Getting your tech innovations into the world rests on capturing your audience’s interest. Here are 5 of the hottest marketing trends we see coming in 2023.

The 2022 Marketing Star — Short-form Video

Short-form video vaulted into the top marketing strategy slot last year with strong evidence that these videos increase engagement and lead generation. In 2023, all signs point to this  short-but-mighty-trend remaining a favorite in marketing departments across the board. In fact, the video production company Wyzowl’s 2022 report found that 73% of customers prefer to watch a short video to learn about a product or service, compared to 11% who like to read text, while only 4% lean towards infographics. Most notable for your IT industry is that of the 98% of respondents who watched an explainer video, 78% of consumers credited the video for their software download or purchase.

If you’re ready to add short-form videos to your plan this year, here are a couple of tips:

• The average video view durations on social media platforms range from 15 to 26 seconds.
• Most customers look for value in the first 3 seconds.
• Once your videos are ready, send the video links via email and text messaging campaigns to increase viewership.

Use DMs for to Grow Your Marketing and Customer Service Messaging Opt-ins

Direct messages (DMs) through your social media platforms can help you start a personal conversation and connection with a new lead or customer. DMs are a perfect pathway for gaining text messaging opt-ins and sending links to your newsletter or other materials.

After you have their permission to send texts, you can start campaigns through a messaging platform like SMS-Magic to boost your 2023 marketing game plan. One excellent approach to your DM marketing journey is to use DMs for giving, not asking. You can start by providing a little love to your followers, thanking them for their support with a special reward or discount.

You may also find that your direct message mailbox contains customer questions about an order or feedback about your IT product or services. Use your responses to provide excellent customer service and incentivize your followers. Thank them for their input or help them solve an issue followed by a discount on an upgrade or future downloads.

Digging Deeper with Data

In 2023, how well you know your audience should go beyond simple demographic data. It’s also essential to understand your audience’s interests and passions. Where do they stand on issues, and what difficulties do they face? What IT software are they currently using, and what groups are they a part of?

You can use this data wisely with targeted campaigns to specific groups through email and messaging campaigns. Showing your audience that you get them and want to solve problems for them with your product that suits their challenges can give your brand value. And since this data is ever-evolving and trends are changing quickly, your marketing team’s plan may need to change course during the year.

 Making Real Connections by Humanizing Your Brand

The trend of knowing more about your customers also has a flipside — your customer wants to learn more about you, too. Creating marketing content that reflects your brand’s values can help you connect to your audience in a raw, human way. Where does your IT company stand on certain issues? What role are you playing in the world? Reflect the human side of your brand in your content to leap ahead of the competition this year.

Automations Keep Pulling Their Weight in 2023

Humanizing your brand doesn’t mean you won’t use AI assistance to snag your audience’s attention in 2023. Instead, the trend to use AI to start, continue and maintain marketing conversations through automated text messaging flows or a website chat box is trending upward.

While your customers might be searching for products and watching short-form videos about your app or software in the middle of the night, you don’t have to lose a potential lead if you aren’t available in real-time. And even though you’re automating these conversations, they’ll have a significant impact when you craft with a personal touch. That way, even though you aren’t answering them at the time, it can certainly feel that way with real conversational responses.

Your marketing journey is kicking off this year in the IT industry, and SMS-Magic is here to help you reach your audience with messaging. Ready to get started? Contact our SMS-Magic team for a demo or a free trial today!

Seemingly simple requests, like a request to opt out of communications, can sometimes have expensive consequences. Fines for illegal text messages can range from $500 per text to $1,500. If you’re sending thousands of texts, fines can quickly become overwhelming due to non compliance.

More than that, however, is the desire to build trust between your company and your customers. Customers these days want a transparent look into your motives and methods. Asking permission before you send a text and honoring requests to stop sending texts are small ways to demonstrate transparency and care for your customer.

