Our lives run through our mobile devices. Research shows, 96 percent of Americans own a cell phone, making it easier than ever for businesses to reach their customers. Countless apps and methods for communication with customers are available, but which option is best? And why should you, as a trusted business, even offer SMS communication?
Read on to discover why your business should consider SMS solutions and how you can easily implement this into your daily operations.
Let’s start by looking at the usage of Short Message Service or SMS messaging. Professional text message use is expected to continue growing through 2021, and more than 5 million people worldwide send and receive SMS messages. It’s safe to say SMS usage is extremely high, but how effective is it for your business looking to close leads?
Businesses receive messages from various channels, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and many more. But ultimately, they need to decide how to communicate and stay in touch with prospective leads and current customers. A business doesn’t necessarily know whether customers have used third-party apps such as Facebook and Instagram. So these apps are probably not to be relied on as a business’s primary communication. A few primary and nearly guaranteed ways businesses can contact customers at any time is through a phone call, SMS, or other text message form, or email. Smartphones also have push notifications capabilities. But which of these methods is best for your business to communicate with customers and how do customers want to be communicated with?
To determine this means looking at which channel is most effective and understanding the way in which customers want to be contacted. The solution should be efficient for the business and delights rather than annoys the customer. According to a study that analyzed 5,000 notifications through SMS, push notifications, and email, SMS blew away email and push notifications in terms of open rates and engagement. Here is the breakdown of the results.
These numbers show SMS as the clear winner in every category. It’s obvious from this data why a business should be reaching out to customers via SMS. Also, note that 85 percent of customers say they prefer receiving text messages rather than a phone call or email. Customers are not only more likely to respond to SMS messages, it is their preferred method of communication.
There are many SMS options available, and most software providers exclusively offer SMS messaging services. While your business could use an exclusive SMS messaging service, you add yet another software solution to your operations. It’s much easier for your business to use one platform, with one login and one reporting system for your business that offers digital solutions, SMS, reporting, and more.
The GREENstick Business App offers a complete platform featuring various solutions for digital marketing, including SMS messaging. Within the Business App, you can manage all SMS customer communication from a single “Inbox.” It’s easy to add team members so multiple employees can collaborate and communicate with customers from the same place.
The benefits of SMS go beyond great communication solutions for your business. Many GREENstick customers who use SMS see triple the engagement rate with their brands and with the Business App. Our usage data shows SMS messaging users come back to the Business App three times more often than businesses that have not yet adopted SMS messaging.
We’ve earlier outlined high-open and click-through rates as benefits of using SMS messaging to contact business customers. But there are even more ways to show value and address needs through SMS messaging.
Inbox in GREENstick Business App provides a hub for business teams to collaborate. All employees can manage SMS custom communication from the same place in the Business App, and it supports efforts to scale sales and support communication with complete transparency. SMS messaging in GREENstick Business App also ensures a business owns its customer data – instead of services like Facebook or Google. Customer information is stored centrally and customers are not lost when employees leave.
Businesses should be communicating with customers through the methods they prefer to be reached and in a way that effectively scales support and sales. There should be full transparency when it comes to employee-to-customer communication and ethical ownership of customer data to ensure none are ever lost.
A comprehensive digital marketing and communications platform, such as GREENstick Business App, streamlines reporting and gives your business a single login to a platform full of essential local business tools.
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