These results are exciting, but they can also be overwhelming. A sudden surge in sales presents your business with brand new challenges. If you rise to the occasion, you’ll take your business to the next level. However, if you’re unable to handle the rapid influx of orders, your business could crash and burn.

These keys to success can help you successfully navigate your sales surge:

1. Don’t expand too quickly

Watching your profits soar and your client base spread is invigorating. Many business owners get so excited by sudden growth that they overextend themselves. Opening new storefronts, stocking up on popular items, and hiring new staff are all natural steps to take as your business grows, but be sure to keep growth sustainable and err on the side of growing too gradually, not too quickly. 

You’ll likely need to add to your sales team, but aim for controlled growth. Since messaging adds efficiency to your sales processes, you may need fewer agents per lead than you did when using traditional outreach methods, like phone or email.

2. Listen to your employees

Your sales agents are on the front lines of managing your widening base of sales leads. If your business has doubled its sales leads, thanks to the power of conversational messaging, your employees’ day-to-day workload is changing. Messaging offers powerful automation tools, empowering each agent to successfully manage more leads. However, the transition to managing twice as many leads will require your agents to adopt different workflows, procedures and mindsets. 

Check in frequently with your team and listen to their feedback while the transition is underway. Share your vision and discuss big-picture goals with your whole team. This is also the perfect time to implement incentives. Short-term goals with tangible rewards can keep your team motivated and excited.

3. Nurture leads effectively

If your sales leads have recently doubled, you currently have the chance to nurture them into engaged, long-term customers. Don’t let the window of opportunity close! Conversational messaging can help you establish initial sales leads quickly, but it also gives you the tools to build ongoing, meaningful relationships over time.

The key to nurturing leads is creating personalized, relevant conversations. The more you know about each lead, the more your messaging can be targeted and relevant to their needs. Customer feedback surveys are a great way to learn about your customers, and with messaging, they’re easy to manage. Gather personal data and use it in meaningful ways, so that your business becomes a natural part of your customers’ lives. If you ask for a customer’s anniversary date, you can send a reminder message with some gift ideas as it approaches. If a customer loves a certain type of product, message to let them know when a new model is hitting the shelves.

Offering relevant, useful information is a smart way to nurture passive leads. A lead may not need your product or service today. However, if you regularly send helpful information related to your field, they can use this quality content in their day-to-day lives. If you can establish yourself as a trustworthy expert over time, your lead will remember you when they’re ready to buy.

4. Don’t overwhelm your leads

A common mistake when sales leads double is trying too hard to capitalize on every opportunity. If you frequently message your leads with generic content, they’ll be quick to unsubscribe. Message strategically, only when you have something compelling and relevant to share. Adopt a less-is-more approach until you have a solid understanding of your sales base. Some customers may welcome frequent texts from your business, especially if you’re sharing time-sensitive promotions or events they don’t want to miss. However, it’s best to assume, at the outset, that texting more than once or twice a week will annoy your leads.

With these guidelines in mind, your business can effectively scale up to handle the sales lead explosion you’ll achieve through conversational messaging!  Ready for exponential growth?

Are you ready to switch to conversational messaging? Our customer support team would love to show you how to boost your leads with SMS-Magic. Contact us for a demo or a free trial!

“[A] rep is 100x less likely to make contact if the first call is made 30 minutes after submission. The odds of making contact drop by 3000x if the first call is made 5 hours after lead submission.”

Quickly cultivating personal and relevant conversations has become the key to success. Whether you are focused on closing deals, placing candidates, serving clients or recruiting students, the more conversations your reps have, the more your business can grow.

Did you know that the company that responds first to a lead gets the business over 40% of the time? It’s also shown that the longer you take to respond to a lead, the less likely you are to ever get a conversation. Yet research from Harvard has shown that the average response time, among companies that responded within 30 days, was 42 hours. That’s not exactly prompt, is it?