Michael Weinhouse, founder and co-CEO of Logical Position, wrote in a Forbes leadership article, “But as scary as the idea of transparency might seem, I know from experience that, in the long run, it’s good not only for your customers but also for your business. In addition to attracting new customers, transparency allows you to better serve your current ones, ensuring they stick with you.”

We think asking customers to opt into your messaging program will help make the world (and your business) a better place. It demonstrates the kind of respect we all want.

What Are the Rules?

In the United States, commercial text messages are governed by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). The Federal Communications Commission established the act in 1992 to slow the stream of unwanted telemarketing calls. In the subsequent years, the TCPA has been expanded to include text messages, too.

Here is a quick guide from law firm Whitfield Bryson LLP outlining what is not allowed under the TCPA:

• Unsolicited Text Messages – businesses are not allowed to text consumers without their permission. If a consumer gives permission for texts, the first text you send to them should confirm their permission.

• Requesting Payment – businesses may not request payment or additional identifying information before revealing the actual message.

• Scrambled Messages – businesses must send readable texts. They may not scramble the message or use unintelligible audio.

• Do Not Call Registry – businesses must respect the Do Not Call registry established by the FCC and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

• Robocalling & Automated Dialing – businesses may not use robocalling to generate phone numbers or send text messages.

• Restrictions for Residential Numbers – businesses may no longer use an “established business relationship” as the basis for texting someone’s home number. That includes mobile phones that are used as home numbers.

So what should you do? Here are suggestions from Gleantap, a customer management platform created for the fitness industry:

• Receive consent before any message is sent
• Mention your company name in the first text
• Give the coupon or value proposition upfront
• Mention the frequency of messages that will be sent monthly
• Disclose possible carrier costs and fees
• Give an option to ask for help and opt out of future texts

How Can SMS-Magic Help You?

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, healthcare 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!

Research shows that 80% of sales require 5 follow-ups and 44% of reps give up after the first follow-up. On top of that, regular follow-up channels like email and calling have discouraging response rates. Customers want to communicate and respond on a channel that’s easy for them. The average American checks their phone 47 times a day. With text messaging, you can meet them where they are.

Integrating text messaging with your Salesforce CRM makes it easy for you to start engaging with your audience and responding to leads.

Faster response times. When you integrate SMS messages in Salesforce you’ll be able to respond faster to leads and customers. For leads, we know that the company who responds to an inquiry first gets the business over 40% of the time. And with customers, you’ll greatly improve satisfaction and loyalty by having quick responses.

Engage in multiple conversations simultaneously. Managing the regular influx of leads and inquiries while also keeping older leads engaged is a challenge all sales teams face. By integrating SMS with your CRM you are able to handle a higher volume of conversations each day. Reps can also quickly share resources and links from the ‘Resource Base’ saved within your CRM. This actively helps with providing customers and leads with relevant information based on the conversation.

Quickly access conversation history. It can be difficult to keep track of who said what to each prospect, what information has been shared, and how they’ve responded to interactions. By integrating text messaging with Salesforce you can easily access complete conversation history. This allows any rep, even if they have not been involved with a lead or customer before, to jump right into a conversation without anyone having to repeat questions or information.

Automating appointment reminders. Having no shows at meetings can be a huge waste of time and energy for reps. When you have text messaging integrated with your CRM you can automate appointment reminders, which cuts down on the number of no shows you encounter. By knowing the status of all meetings in advance, reps can optimize their time and spend their energy on promising leads.

Tracking engagement status. When you have your messaging programs integrated with Salesforce you can easily see the engagement of each interaction. By having this quick view you can set up campaigns to send them information based on their status. For example you could send a lead a discount code, a promotion, a reminder of an upcoming webinar or a specific case study geared towards their interest.

The Bottom Line

People want to use text messaging as a main form of communication with companies. If you’re not using it yet, you’re missing out on having personalized conversations with your customers and leads, ultimately driving more revenue for your business. And by integrating text messaging with Salesforce you’ll gain a competitive advantage because of how easy it is to have interactive conversations with your customers and leads.

