Regardless of industry, the type of product/service you sell and the type of customers you target, your customer engagement strategy matters. Engaged customers are not only happier, but they’re often more loyal to your business. But getting customers to engage with you and stay engaged can be challenging.
With an average open rate of up 98% and a global user base of 5 billion, SMS is a fantastic channel to connect with your customers. Here’s how you can increase customer engagement using SMS:
- Offer customer support
- Send promotional incentives
- Send reminders
- Send prompts
- Ask for customer feedback
Offer customer support
Use SMS alongside your more traditional customer support channels, such as email, live chat and phone/call centres. Texting is more personal, feels more natural and although customers can reply at a time that best suits them, the nature of SMS encourages many people to reply quickly.
This helps create a better customer experience and more efficient case resolution.
Send promotional incentives
Promotional incentives, such as exclusive discounts, sales and product launches, help keep your customers engaged. You’re likely already using other channels like email and social media to promote these activities. But are all your customers seeing these messages?
With SMS, you can ensure your messages actually reach customers and not end up in a spam or promotions folder. You can also personalise messages to the individual customer, even if it’s as simple as addressing them by their first name. After all, 91% of consumers are more likely to buy from businesses that remember and provide relevant offers and recommendations.
Send reminders
An SMS message can remind customers of upcoming appointments and any other important notifications that, if missed, could be costly to both your company and your customer. A simple text is not only a cost-efficient and quick way to communicate with customers, but is more likely to be seen by the recipient.
Send prompts
From cart abandonment notifications to messages that remind customers that a certain product needs refilling, a simple text can quickly and easily make recipients think of your brand. These messages can even bring customers back to do business with you.
Ask for customer feedback
Continually improving your services is a vital part of your business – it shows that you care about your customers, that you value what they have to say, and that you’re always striving for innovation. But to do this, you need customer feedback.
SMS is a great channel for gathering feedback. In fact, 40% of consumers are more likely to fill out a survey if it is promoted via text or WhatsApp. So, send a quick text to customers, asking them what they thought of your product/service and whether they would be happy to leave a review on TripAdvisor or Trustpilot.
You can even incentivise them to provide feedback with a “small thank you gift” for the time they spent completing the review, whether that’s an exclusive promo code or a gift card.
Engage with customers at every touchpoint during their buying journey
It’s clear that SMS is one of the best communication tools for connecting businesses with their customers and vice versa. For your customers, it’s a message from their favourite brands via the channel they use daily. For you, it’s quick, cost-efficient, directly reaches your intended recipients and boasts high engagement metrics.
Use SMS to grab your customers’ attention, keep them engaged with SMS and ultimately, boost conversions, sales and retention.
If you’re not already using SMS to engage with your customers, it’s time to start. If you’re already using SMS, how confident are you that you’re using it to its full potential? Learn more about this channel and how you can get more out of it by reaching out to us today.