Our SMS sales messaging customers handle 10x the volume of sales leads, quickly and effectively. Reps are the first to respond, and are always available to chat.

Think of how many opportunities you’ll win by having the right conversations at the right time!

How Messaging Can Handle 10X More Sales Leads

Messaging has been proven to drive more leads into your pipeline. It’s also proven that without the right messaging platform, you can lose track of all those conversations.

If your marketing team uses messaging to attract more prospects, but they have the wrong messaging platform, you’ll actually increase abandonment rates, your response times will lag, reps will flounder and everyone will be frustrated.

That’s why we designed Converse to easily handle the high volume of sales conversations you’ll enjoy with message marketing. Here are just a few of the ways the right messaging platform will make your reps more productive and effective.

• Immediate responses – Harvard Business Review recently released a study analyzing sales leads and response times within B2C and B2B companies. They found “Firms that tried to contact potential customers within an hour of receiving a query were nearly seven times as likely to qualify the lead …as those that tried to contact the customer even an hour later—and more than 60 times as likely as companies that wait 24 hours or longer.” This is where automation comes in. Within Converse you can set up automations so you quickly respond to every lead, so you never lose out on a sale because of delayed response time.
• Familiar interface – To be successful with messaging programs you need an SMS platform that is familiar and user friendly so your reps can easily navigate through conversations. Having a messaging UX that integrates with your reps “home” environment (CRM, call center, etc) will ensure your reps never lose time trying to find lead history or past conversations. Converse delivers the most advanced native Salesforce SMS messaging capabilities available. It’s both robust and simple to use, which is why we have a 5 star review in AppExchange.
• Rep Guidance to quickly find and respond to messages. With Rep Guidance you get alerts to new messages, blended with guidance features help reps to quickly find and respond, track, and manage conversations. The intuitive rep guidance also creates simple worklists, offers customizable rapid response templates and gives you quick access to conversation history. It arms reps with everything they need to create personal conversations, quickly.
• Full-Context history. Converse’s 360˚ Full-Context History provides personal insights and related conversations for every lead. This helps reps deliver fast, personal responses, creating more loyal customers and shorter conversion times. 
• Rapid response templates. Text message templates arm reps with pre-written proven responses, allowing them to quickly share the best possible information. This allows you to leverage winning conversations across your team.
• Analytics. Track and control your SMS messaging results with easy-to-use analytics dashboards. With the right insights you can better control SMS delivery, compliance status, rep and team productivity. This leads to better conversation flows and success rates while continually helping improve rep results.

The Bottom Line

You need more sales leads with immediate, personal conversations. SMS messaging is proven to deliver more leads and convert those leads with key features. With the right SMS platform, like Converse, you’ll also 10X more immediate, personal conversations to increase your results.

Want to see for yourself how messaging can increase your sales leads? Just reach out and we can give you a personal tour!

Use SMS messages to be the first to respond, offer leads relevant and compelling information and give opportunities that personal touch that sets you apart.

We put together this infographic to give business and product sales leaders a quick overview of how you will accelerate product revenue with SMS messages from SMS-Magic.

If you haven’t yet adopted business text messaging for your team and want to learn more, schedule a demo and we’d be happy to share our expertise with you, answer questions and show you what text messaging can do for your business results.

Analysis shows that incorporating SMS into sales processes speeds up the sales cycle by 25% and converts 40% more buyers. Messaging also offers more powerful ways to attract and engage prospects in a personal way, before you rep ever connects.

Blend SMS Into Your Sales Processes

1. Get the Conversation Started Immediately

In our 24/7 world, it’s important to be able to respond immediately when a prospect reaches out. With text messaging, you can automate the first response so you never miss an opportunity to engage. Sending an automated welcome message with the sales rep’s information and when they can expect a personal response is a great way to respond right away without seeming impersonal and bot-like.

