CSAT scores are great measures of how delighted a customer is after a single experience with your company. Measuring customer satisfaction is a must for most industries.

The first place our customers use text messaging is in sending satisfaction surveys. When they’re measuring customer-service interactions or conversations, our customers tend to send out surveys by text immediately after the interaction. With products like furniture, they may wait several weeks to give the customer time to enjoy the new additions before sending a satisfaction survey.

The surveys often consist of only one question or just a few carefully chosen questions. If our customer needs responses to a longer survey, they can link the text message to an online survey form. And with text, the response rate goes up almost immediately.

The greatest benefit to sending any survey by text is that your customers will read it and respond. We know that globally we send 5 billion texts a day, and we open 98 percent of them. Conversely, we only open emails 22 percent of the time, according to Gigaom. Research from Asurion shows that we look at our phones 96 times a day or once every 10 minutes.

If you want to know what your customers are thinking, ask them via texts. You can use text-only SMS messages or multi-media MMS messages. Visit our recent blog to determine which is best for your use.

In addition to sending surveys via text messaging, you can improve your customer experience with text messaging. Here’s an insider secret from one of our customers – consider using the SMS-Magic Mobile App.

One of our customers is a property management company, and needed a way for tenants to reach property managers during an emergency. The PMs weren’t always at their desks waiting for the calls to come in, and tenants were frustrated by what they perceived was a lack of concern.

Nothing could have been farther from the truth. Often during working hours, the property managers were out visiting properties. After hours, they weren’t in the office, but relied on a dedicated phone line to handle emergencies. The only problem was that tenants texted the company instead of calling, and no one responded to them. The system wasn’t set up to respond to texts.

So, the company deployed the SMS-Magic Mobile App. A tenant could text the company about emergencies, and the PM on call could field the text on a personal mobile phone. The text would even be recorded in the company’s CRM as if it had come through the desktop computer in the office. You can imagine how much happier the tenants are – their emergencies are getting prompt attention. And how much happier staff members are because they can handle emergencies away from their desks.

Another of our customers is a disrupter in the world of travel accommodations. The company works with condominium and apartment developers to identify properties that are empty during the construction phase in major U.S. cities. They design high-end interiors, stage the empty condos and apartments with furniture and accessories, and rent them to travelers looking for luxury accommodations in highly desirable neighborhoods, mostly in downtown areas.

SMS-Magic helps the company’s customer service reps easily reach out to the right people to resolve issues. For example, if a guest is arriving late and has a question about checking in — they can call, email, or text customer support. The inquiry is logged in the support center and any customer service rep who checks that guest record later can see the complete interaction. It makes solving guest issues easier, especially when handing off open cases during shift changes.

Connecting a guest and a customer service rep via text is an important functionality needed to resolve issues. Text is also likely to be a guest’s preferred method of interaction since messaging is the fastest growing conversational medium on the planet.

We can help you set up automated responses to incoming texts. With an automated system in place, your customers will have an immediate response that often can provide the information they need. You have the option to switch to live responses when you need to.

We’ve also thought about the customers who use more than the native SMS capability in their phones. You can receive, track and respond to multichannel queries such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, text and MMS.

Security is always top of mind for us. With all our products, we ensure data privacy and regulatory compliance while you’re using text messaging to manage your customers’ issues.

It’s a competitive world and if you’re able to respond to your customers faster than your competition, you have earned an amazing competitive advantage. Your customers may not expect much from customer service, but you can earn new customers, while keeping your existing customers, by delighting them every time they contact you. Quick responses to their emergencies or inquiries can help you develop the positive customer relationships that drive your business.

We’d like to help you wow your customers with outstanding customer service. Contact us for more information about the SMS-Magic family of products. We have a solution that’s right for you!

Many different organizations – companies, healthcare systems, financial institutions, higher ed, just to name a few – need to communicate with the people they serve. But the people they serve aren’t responding to phone calls, voice mail or emails. It’s so quiet out there, you can hear the crickets.