If you have questions or would like to discuss how CRM integrated messaging can help your sales team, contact us or email at sales@sms-magic.com.

Customers want better. Automated message systems help many companies improve customer experiences. Even better, if you increase your customer retention rates by just 5%, profit increases anywhere from 25% to 95%. 

We’ve all had an experience sitting on the phone while an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) moves us through a long list of questions and responses, putting us on hold, and finally moving us to a service rep who reads a script that has nothing to do with the actual problem we’re experiencing. Then when you finally manage to give them your info they aren’t able to help. It’s frustrating and time consuming. 

The problem of declining customer satisfaction is evident. By using automated messaging, your reps will handle 10:1 the volume they were doing previously and create improved customer experiences, from the IVR all the way to surveys after a closed conversation. 

Tips for Better Experiences With An Automated Message Solution

Implement Interactive Messaging Response

This acts like an IVR but uses text messaging. It’s simpler, allowing people to quickly respond in a preferred channel (no more listening on the phone forever, caught in loops etc). With IMR your customers can quickly respond and stay in your queue – as you dramatically shorten time in queues.  

• Begin by asking a few simple questions with keyword reponses to immediately profile the case and route it to the appropriate reps or team. No more listening to long-winded recordings and searching for buttons to press then ending up in a continuous loop.
• Analytics track key IMR metrics so you know where process improvements need to be made.
• You reduce abandonment rates with concise messages that quickly capture lead info and route to the right agent for immediate resolution. No more hold time!
• For new cases, ask 2-3 key questions for routing and for accelerating time to respond when an agent enters a conversation.
• Effectively package and send all insights about case and history to agents.

Increase Agent Knowledge

The number one complaint from customers is listening to scripts from agents who don’t understand their problem and who don’t have the skills to resolve said problem.  

• With automated messaging you can create rapid resolution templates based on responses that assure rapid case closure.
• You’ll automate messaging across all reps, learning best practices from the highest performing reps, so they can quickly find the best resolution response to deliver to the customer.
• Deliver an automated and simple way for managers to update and enhance templates with new content and new template categories.
• Reps will have faster time to resolution (TTR) and increased close rates even as they handle higher case volumes.

Automate Follow-Up for Customer Feedback

Only 1 out of 26 unhappy customers will make a complaint to the company about their experience. The other 25 churn and look for another vendor. People don’t want to respond to long surveys. Especially when they’re upset. 

• Immediate messaging with an automated escalation process for poor scores shifts the feedback loop from customer to your business. Survey questions sent immediately are highly likely to receive a messaging response, giving you the chance to act quickly to correct poor experiences, as you train agents to avoid this mistake again.
• You can offer simple clickable options for agents to send such as case follow-ups, customer service updates, relevant tips and tricks, and relevant resources such as webinars.

SetUp Analytics

Powerful analytics can track the effectiveness of messaging in real time, so that you can tune your process, understand where resolutions are effective and where they aren’t- all to improve your customer experience driving customer retention and revenue growth. 

The Bottom Line

With an automated message system, you’ll create better customer experiences leading to higher retention rates and improved customer satisfaction. 

• have a faster initial response that drives more conversions.
• see reduced time in queue and overall reduced abandonment rates.
• create personal conversations that increase engagement.
• Ultimately you will see a faster time-to-sale due to increased customer satisfaction and increased rep productivity.

Your customers will appreciate the thoughtful responses and conversations they receive from your company. And, you’ll close more business while creating a sustainable competitive advantage that keeps customers coming back for more.

Want to see how SMS-Magic Converse helps clients achieve all of this with text messaging? Reach out and we’d be happy to give you a personal tour and share examples from our clients!

The reality is that too many reps only focus on selling your product. They miss the mark by not better engaging with buyers and truly understanding their needs. It’s a fast way to send your buyers straight to your competition in today’s market.