2. Establish Yourself as a Trusted Advisor

Because 76% of consumers expect a salesperson to focus on their individual needs as opposed to simply promoting a product, it’s critical to understand each prospect’s specific needs and to address them with personal, relevant messaging. Look at your prospects message history and see how they’ve previously interacted with your company, what messages they’ve sent to and received from marketing, and what types of content they’ve viewed in the past. By leveraging this context you can engage in more meaningful conversations with your prospects.

3. Engage Prospects in One-on-One Conversations

Text messages are clearer and convey more of a sense of urgency than email. 90% of texts are read within three minutes. This means that you can can deliver information to your prospects faster and speed up purchase decisions. You can also be more productive by conversing with multiple prospects at once.

4. Streamline Sales Processes

Phone tag and missed emails tend to make scheduling meetings and getting documents signed an inefficient hassle. With the immediacy of text messages, you can speed up these processes as well. Simply send a link to your calendar app via text and allow your prospects to easily choose a time that works for both of you. Text reminders allow for easy rescheduling and prevent no-shows. When it comes time to sign contracts or other documents, texting is a great way to send confirmation of receiving the docs and reminders to sign and send contractually required documents.

Incorporating text messaging into your sales communications will create a better experience throughout the buying process, for both you and your prospects and clients. Use texting in sales to get the conversation going faster, engage more meaningfully with leads, and convert more sales, faster.

If you haven’t yet adopted business text messaging software, and are interested in learning more about what you can do with SMS, feel free to schedule a demo and we’d be happy to share our expertise with you, answer questions and show you what text messaging can do for your sales team.

SMS text messaging was once considered an alternative communication channel. Now it’s become a preferred channel for most consumers – 97% have said they want text messaging to be part of the sales conversation. But they won’t tolerate just any text message. Texting can help close sales faster, but if used inappropriately, it can hurt your chances of making the sale.

The Ideal Buyer Experience is Enabled by SMS Messages

Research from Ellie Mae finds that consumers are more than just receptive to text messaging with sellers. Texting is the 2^nd most preferred method of communication for buyers and its popularity is growing:

• 58% of consumers respond to text messages within 10 minutes, 17% in under 1 minute
• 76% of buyers believe text messaging speeds up the sales process
• 328% increase to sales conversions with text messaging as part of the sales process

The study also found that consumers are just as comfortable texting with businesses with which they have a relationship as they are with colleagues. While texting may not be the way to initiate a relationship, sellers can certainly take advantage to speed time to revenue by using texting to grow the relationship as the buyer becomes aware and engages with the brand.

3 Misconceptions Cause Sellers to Drop the Ball

Even though an overwhelming majority of buyers want to communicate via SMS messages, only 28% of sellers currently do so. Three reasons are holding sellers back from using text messaging, but they shouldn’t be.

1. 50% of sellers say there’s no convenient tool available for texting

Technology has come a long way. An intelligent text messaging platform does exist that not only enables sellers to text consumers from within their CRM, but to automate campaigns and outreach with preconfigured applications.

This includes alerts to a sales rep when a buyer responds to a message, so they can step in and have a 1:1 personalized conversation. With a complete conversational history tracked in the lead record, your sales rep will always know where the conversation stands and how to make the next message even more relevant.

2. 56% of sellers are concerned about compliance

Yes, SMS messages are regulated by the TCPA. However, gaining consent for email communications is also considered to be a best practice by consumers. Intrusive communications that violate customer preferences are never a good idea.

Opt-in can be handled easily with an automated App that uses a best practice double opt-in process to record consent with a time stamp in the lead’s record in your CRM, providing an audit trail for compliance. Should the buyer text STOP to opt out, our text messaging platform handles that automatically, as well, flagging the lead record and removing the buyer from any active messaging campaigns.

Since texting buyers prior to establishing initial contact reduces the likelihood of response—plus, it’s a violation of regulations—make collecting opt-ins for text messaging part of the early engagement process so you can interact with buyers in the channels they prefer.