What results is a company spending hours of staff time trying to send reminders for appointments or deadlines, frustrated customers having to repeat their stories to rep after rep  or everyone playing phone tag for days. Older ways of communicating can be difficult and ineffective.

It’s nobody’s fault, but it is an indication of the world we’re navigating right now. We (as consumers) are changing what we respond to. Here are a few statistics to put it in perspective:

• In 2018, 73 percent of online traffic came from mobile rather than desktops, according to Parse.ly. The percentage has grown since then.
• We only open emails 22 percent of the time, according to Gigaom.
• Globally, we send more than 5 billion texts a day, and we open 98 percent of them.
•  Asurion’s research shows that Americans look at our phones 96 times a day or once every 10 minutes.·      In a recent survey cited by Nathan Eddy in eWeek, “Over half of respondents (52 percent) said they would be likely to text with a customer support agent. Similarly, 52 percent would prefer texting customer support more than their current preferred method of communication.”

In short, as customers we like texting, and we respond to text messages quickly. As companies trying to serve customers, messaging allows us to interact in personal, memorable ways. Mobile phones give us ideal access to our best customers, and messaging gives us access to those phones. By using messaging, you can reach your customers wherever they are. With thoughtful planning, you can provide interactions that are both helpful and just in time.

Messaging is applicable to almost all industries because every business needs to interact with its customers. Positive interactions are critical to engaging customers, understanding their needs, and keeping them loyal to your brand. Engaged customers lead to higher sales, more applicants, more qualified buyers, stronger leads, and better attendance, just to name a few benefits.

How Can You Get Started?

If your customer engagement is currently based on emails, phone calls, or direct mail, we suggest you try messaging as a new channel. We offer automated text messaging, so your customers get the attention they need, but not at the expense of your customer service team. Our conversational messaging is just that – conversational. Your customers can respond to your messages if they have questions or want to give you more information.

Our system, working with your CRM, can keep track of all your customer interactions in one place. It can also keep track of messages sent from a variety of platforms like Messenger, WhatsApp, SnapChat and native phone texts, so you don’t sacrifice anything to help your best customers when they have problems.

SMS-Magic offers a free trial so that you can get a feel for our product. If you’re as pleased as we think you will be, you can choose the level of service that’s best for your company.

Contact us to set up a demo or to start your free trial. Let us show you how you can engage your customers in a new way!

She immediately contacted the manufacturer. Here’s what happened:

1. The company asked for proof of purchase.
2. She found her Amazon receipt and sent it.
3. They asked what was wrong with the machine.
4. She explained the display was flashing.
5. They agreed the machine was dead and sent her instructions for submitting a claim.
6. She cut the cord on the machine, took a picture of the machine sans cord, and sent it in.
7. The company replied that her replacement machine would be shipped that day, and she could expect it to arrive in two or three days.
8. Her new machine arrived, and her caffeine addiction was saved

Our colleague was amazed. She expected the interaction to be time consuming and unpleasant. Instead, it took only minutes to report a warranty issue and have a new machine on its way to her. She didn’t have to argue or justify or complain or talk to multiple customer service reps.

For all she knew, she was dealing with a chat bot and that was fine. She didn’t necessarily need human interaction to solve the problem. All she needed was instructions for getting a new coffee maker ASAP.

Kudos to the manufacturer for making their warranty service process so customer friendly. They couldn’t have done it without a technology commitment.

Bring Quick, Easy Problem Resolution to Your Customer Service Team

You, too, can bring results like this to your customer service department by using automated text messaging. It’s a win-win for you and your customers.

Customers say they’d like to communicate with customer service using text and prefer texting to other methods of contact. Using text messaging, your customer service team can automate routine interactions, saving human interactions for more complicated issues. Your team won’t have to send repetitive responses to your customers, both saving time and making their jobs more interesting.

It will take some thought to set up your automated text sequences, but once it’s designed and tested, you’ll save your team hours on the phone or email.

Let SMS-Magic Help You

We think SMS-Magic can help you reach your customers with less time and effort than you’re spending on emails and phone calls. We offer automated text messaging, so your customers get the attention they need, but not at the expense of your customer service team.

