be ignored.
  • Increased conversion rates. Because most customers opt-in to receive texts and check their phones more often than their email, your conversion rates tend to rank higher than email.
  • Direct customer engagement. With 33% of consumers engaging with SMS messages and 47% leading to sales, SMS is a great way to reach your customers and engage with them regularly.
  • Trackable data and metrics. CRM integration allows you to clearly track and monitor your SMS data and analyze metrics over time. You will be able to quickly see what times tend to work best for your customer base, which styles of communication they tend to respond to, your opt-in and opt-out ratio, and so much more.
  • Simple and automated personalization. To save time and increase personalization, many SMS CRM tools allow you to individualize each text with names of customers, location-specific messaging, and more.
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Understanding the Limits

Although there is an extensive list of benefits with SMS, there are also limits.

  • Do not assume every customer wants personal communication via text. Some people prefer email, while others may opt out of all ads and brand communication. This is where understanding your customer base and their preferred communication channels can help you show up in a way that resonates with them and aligns with your goals.
  • SMS comes with strict opt-in rules that must be followed. Your SMS opt-in form should state how often your customers can expect to receive messages, your terms and conditions, instructions on how to opt-out, and messaging about data rates. Federal laws and regulations uphold these rules, and it is vital for your brand to stick by its word.
  • Character limits can impact your messaging. SMS has a short 160-character limit, meaning you must be short and sweet with your messaging. For communications that require long-form content, email is best.
  • No imagery or graphics. There is a difference between SMS and MMS (multimedia messaging). SMS only allows up to 160 characters of text and no imagery or video. MMS, on the other hand, is better for longer, more complex messages that are paired with images, videos, links to external sites or audio clips.
  • Set realistic goals around delivery capabilities. Like all marketing plans, setting realistic goals for your SMS campaign is imperative. Our long-term goal may be to double or triple the subscriber list, while the short-term goal revolves around increasing the opt-in rate every month. The content developed for the campaign will also impact its success, which includes the delivery method and how it appears to the customer. For example, a wall of text about your newest product launch will not be as inviting as a short and timely sentence about your latest promotion.
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Finding the Right Balance

SMS CRM marketing is an excellent tool for nearly all types and sizes of businesses. However, it is not the only system that should be used to communicate with your customer base. Integrating SMS CRM alongside other tactics, such as newsletters, social media and the good, old-fashioned phone call, is a great way to step up your reputation game.

These tools typically require a monthly subscription and a team to manage the communications and data. This is where having a trusted digital marketing agency comes into play. Here at Web Tech, we implement a holistic and industry-specific approach to SMS and chat marketing campaigns. Before jumping in headfirst, we gather crucial information about your business's goals and needs and identify solutions that best fit those needs. We then integrate it with your technology and help you manage it from start to finish.

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