3. 34% of sellers don’t want to use their personal cell phones to text buyers

We removed this as a reason in #1 above, but to be clear, if your sellers are using their personal cell phones to text with buyers and customers, your company has no record of those communications, limiting your visibility—and potential exposure for compliance violations. With the Converse Intelligent Text Messaging Platform, your company gains a 360° view of the buyer’s conversational history and has proof of compliant opt-in.

Smart Sellers Use Text Messaging Straight from Salesforce

Nearly all salespeople are working in the CRM constantly. It’s the system of record for many companies’ sales pipelines. An advanced text messaging platform does for text messaging what marketing automation did for email.

SMS-Magic Converse is natively integrated with Salesforce. This means that all messaging conversations are automatically logged to the object (lead, contact, opportunity) within your Salesforce Org. Your sellers will never lose track of the conversations they’re having with prospects, even if there’s a time lag while the prospect makes progress in their buying journey.

Converse is also easily configurable, whether your sales reps prefer working in the Desk, want to embed the desk within Salesforce objects, or are on the road using the mobile app. Your customers are clamoring for simplicity, information and help making buying decisions. We make it easy for your reps to make this happen on the channel customers prefer.

There’s a Huge Payoff for Sellers Who Use Text Messaging with Buyers

It has been found that sending three or more purposeful text messages—after contact with a buyer has been made—can increase conversion rates by as much as 328%. This growing trend in preference for text messaging certainly makes it possible that text messaging could become the most preferred method of communication with buyers in the years to come.

But even at #2 as a communication preference, text messaging is giving email and phone calls a strong challenge. Sellers who use text messaging to increase their responsiveness will meet buyers’ expectations for speed and a low friction, low effort buying process. In fact, 87% of sellers say they plan to increase the use of text messaging over the next five years.

Why wait? Get started now and use text messaging to differentiate your business, captivate and engage your buyers, and accelerate your sales process.

“No matter what CRM you’re using, driving a culture of CRM usage is the key to CRM success.”
– Steve Roch, founder of CRMCulture and creator of popular Salesforce app ActionGrid.

Demonstrate the value of CRM

The best reps quickly abandon processes that don’t contribute to closing deals. Spending time on data entry, CRM updates with call logs, and other tasks is usually seen as unimportant and a waste of time. Demonstrating how your Salesforce CRM will make them more successful will inspire them to adopt the tool as a part of their routine sales practice. Incorporating business messaging that drives high engagement and immediate responses from prospects will get your reps actively working in the CRM.

Make starting sales conversations easier for your sales team

Connecting with prospects is becoming more drawn out and difficult. Research shows that 80% of sales require 5 follow ups but 44% of salespeople give up after the first follow up. Regular follow up channels like calling and email have discouraging response rates of 4.8% and 20% respectively.

Business messaging solves this problem by adding demonstrable value to the CRM. With an open rate of 98%, texting is becoming the most preferred medium of communication with customers Anyone who uses a mobile phone knows how easy it is to pick up the phone and read an incoming text. Today’s customers are becoming more attuned to receiving texts from businesses—and many of them prefer it over phone or email.

When your sales reps see how simple it is to start and continue conversations with their prospects with messaging, they will understand the value and adopt the practice.

Integrating texting from CRM provides multiple benefits

When you add texting as a conversation option in your Salesforce org, you will see your customer’s response rate escalate.

Integrating text messaging with your CRM also allows both salespeople and managers to see all messaging conversations directly within Salesforce. Access to up-to-date and actionable insights to lead quality and pipeline velocity are readily available.

A case study for business messaging

A leading financial services company, Pluto, was able to maximize Salesforce CRM adoption across its sales team by simply integrating text messaging within its CRM and adding a mobile opt-in on their loan request form.

Here’s the value-add the sales team recognized after adding text messaging.