Our system, working with your CRM, can keep track of all your customer interactions in one place. It can also keep track of messages sent from a variety of platforms like Messenger, WhatsApp, SnapChat and native phone texts, so you don’t sacrifice anything to help your best customers when they have problems.

We’d love to help you handle repetitive customer service requests, just contact us to set up a demo or to start your free trial. Let us show you how SMS-Magic can help you easily respond to routine requests while freeing up your reps to handle more complicated issues.

Think about how you’re contacting your customer now. If you’re sending any type of message in small batches, you are spending quite a bit of time making sure all the elements (subject line, message, email address) are correct before you hit send. It would take several hours to send out 1,000 messages, and we don’t want to consider how long 10,000 messages might take, even with a bulk email delivery service.

And if you’re relying on emails, you are probably disappointed with the response rates your messages generate. Those of us in the U.S. only open emails 22 percent of the time, according to Gigaom. No wonder your customers aren’t beating down the door – they aren’t getting the message. And following up on emails that have gone silent takes lots of time.

If you’re using the phone to contact customers for any reason – their car is ready, their appointment is coming up, or you still need those documents completed – you’re not only spending time dialing and leaving messages, you’re also spending time in the social aspects of a phone call. The minutes spent asking about your customer’s holiday plans can quickly add up to hours.

Then there’s the cost. Customer-service phone calls, according to a Forrester Research study, cost the sponsoring company about $16 each. A text thread, however, averages out to between $1 and $5. We think that’s enough of a reason.

Even so, we don’t mean to disparage talking to your customers by phone, but when you do engage in a phone call, you need to have a specific reason. Are you calling to establish a personal connection to solve a problem or ask for an opinion? In that case, the phone may be the best way to connect.

But we all know that when you’re sending lots of messages with the same text or question, it isn’t fun. It’s routine. It’s boring, but it’s still vitally important. So why not use a system that can send messages in seconds, update your customer’s record, and provide a quick, easy way for your customers to respond?

If you’re using a CRM like Salesforce or Zoho, text messaging apps like SMS-Magic can link directly to the CRM. That allows you to:

1. Collect all the customer service information about an open ticket in one place. That allows anyone on the team to handle the next interaction.

2. Know exactly what messages were sent to which customers because it will be logged into their CRM record.

3. Communicate with messages from all of the messaging apps like WhatsApp, Messenger, WeChat, Line, Phoenix, Viber or the native texting app on your customers’ phones.

SMS messages are limited to 160 characters and cost less to send than larger MMS messages. MMS messages, however, can include audio, video, GIFs and complicated graphics, among other rich media components. Even with a large file attached, you can send your customers the information they need, exactly when they need it.

Let SMS-Magic Help You

We think SMS-Magic can help you reach your customers with less time and effort than you’re spending on emails and phone calls. We offer conversational messaging so that your customers can respond to your texts. If you want to tie into your CRM, we work particularly well with Salesforce and Zoho, but we can help you with many others, and we work with all the messaging apps like Messenger, WhatsApp, and SnapChat, so you don’t sacrifice anything to reach your best customers wherever they are … and you get your life back! How cool is that?

Contact us to set up a demo or to start your free trial. Let us show you how SMS-Magic can help you end the nightmare of scheduling installations!

As we listened to her story, we thought she had done everything right because she worked with a reputable company. We thought they really did want to provide great service, but the sales staff left out a critical part of the installation process – the installer wouldn’t haul away stained carpet. The customer service staff wanted to help, but our colleague couldn’t reach them on installation day because she got caught in endless voicemail loops. When she finally reached them, customer service couldn’t get in touch with the installer quickly enough to resolve the issue. Our colleague faced a huge expense to find and hire someone else to dispose of the old carpet.

The End of the Story & Critical Solutions

The installers eventually gave in and finished the job, but they trashed the old carpet in a dumpster the homeowners’ association had supplied for a different project. Our colleague faced fines from the HOA for improper use of the dumpster. It’s easy to see why she won’t use this supplier again. But it all could have been avoided.

