What are inbound enquiries and how do we convert them with SMS?
Converting inbound enquiries with SMS is not as technical as it sounds and will enhance the way you deal with your consumers. Your inbound enquiries are requests that come from your customers and potential clients for further information about your product or services. In marketing, we call this lead generation. When you instigate a new SMS marketing campaign, you will likely attract a whole raft of new enquires and potential customers. It may be that you are already struggling to handle current sales enquiries. How you respond to your new enquires is how you convert them into business and is vitally important to the success or failure of your SMS marketing campaign or your business in general.
As the majority of your customers are engaging with businesses via their mobile phones, it makes perfect sense to respond to them instantly to their devices.
What a slow conversion rate says about your business
At a time when your department may already be running at its maximum capacity, you need to think about how your staff are going to be able to cope with the influx of new prospects. The speed at which you respond to the new enquiries says a lot about your business and first impressions really count. Let’s take a look at what a poor lead response time says about your organisation…
- Can’t cope with the business we already have.
- Not interested in customer enquiries/feedback.
- If we don’t have time to communicate with our customers, how can we offer you good service?
You may think that you are converting your inbound enquiries at a reasonable rate, but if you are not fast enough, this will show the customers that you are not able to manage and are likely to lose you those sales. Perhaps the most concerning part is that when you lose customers in this way, you are unlikely to be able to win them back. They will have given you what they consider to be ample time to respond and then taken their business elsewhere.
How can SMS marketing help?
The rise of SMS marketing has brought with it many really cool advantages. The key components that can add value to your SMS marketing strategies are:
- Bulk SMS marketing – meaning you can send out as many messages as you wish to as many subscribers as you wish. Technically, there is no limit to how many SMS marketing texts you can send out there using Bulk SMS, but we recommend that you check out our hints and tips for this.
- Two-way communication or transactional SMS messages, allows you to respond to your customers and continue a basic dialogue.
- SMS automated messages – this enables you to auto-respond to your enquiries.
When looking for strategies and solutions to reduce the amount of time it takes to convert inbound enquiries, two-way communication and automated SMS are the key to success. Imagine how frustrating it is for a customer who responds to your latest marketing advert or requests a quotation and then waits days for a response. Many won’t wait at all! You know your department is really busy right now, so why not use SMS automation to fire them a quick text back to let them know that you have received their enquiry and will aim to respond within an acceptable time frame. This will automatically free up man-hours for your staff who are seeing an influx of enquiries and reduce the cost of handling external communications, in business we call this call deflection. When SMS marketing messages are integrated with your own software, the leads can be managed as part of your organised system. This could reduce the instance of leads going elsewhere or slipping through the net.
SMS marketing tools to nurture leads
As well as an instant response to your enquiries, you can use:
- Automated SMS to send out updates, prompts and reminders to nurture new leads.
- With SMS marketing you can even set personalised messages to reach your recipients. Include details such as their names and the specific nature of their enquiry. For example, “Hi Josh, thanks for reaching out to us. A member of our team will contact you within 24 hours with a quote for insuring your dog DUKE”.
- Add forms, links and attachments to ease the customer further down the line of a potential sale or direct them to the right department. Customers can get information such as pricing, availability or frequently asked questions in an instant. Alternatively, they can be directed to the appropriate page of your website. Additions such as these will help to reduce workload within your enquiry-handling team.
- Implement a short code keyword for your potential clients to register their interest in a product or service. Short code key words make it easier for sales people to track inbound enquiries and follow up quickly. You can also create an auto response for the particular keyword that could be associated with a product/service.
- Use SMS marketing messages to confirm online bookings to give confidence to your customers that you are ready for their visit.
- Send out purchase confirmations to let your customers know that their product is on its way and you can even link tracking information.
Convert your inbound enquiries with TextAnywhere
Using simple SMS marketing tools can enhance your customer’s experience, develop trust and increase brand loyalty. When you choose TextAnywhere as your SMS marketing platform, you can integrate it with your own systems to keep all enquiries and communication accessible, organised and in one place.
Ready to get started? Click the button below for a free trial and let us show you how you can improve your customer experience through SMS marketing