1. Prioritizing hot leads

The sales team at Pluto was allocated hundreds of new leads daily. The team was tasked to do a background study of each lead before calling. Since the team had to make so many calls, information about clients would get mixed up. Some leads had to be called multiple times, which would take hours. The salesperson also had to update every lead record with details about each call.

After integrating business messaging with the CRM, each salesperson started his day by sending a text message to all the leads assigned to him to schedule a call in response to loan requests.

Based on the responses, the salesperson had his priority list of hot leads ready within minutes. Since all the lead responses were directly stored in the CRM, the lead status could be automatically changed to hot. The salesperson now easily prioritizes which leads to research and is focused on closing the most responsive leads first.

2. Managing multiple leads

Managing the regular inflow of new leads daily and keeping the older leads engaged is a challenge that most sales teams face. With integrated business text messaging, the sales team at Pluto can now converse with multiple leads simultaneously. Each messaging conversation is located within a different tab, allowing them the agility to move between messaging conversations as needed. Based on each lead’s information request, the rep can also quickly share links from the ‘Resource Base’ saved within the CRM.

3. Tracking current and historical conversations and behaviors

One of the hardest things to do is to keep track of a prospect’s status, including who said what to each prospect, what information a prospect has seen, and how she’s responded to different topics. With integrated text messaging, the sales team has access to a complete conversational history for each prospect. If a sales rep happens to be on leave, and someone else is assigned his leads, it’s easy for the new rep to quickly scan the thread and place the lead in the appropriate stage of the sales cycle, respond to inquiries, and keep the prospect moving through the pipeline.

This history also can be used as a prompt for sales reps to quickly gauge the opportunity behind current prospects and share instant offers to accelerate time to sales.

4. Meeting reminders to avoid ‘no shows’

No shows at meetings are nightmarish for all sales reps. Apart from wasting time and energy, ‘no shows’ have an opportunity cost tied to them.

With integrated text messaging, the sales team at Pluto sends automated reminders before the calls asking the prospect to confirm or reschedule.

By knowing the status of all the confirmed meetings well in advance, the sales rep can optimize his time. The sales team at Pluto sees definite value in using business messaging within the CRM to create sales conversations that drive business growth.

Make your Sales team’s lives easier and boost your CRM ROI

Integrating business messaging with your CRM will have sales reps engaged with prospects fast and boost that ROI on your Salesforce CRM investment. Saving time by prioritizing hot leads, streamlining management of multiple leads, keeping an easily accessible record of conversations and behaviors, and reducing meeting ‘no shows’ are just some of the ways that business messaging for CRM will help your sales team close deals faster, which is what they love more than anything.

If you have questions or would like to see use cases, simply message
DEMO, Name, CompanyEmailID to
36343 (USA),
61427142795 (AUS),
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or contact us at sales@sms-magic.com

Sales teams have relied on phone and email to interact with prospects and customers for years. But, customer preferences and expectations are changing, including the channels they use. Sales teams must adopt a multi-channel approach to keep pace. This includes SMS text messaging, chat, mobile chat, and video, according to Salesforce.

Salesforce states two drivers for adopting a multi-channel approach:

• The focus on providing a buying experience on the channel customers most prefer
• A massive increase in the amount of time sales reps spend selling via virtual channels

The question Salesforce asks at the end of the slides on this trend (19 – 26) is, how long before SMS, Chat, and video become tools embedded within CRM?

SMS Messages as a Tool Embedded within CRM

SMS-Magic has been a Salesforce partner since our inception more than 10 years ago. Converse is a native application for Salesforce CRM, as well as for Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, and Sales Cloud.

This means that salespeople can message with leads, contacts, and accounts from the Object in their CRM with the Converse Embedded Desk or through the Converse Desk interface which allows them to message and update the Object without changing screens or moving from an application to Salesforce. Salespeople also can use Converse with the Salesforce1 mobile app.

The flexibility of Converse enables salespeople to converse with leads and customers whether in the office or on the road.