How? By using text messaging to standardize scheduling, deliver consistent installation tips, and connect customers with customer service and installers quickly. We think text messaging can help you turn a disgruntled customer into a delighted customer. Remember: you can’t help a customer that you can’t reach.

How Can Text Messaging Help You Schedule Installation?

If you sell products or services that need installation, text messages can help you reach your customer wherever they are. Your customers actually prefer texts to emails or phone calls. Consider this:

• Nathan Eddy writes in eWeek, “Over half of [survey] respondents (52 percent) said they would be likely to text with a customer support agent. Similarly, 52 percent would prefer texting customer support more than their current preferred method of communication.”
• Globally, we send more than five billion texts a day – not counting other types of messages – and we open 98 percent of them. Conversely, we only open emails 22 percent of the time, according to Gigaom. Research from Asurion shows that we look at our phones 96 times a day or once every 10 minutes.

Clearly, we like to text and find it helpful in personal interactions. We think the next big business opportunity is to make messaging a regular part of customer support.

Text messages, either SMS or MMS, are versatile. They are immediate because your message goes directly to your customer’s phone. Text messages are brief but they can link to much more information like calendars, web pages, PDFs, videos or podcasts. You can deliver the same critical information about the installation to every customer, every time.

And during the sale, your customer can opt into receiving text messages. You can include it as part of the sales process.

When you set up a new messaging campaign, we recommend that you plan the flow of text messages using both templates and automated delivery. You decide what information your customer needs and in what order – the next text message in the sequence is triggered by the customer’s response to the last text. If you don’t receive a response within a certain time, your system sends a reminder text. If you don’t receive a response or your customer indicates a problem, the issue can be referred to a live customer service rep automatically.

If our colleague’s carpet company had used this type of system, they could have given her options for carpet removal and disposal long before the day of installation. They might have been able to keep a customer.

Let SMS-Magic Help You

We think SMS-Magic can help you eliminate nightmares when you’re scheduling installation for your products. SMS-Magic can help provide a great experience for your customers, too. We offer conversational messaging so that your customers can respond to your texts. If you want to tie into your CRM, we work particularly well with Salesforce and Zoho, but we can help you with many others, and we work with all the messaging apps like Messenger and WhatsApp, so you don’t sacrifice anything to reach your best customers wherever they are!

Contact us to set up a demo or to start your free trial. Let us show you how SMS-Magic can help you end the nightmare of scheduling installations!

And by customers, I mean the people who buy goods or services from you, regardless of what you call them – customers, clients, patients, applicants, students, or anything else.

Davidson, a brand and communications agency, answered the question: “Beyond intuitive design, customers are looking for brands that encourage them to be the best versions of themselves – like a good friend. Consumers are looking for brand relationships that feel less robotic and more real – regardless of whether they are purchasing a fast-moving consumer good or a luxury good.”

So what does your compliance with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) have to do with meeting customer expectations?

Everything.

Being a “good friend” to your customers starts with how you reach out to them. It’s simply rude to start sending unsolicited texts to potential customers. You wouldn’t approach a new friend that way – you’d demonstrate much more respect for them. And in this case, it’s also the law.

The TCPA was created to combat unsolicited phone calls. Through the years, however, it has expanded to include new technologies like text messaging. It contains specific restrictions and penalties that companies ignore at their peril. The fines can be as much as $1,500 per message sent. In one of the first class-action lawsuits concerning texting, Papa John’s settled the case against it for $16.5 million in 2013.

Here’s how you can better serve your customers by complying with the TCPA:

Obtain Express Written Consent

You must have express written consent before your company can legally send text messages to anyone. That means more than just asking for their phone number. It doesn’t matter who it is – an existing customer, a former client, a trade-show lead, or someone on a purchased marketing list. Before that first message goes out, your customer must say it’s okay.

That generally means the first contact must made by a different type of communication – email, direct mail, in person, and point-of-purchase materials are some of the most common. You can ask your customer to send a key word to a specific phone number, like sending CHEESE to a pizza company to start texts and get a discount coupon. You could ask customers to fill in their phone numbers on your website. You could also have customers sign up in person at meetings or trade shows.

