Whether it’s glasses of wine by the fireplace, or a spontaneous weekend away, the romantic season is upon us again and it’s clear that the ‘love economy’ is here to stay.
With attention spans getting shorter, it’s becoming increasingly challenging for businesses to form meaningful connections with their customers. Brands are continually seeking out innovative ways to reignite the spark with distant customers and break the one-time transaction curse.
Using SMS to make customers fall in love with you
In this blog, we’ll explore some top SMS strategies for increasing brand loyalty and winning new business this season.
Add a personal touch
Customers want to be more than just a number, so a great place to start is by analysing your customer data. Take a deep dive into their purchase history, and browsing habits to divide the crowd into groups of customers with similar behaviours. By segmenting your audience in this way, you can come up with hyper-targeted messages that will help your SMS campaigns hit home.
Pay more attention to the one-time purchase or infrequent purchase group with a campaign that shows off a new product range, and shares a limited-time discount code. Or group your customers by age and send them insights into what their peers have been buying. Don’t forget to include links to similar products.
In the short term, this strategy works to boost conversion rates, but there’s a long-term game in mind too. You’re showing customers that you’ve noticed them. Sometimes it’s the small gestures and personal touches that mean the most when building relationships.
Timing is everything
Just like with romance, for SMS campaigns, timing really is everything. You could send the right message at the wrong time and it would be no different from sending the wrong message at the right time. So let’s explore how to get that perfect intersection of messaging.
First off, let’s think about when the right time to message would be. We want to catch customers at key points along their journey when they’re the most engaged, so this could be when they’ve added an item to their basket or after their first purchase.
With SMS automation, you could set up a workflow to ensure that every customer who makes it this far in their journey receives a targeted message to coincide with the step that they’ve just completed. We could think of this as a not-so-casual run-in with the person that we’ve been trying to get attention from for the past few days… Whether they take the bait and it turns into more success or it sticks out in their mind for next time, this is one way that you could nurture a new customer relationship.
There’s also the functional benefits of automated SMS campaigns. Picture a seamless delivery experience with real-time tracking updates, and alerts that allow the customer to make sure they’re actually going to be in to receive their order.
Keeping customers in the loop is a great way to build trust and satisfaction with your service, and on the flip side, automated SMS campaigns help to save resources and improve productivity for your business too. It’s a win-win for fostering brand loyalty and delivering a top-tier customer experience.
Touch point of choice
If there was doubt before, research from The Consumer Data Revolution has confirmed that SMS is the preferred method of contact for 64% of customers, thanks to its convenience and immediacy.
With our email inboxes regularly getting inundated with newsletters and updates, SMS provides a direct way to cut through the noise anytime and anywhere. It’s a great way to filter the alerts and notifications that are really important, such as appointment reminders, delivery updates, and time-sensitive announcements.
Such a direct and personal approach is not only great for being seen but it’s also great for building a positive brand image. Customers appreciate brands that respect their time and preferences, and when these elements are reflected in SMS communications, it strengthens the overall brand image as well as the relationship between business and customer.
Be dependable
In every relationship, there has to be a sense of give and take, and customer comms is no exception. Stand out by being different and celebrating the little things.
Whether it’s a personalised birthday discount or a recipe for world chocolate day, offering a value-based approach to your conversation is more likely to keep your customers hooked. Instead of being labelled as a brand that takes, be known as the brand that always gives back.
Why not test engagement by creating contests and polls for your customers to get involved in? Shortcodes and virtual phone numbers are a great asset for encouraging a two-way street of conversation. Couple this with an incentive for customers to take part in a prize draw or a 10-minute sale opportunity, and you’ll start building more consistent customer interaction, which will strengthen customer loyalty.
It’s also important to keep up a string of regular comms with your customers. It’s not just about broadcasting information updates and transactional messages but about engaging in meaningful exchanges, whether through customer surveys, feedback requests, or sharing useful/ interesting content.
This steady stream of ‘getting to know you’ chat is what will ultimately build the foundation of an emotional connection to your brand, and foster positive associations.
The bottom line
Relationships take time and work, and SMS is a great way to dig a little deeper and set the pace for more meaningful exchanges with your customers.
Thanks to an open rate of 98%, and a response time of 90 seconds, it’s a tried and trusted tool when it comes to offering next-level customer service.
Ready to try it out for yourself?