Benefits of Text Messaging for Sales

Companies that use text messaging for sales convert 40% more deals than those who don’t.

With conversational text messaging, salespeople can:

• Be first to respond to inbound requests
• Use messaging conversations to deepen the relationship
• Win deals faster and more often

Use our seamless Salesforce Sales Cloud integration to define your buyer’s journey and interests, tune your conversations to match their personalized requirements and convert more deals faster.

Invite Inbound Sales Requests

By inviting buyers to request specific information via keywords they can text to your company’s short or long code, you can engage with leads immediately, in the moment. It’s been proven—and reinforced by our customers—that speedy responsiveness contributes to winning more deals.

Inviting conversations via keyword is simple. Post the keyword and short or long code where you post options for contacting your company. Post them near product information or in your online catalogs so that your buyers can get their questions answered when considering your products or services.

Automated confirmations tell your buyers that their request has been received while simultaneously alerting the sales rep to step in to respond. Your automated conversation can also ask the next question to keep the conversation rolling forward, giving your sales rep even more context for a personalized response.

Two-Way Texting Conversations Deepen Relationships

If you think about it, a conversation is a series of back and forth questions and answers. The fact that it’s held on your buyer’s personal mobile device is even better. They ask, you answer. This also makes it easier to jump to a phone call should the need for the exchange make more sense by voice.

The problem with email is that it’s slow and often ignored. Phone calls are seen as interruptive and intrusive. Our customers all used email and phone as main communication channels prior to embracing business text messaging. All of them have found that their prospects and customers are more likely to engage with text than to answer email or phone calls.

SMS messages are great for exchanging information and following up with reminders or to schedule and confirm appointments. Saving time and speeding time to revenue go hand-in-hand with text messaging for sales.

The Bottom Line

You can’t argue with the trends. Customers preferences for engaging virtually are growing. SMS messages cross generations and is seen as a welcome and intuitive way for consumers to communicate with companies to do business. Text messaging is a channel that your company would do well to embrace given that more time is spent texting on a smartphone than talking.

Check out what else your sales reps can do when they start engaging your buyers with conversational text messaging.

People check their phones every 15 minutes or so, even without the ping of a notification. Smartphones have become the device of choice for nearly all of us—young or old. We use them to message our friends and family, search online, play games, use apps, read email, and occasionally to make a call.

Because our mobiles have become second nature to us, we also prefer to use them to contact businesses and brands. But that doesn’t mean we want to call them. According to a recent survey by Ellie Mae, 97% of consumers asked want texting to be part of the sales conversation.

Interestingly, Gartner’s 2017 Channel Survey found that there’s a place at every stage of the customer journey for messaging.

This means that both marketing and sales can use text messaging to advantage. The better aligned the two functions, the more consistent and relevant the communication. An advanced conversational text messaging platform enables this to happen because the entire texting history for every prospect or customer is captured in an ongoing conversational flow that allows everyone involved to see what’s been said and responded to in the past.

You’ll know instantly how to be relevant and what will add value to the conversation given the customer’s relationship with your company. And that’s powerful, considering that visibility into prospects and customers remains one of the biggest challenges to both marketers and salespeople.

Before you start messaging your prospects and customers, you’ll need to get their consent via a compliant opt-in. This is critical, and it’s a regulation, so make sure to do this first.