With any of these methods, however, you must include information about your texting program. Your call to action must meet TCPA requirements before you are legally out of the woods.

How to Structure Calls to Action

Your call to action is any message that encourages your customer to sign up for texting and it can contain an offer like a coupon or discount.

Here are the items you need in every CTA:

Automated Marketing Messages

Your customers must agree to receive automated marketing messages from you. Your CTA needs to be very clear about what they are allowing. Your CTA should also explain that customers don’t have to agree to receive text messages to be able to make purchases from you.

What Can Customers Expect to Receive?

Tell customers what you’ll be sending them. Be upfront about coupons, discounts, newsletters or anything else you have planned in your campaign.

How Often Will Message Arrive?

Explain the frequency of messages. Can they expect weekly messages or is this a one-time contact? Estimate the number of messages you intend to send during a given time period.

Message and Data Rates

Remind customers that they might be charged to receive SMS messages. Most plans include free unlimited texting, but some plans include charges. The wireless carriers require you to put your recipients on notice.

What, Who, When, Why, How?

Either provide a list of terms and conditions for your offer or include a link to more information. Tell the customer the following:

• The company’s identity, the brand name or program.
• How to reach customer service with questions.
• What your customer is saying “yes” to with details of the product or service.
• How to opt out. For example, “Reply STOP to unsubscribe.” Make it prominent.

Privacy Policy

Make sure you include your company’s privacy policy or provide a link to it. If you don’t already have a policy, you’ll need to draft one.

Keeping Track of Who Opted In and Who Opted Out

Our customers use messaging in a wide variety of applications in a wide variety of industries. No matter what industry you’re in – banking, higher education, hospitality, finance or others – SMS-Magic can make compliance a breeze. We’ll help you keep up with customer permissions as they opt-in (and perhaps opt-out) of your messaging campaigns.

SMS-Magic is designed to track opt-in and opt-out requests so that you send only to the customers who have specifically asked you to. Our back-end systems are structured so that we can display individual requests, and we can prove you’ve complied with customer requests. You won’t have to worry about regulators asking to see your records. We use on-going processes to collect and store information about distribution and can share it with regulators, if necessary.

Does SMS-Magic sound like the answer you’ve been looking for? We hope so!

Contact us to set up a demo or to start your free trial. Let us show you why your compliance worries will disappear with SMS-Magic!

First, let’s talk about what is Omnichannel vs multichannel. These two similar terms have different meanings.

• Multichannel refers to a business reaching out to their audience on several channels. Each channel sends the same content or message, with the goal of attracting as many responses as possible.
• Omnichannel refers to a business seamlessly communicating with buyers across multiple channels. These channels are able to interact with each other.  Your reps are able to have continuing conversations with Individual prospects and customers, no matter what channel they are using.

They simple difference? With Omnichannel you get seamless conversations blended together across channels.

These are just a few results that show why you want to adopt Omnichannel.

• Marketing: A recent study shows that marketing campaigns using three or more channels resulted in an 18.96% engagement rate.  Compare that to single channel campaigns that only get 5.4% engagement.
• Sales: When interacting with three or more channels, customers bought 250% more frequently than customers who communicated with only one channel. Even better, Omnichannel customers were 90% more likely to come back for another purchase.
• Service/Retention: Customer retention for Omnichannel support teams reached 66.12%, compared to 34.8% for a single-channel

What is Omnichannel in Messaging?

Omnichannel in Marketing

Omnichannel is most often thought of in relation to marketing. An Omnichannel marketing strategy means that every channel is integrated. Each channel responds to and updates customer data. Which means that each rep or user on different channels can use that data to be sure they are sharing relevant information, based on the conversation history of each individual.

In Omnichannel messaging, that means delivering seamless, continuing conversations,across all messaging platforms. For example:

• A prospect receives an SMS message with an offer and responds.
• The same prospect sends a new inquiry via Facebook, or WhatsApp.
• Omnichannel messaging lets your business users see both interactions as a continuing conversation. S they can respond with relevant questions or information, using the appropriate messaging channel.
• All of the above is done in a way that’s seamless for both your audience and your internal marketing users or sales and service reps.

