Texting, once the domain of chatty high school students, continues to increase in popularity among people of all ages. Since they’re easy, fast, and discrete, texts are something that you can send and receive almost anywhere. As popular as this communication method has become, its potential to increase the success of businesses continues to go largely untapped. To make sure that doesn’t happen to your business, here are four ways that texting can boost your business outreach.
Make it Personal
Email, as popular as it is, is one of the least personal methods of communication. There’s nothing less impressive than getting a bulk email from a company that clearly has other priorities. However, if you send a text to your customer, it’s likely that it will be seen as a personal connection, even if the content of the text is largely pre-written. This will elevate your company in the mind of that customer, allowing you to then use other communication methods to meet their needs.
Make it Fast
Sending a quick text to a customer takes almost no time, meaning you can make a connection with them as soon as they leave the building. Sending that text request to get them to opt-in to texting is sure to get their attention and keep you at the top of their mind. This is especially important if they have yet to make a purchase decision, as it will help them mull over their options instead of putting their decision on the backburner. Companies like Text Request offer peer to peer texting options that make this sort of outreach much easier.
Make it Conversational
How often do you receive emails that say, “do not reply to this email”? The problem with that is that emails you send often create questions in a customer’s mind that they’d like to have answered simply by responding to the email. If you reach out via a text message, though, you can engage in a conversation with your customer on the same thread that you began, meaning the entire conversation will be preserved. This will prevent customer frustration since they won’t have to use multiple contact methods simply to find the answers they’re seeking.
Make it Noticeable
Bulk emails are so ubiquitous that any good email client has a special folder for these emails: the junk folder. If you think it’s hard to get noticed via an email in someone’s inbox, try getting noticed when your email is sitting in their junk folder. Fortunately, most text programs don’t have a junk folder, meaning that your text is likely to be seen, front and center, on your customer’s phone. This will help make your communication noticeable and make it less likely to be ignored.
What Would You Want?
When thinking through the best methods of business communication, many businesses are only concerned with what is easiest for them. However, what you should be concerned with is how you would want to be contacted if you were the customer. In most cases, it’s likely that you’d prefer a text for all the reasons mentioned above. If you realize that to be true, then it’s important to begin outreach through text as soon as possible.