Tips for Real-Time Marketing and Sales

1. Make it Conversational. SMS messages are seen as personal because it’s on the device we’ve integrated so completely into our lives. Business casual as a style works for both dress codes and texting. Be respectful and professional, but don’t be afraid to have a bit of fun. An SMS message is 160 characters, so you’ll need to be brief, but also compelling.
2. Make it Useful. The fastest way to get someone to text STOP to opt out of your messaging programs is to send them communications they consider to be irrelevant or spammy. Ask yourself if the message is something they can act on right now or in the near term. Does whatever you’re sending provide something your prospect or customer will find valuable based on where they are in the customer journey?
3. Make it Actionable. What are you asking them to do? Is it easy? Or will it take more effort than a person will want to expend on a mobile device? The call to action (CTA) is the most important part of your message, so plan it carefully. Walk through the entire experience yourself, just as your customer will to make sure the experience is what you want it to be.
4. Make it Personal. With an advanced messaging platform, you can see the prospect or customer’s record in your CRM, in addition to their conversational history with you. If you’re lacking insights, send a message asking them to take a brief survey so that you can tailor your messages and offers to their specific wants and needs in relation to your products or services. You can also do this by asking for keyword responses that will trigger related follow-up messages or conversations.
5. Make it Fit the Relationship. Based on your relationship with the prospect or customer, your messaging should match their expectations. For example, if they’re new to knowing your brand or business, be careful about making assumptions or being too familiar. However, if you’ve just met with them, sending a follow-up text message with an answer to a question they asked that you couldn’t answer at the time will be welcome.

With SMS Messages, Make it Human

The best part about using SMS messages for real-time marketing and sales is that keywords can be used to trigger alerts to a member of the team to step into the conversation in real time and engage with the prospect or customer. The speed of response and the ability to blend automated messaging with human messaging is something that is complex and difficult to do with other channels.

Advanced messaging platforms are built to enable this combination. This means that real-time can become a reality for marketing and sales, rather than the pipe dream we’ve had for years that technology has promised but not lived up to. Well, now it has.

Get a free trial and see the magic of real-time messaging for marketing and sales. We’ll support you every step of the way.

SnapApp defines interactive content as “Content that requires the participants’ active engagement — more than simply reading or watching. In return for that engagement, participants receive real-time, hyper-relevant results they care about.”

This sounds pretty wonderful when compared to the self-serving, static content and irrelevant emails that so many brands push out to consumers.

You may think of quizzes, assessments, ROI calculators, and dynamic infographics when the concept of interactive content comes up. And when done well, those do fit SnapApp’s definition.

But they are still, for the most part, one-way content. There’s an end date to the engagement. Once you’ve taken the quiz and learned which is your spirit animal, you’re not likely to take it again. Its value has been played out.

Purposeful Conversations Require Back and Forth

A conversation is an active exchange of ideas. This infers more than one participant. And it also allows for a following of those ideas to hone in on what’s meaningful to someone.

Relevance is a prerequisite for a continuing conversation. And businesses need to have the flexibility when communicating to adapt to what their prospects and customers want to talk about.

Your boutique may have a special on boots, but if your customer is interested in tennis shoes, your conversation will be short lived.

However, if you can let your customers steer the conversation to their interests while still being responsive, you have a huge opportunity to continue the conversation.

Keywords Enable Purposeful Conversations

Advanced text messaging platforms enable businesses to use keywords to allow prospects and customers to initiate conversations. But you can also initiate conversations with them by giving them choices.

Please note: In the conversations below, green represents an automated conversation, yellow represents a 1:1 conversation.

Taking the example above about footwear, you could invite a conversation by texting and asking your customers to respond with a keyword that identifies what they’re interested in:

When Sherry texts back SNEAKERS, you know exactly what to send her next.

Sherry receives your text, clicks the link, and looks at the shoes.

Once Sherry replies with HELP, an alert is sent to the staff at FancyFootwear so they can step in and respond. But your automated message flow buys you time by triggering a response.

Gain the Advantages of SMS Messages

The advantage of using SMS messages to create purposeful conversations is that they motivate inquiry and action relevant to your customer.

In the series above:

• The first message activated a customer to let the store know what type of shoes interested her
• The second message motivated Sherry to go look at the new inventory of sneakers
• She got her question answered quickly, which removed the doubt she had about making a purchase
• The store made a sale that may not have otherwise happened

If you want to have more purposeful conversations with your customers, try automated text messaging that alerts you when to step in and keep the conversation flowing.