Omnichannel for Sales

Increasingly, buyers are toggling between online sites and offline brick and mortars to research and buy products and services. In a recent study, Deloitte found that digital experiences influence 56 cents of every dollar spent in physical stores.

Omnichannel for sales eliminated the traditional barriers between channels, weaving all communications together and sharing data between them. This empowers  customers to conduct business with sales reps and companies however they want, and whenever they want. Reps can see every interaction, from marketing to prior sales conversations to service conversations.

Omnichannel messaging in sales empowers reps to see all messaging conversations across the entire buying journey, across all messaging platforms. For example:

• A prospect starts an interaction with a company via their Facebook page.
• The rep can immediately check for any other conversations across marketing sales and service. Reps quickly increase their knowledge of the prospect’s history, so they engage them with relevant questions or responses.
• If the prospect then decides to send an SMS to sales and that same rep is unavailable, another rep can respond to their request. The new rep can see the entire messaging history, so the prospect doesn’t have to repeat themselves to continue their buying conversation.

By implementing an Omnichannel messaging strategy for sales, your reps handle more buyers (6:1 over phone calls), and research shows you’ll close 40% more sales with messaging as part of the sales cycle.

Omnichannel for Service

Omnichannel for service allows your customers to reach out to you on any platform, blending all of the conversations around one case so reps can respond with relevant resolution options. True Omnichannel eliminates the need for customers to wait on hold and repeat themselves to multiple reps.

Omnichannel messaging in service empowers agents to send and receive case messages from multiple messaging platforms, such as SMS, WhatsApp and Facebook. For example:

• A customer can start a case through the business’s Facebook page or Whatsapp account.
• The customers can then ask questions via SMS when they’re on the go.
• At any time, they can move back to Facebook or WhatsApp.
• Reps see and respond to a single, continuous conversation.

This speeds time-to-resolution and increases rep productivity, since they can handle 10x more cases with messaging than with phone calls.

The Bottom Line

The question everyone should be asking probably isn’t simply “What is Omnichannel?” The true question is “What is Omnichannel messaging and how can I quickly use it?”

Omnichannel doesn’t have to be complicated. When you have the right messaging platform, all of your messages are seamlessly integrated into a single CRM record. Then, permitted users and reps  have the visibility they need, across the entire buying journey.

Going to Dreamforce ‘19? Be sure to stop by booth #210 to see Converse Omnichannel messaging in action. We’ll be demonstrating the use of Omnichannel messaging in service, blending SMS, MMS, Facebook and Whatsapp into seamless, full-visibility, customer service conversationsss.

Text message templates can be used to both accelerate and improve the quality of your sales and support conversations. You’ll also onboard new reps and empower them to immediately begin to create relevant, compelling conversations as they select proven, powerful responses.

How to Use Text Message Templates to Accelerate Sales and Service

We all know that the reps who close more business  and resolve issues faster are the reps with the most  knowledge and experience.

Text message templates empower you to share the expertise of your best reps with all of your sales teams, easily and effectively.

Here’s how:

• Research the most common buying questions asked by prospects, and/or the most common customer issues faced by support reps.
• Then, gather the information/resolutions that your highly successful reps use to respond to these questions. Identify the answers that successful overcome the objection and move the deal forward, or quickly resolve the customer issue. Quite often there is more than one answer, so collect all the potential answers and resolutions.
• Take all of these answers/resolutions and categorize them into groups, by the question or issue being asked.
• Then, create text message templates for each of the categories and individual answers. Be sure to group  them based on the question or issue. You may need to use the same answer in multiple categories.
• Share these rapid response/resolution templates with all of your reps as part of your text messaging interface. Your vendor should support the easy addition of such templates as part of the interactive Desk or Inbox reps use to send and receive messaging conversations.
• Be sure you train the reps on how to search for and find, then use, the most appropriate templates to accelerate responses that  are relevant and right on the nose.