This is why profiling your buyers to understand every individual’s frustrations and needs is so important. It’s also why sharing and giving visibility with every single tidbit of information about your buyer with everyone in your company is key. Understanding the history and context with a buyer will make all the difference when they make a purchasing decision.

Yet, one of the biggest complaints by customer-facing teams, as well as buyers, is the noticeable absence of that information. Nothing is more frustrating than sales people who don’t know what you want, make you repeat yourself or seem to be clueless that you’ve already investigated their company and their offering. The only thing more frustrating is customer service folks who do the same.

So how can you give every individual buyer a personal touch when you don’t have a full picture of their history with your company?

That’s where Full-Context Messaging from SMS-Magic comes in.

How to Sell with SMS Messaging

When every rep knows a buyer’s entire interaction history, including the personal insights they’ve shared, your customers win. So do you.

SMS messaging empowers your sales team to deliver the ultimate personal touch. Just imagine, every sales rep being able to easily review every messaging conversation a buyer has had with your company – whether it be your buyer’s response to questions from marketing, their questions to a different rep about products or their prior case discussions with customer service for a different product they purchased.

Here’s a simple example. Let’s say you’re running a large call center with thousands of reps responding to inbound calls and messages, as well as marketing generated leads.

First, your buyer’s message is routed to a rep named James. He quickly reviews the record to learn that the buyer is named Fran.

Next, James quickly scans her messaging history from marketing and learns:

• She’s actively looking to purchase a solution next month.
• She’s most  focused on quality, time for delivery and expertise of the vendor to support her as she and her team learn the new product.
• Price is important but not the primary buying criteria.

James also finds a previous sales conversation with another rep on the sales team. He learns:

• Fran had requested some simple information about the company.
• The other rep started to push  her with a selling conversation.
• From Fran’s responses, James  can tell she hates being “pushed” and simply wants to work with someone who will honestly answer her questions and help her learn more.

Thanks to these full-context insights, James can immediately start a relevant conversation with Fran, hitting on her specific personal preferences when he responds. He knows what to focus on and he knows she’s been researching the company and a specific solution. 

Compare this approach to immediately focusing on just selling product, and you can easily see how selling with a personal touch will win every time.

The Bottom Line

We all know that the main reason we lose deals is that we either don’t understand what  a buyer wants (and usually focus on pushing our product), or we don’t create a trusted relationship with that buyer.

When you can access the historical interaction of your buyers and their preferences, you deliver a better personal touch, create a trusted relationship and ultimately close more deals.

That’s the power your sales team will enjoy with full-context messaging for sales.

Want to see for yourself how full-context messaging works? Just reach out and we can give you a personal tour!

Are you going to Salesforce World Tour in Sydney on March 4th? We will be there and would love to see you! Make sure to stop by and say hi or send us a note so we can meet you during the event.

Consumers are ready and waiting for companies to reach out to them on this channel. In fact, 75% of people would like to receive offers through text messaging. If you’re not already using S messaging to create personal conversations, chances are you’re already behind your competition.

What happens when you don’t get personal?

There was a time when your sales reps held all the information about your offering, so your prospects had to come to you to research their buying decisions. In our digital world, that’s no longer true.

Prospects move through 75% of the buying cycle before reaching out to vendors. Consequently, they know nearly everything about you before you converse with them. They expect you to treat them as individuals, with a personal touch.

In fact – 79% of organizations that exceeded revenue goals have a documented personalization strategy, compared to 31 percent of those that met revenue goals and 8 percent of those that missed revenue goals.

Your business depends on a personal touch to be successful. The challenge is how to quickly understand the personal preferences and intention of each audience member. Let’s face it – people no longer want to fill out forms to receive information, and trends in regulatory compliance, such as GDPR,  are making it difficult to require any personal data for content downloads.

So how do you deliver a personal touch in a world that is moving away from sharing personal information?