The graphics below share examples of Sales Rapid Response and Service Rapid Resolution templates.

Sales Rapid Response Template Example.

Support Rapid Resolution Template Example.

The Bottom Line

Today’s digital buyers expect increasingly faster and more relevant responses to their inquiries and issues. We live in an immediate gratification world, and they expect immediate results from you and your business.

Text message templates guide your sales and service reps to create and send the most relevant responses to your audience’s questions and customers’ issues.

• You get to easily leverage the best and brightest in your rep teams to increase the productivity of all your reps.
• New reps quickly come up to speed to be effective in their initial messaging conversations.
• Current reps get better and better at responding with relevant and compelling answers to questions and issues.
• The productivity and results of your sales and service organization increases again and again as you continue to enhance templates to win business and serve customers.

Last week we talked about how to use SMS templates to increase marketing responses, create compelling nurtures and accelerate buyer profiling. Marketing uses templates to quickly create campaigns, assuring the content is the most compelling to individual buyer intents. If you missed that post, check it out here.

If you’d like to experience how SMS business text messaging and SMS templates can help your business, we’d love to share a Free Trial with you. No strings attached! Click here now to register for your Trial and get ready to experience the best in business text messaging.

Research proves that your audience members like texting even better when it’s efficient and relevant for them.

• 76% of US consumers said that speed is the most important feature of service-based messaging to positively impact satisfaction.
• 91% of users who opted in to receive texts from a brand see those messages as “somewhat” or “very useful”.

Here are a few simple ways to use SMS templates in business to make sure you are effective and relevant with every message you send.

How to Use Text Message Templates in Business

MARKETING Content

The first step in using templates successfully is to create a basic set of templates for your marketing opt-ins, nurture campaigns, profiling questions and surveys.

Begin by tuning the basic set of content templates provided by SMS-Magic, or your other text  messaging providers, to match your audience and business.

• Edit templates to match your business and offerings.
• Edit the company name in the templates.
• Tune campaign templates, such as nurtures and questions, to be relevant to your specific focus.
• Now, create a second set of templates with a  different set of messaging/information.

Run these A and B campaigns for a bit of time, tracking the response rates and any trends or profiles you see. See which style of message and content gets the best responses and/or drives prospects forward in  the most effective manner.

If you need, run another set of tests to hone in on the voice and content types that compel the  best responses. Match all of your other marketing content templates to this style and you’ll begin to get the best results from your text campaigns, quickly and effectively.

 Compelling SALES responses

It’s important to research to find the specific answers your sales teams give to prospects, the answers that successfully move them forward in your pipeline.

Use these successful answers to tune the sample templates offered by your messaging provider. Then, offer these templates as proven responses that the reps can quickly select and send in response to similar questions.

Be sure you include the specific content links in your templates that reps have proven drive the highest percentage and fastest time-to-conversions.

Rapid SUPPORT Resolution

We all know that 80% of support issues are quickly resolved by a finite set of specific, accurate responses. Identify the most popular issues and the specific resolutions your support reps use to quickly resolve the majority of your cases.

Tune the sample resolution templates offered by your messaging provider using these rapid resolution answers. Propagate these resolutions templates across your support reps and teams.

And finally, be sure you include the specific content links in your templates that your customers needs to easily resolve the issue.

The Bottom Line

When you use text message templates for business, you can and will increase your marketing, sales and support results, beyond what you’ll receive with basic text messaging. Specifically, you will:

• Personalize your marketing outreach with highly compelling and relevant information.
• Increase sales effectiveness with responses that are proven to close more business.
• Accelerate time-to-resolution by giving support reps the best possible response to customer issues.

Over the next  3 weeks, we’ll be sharing specific template ideas and guidelines for marketing, sales and service, as well as a variety of SMS templates for popular industries. Be sure to check back every Thursday for more details and insights!

If you want to see for yourself how text messaging can impact your business, schedule a demo today and we’ll be happy to show you just how our SMS templates will lead you to success.