3 Ways to Quickly Get Personal with SMS Messaging

SMS messaging gives you the solution. You’ll enjoy powerful ways to quickly get personal with each prospect and customer.  For example:

1. Help reps get personal from the first response:

What if your reps already knew your prospect’s needs and priorities before they started their first conversation? That’s just what auto text-to-lead with profiling questions empowers them to do. Your first conversation begins by asking questions that show your prospect you care.  Using this information, a rep can immediately begin an oh-so-relevant conversation. Now that’s a personal touch!

Here’s an example of profiling questions in a contact center:

Text #1: I’d like to get more information from you so that I can serve you better. So I’m sending a few questions.

Text #2: Could you share where you target your staffing business? Do you serve TECHNICAL, RETAIL, or CORPORATE markets? They then reply with the keyword corresponding to their industry.

Text #3 Super. Do you serve SMALL, MIDSIZE or LARGE staffing needs. They then reply with the keyword corresponding to their market focus.

Text #4: Which is most important to you? Reply   SIMPLICITY, CAPABILITIES or being able to TUNE the solution to your audience? They then reply with the keyword corresponding to their primary intent.

Asking simple questions will allow the rep to begin the conversation confidently, with a relevant focus. They can dive directly into solving the customer’s problem and providing the appropriate solution.

2. Leverage already collected marketing insights for every prospect

If your marketing team is using messaging for nurtures and profiling, you’ll have even more access to personal data for your reps.

Marketers can easily use questions and keywords within outreach programs (such as nurture campaigns) to subtly profile each individual prospect as soon as they enter your pipeline. Just as we did above for a lead that came directly to sales, bypassing marketing.

Be sure your sales team has access to the 360° marketing history (and  your service team too). Many messaging vendors keep conversations in silos so you can’t share insights across departments, so be sure to ask if you have 360˚ access.

3. Always converse in the right context

Be sure you can see every related conversation from this individual so you know about their past experience with your business.

You should be able to access a complete history of every interaction between your company and this individual, so that you can start with a relevant and timely discussion, vs rehashing old discussions, wasting time and frustrating your buyer.

Your history should include all conversations and requests, including service cases for current customers that are seeking to expand their relationship with your company.

For example, you’re in a conversation with a sales prospect and you want to be able to see if they’ve ever talked to anybody else in marketing, sales or service. You should be able to easily find related conversations and learn that this prospect bought your product 1 year ago. You find an old service conversation about it, but nobody’s heard from them since. So you can actually say to them, “I understand you bought Product X from us about a year ago, but then had some questions. Are all those questions resolved?”

By understanding a complete history, it shows the customer that you care.

Be sure you also use SMS messaging analytics so you can dive into deeper details and analysis of how to converse with different personal profiles to optimize your conversion and retention rates.

• Understand which responses to which questions tend to predict a high probability of a quick successful sales cycle.
• Understand where you’re losing business, locate which reps know how to close this type of request and then send these prospect requests  to those reps.
• Find the winning responses that quickly convert buyers with specific needs, then share them across your entire sales team so everyone is using the most effective responses via SMS templates.

The Bottom Line

You need a personal touch to win business. We’ve shown you a few ways to do that with SMS messaging.

• Make sure your reps are able to start conversations with relevant and personal information by using profiling questions to better get to know prospects.
• Leverage information you’ve already collected and make sure your team has access to the 360° marketing history.
• Finally, ensure you’re always in the right context by reviewing relevant conversations.

Your audience will notice the difference if you are taking these steps, and you’ll be rewarded with loyal, long-time customers.  And a distinct competitive advantage called a personal touch.

________________

Are you going to Salesforce World Tour in Sydney on March 4th? We will be there and would love to see you! Make sure to stop by and say hi or send us a note so we can meet you during the event.

If your single message, or messaging campaign breaks these rules, your carrier will block your messages, charge you for the unsent messages, and there goes your budget. Not to mention that your conversation is interrupted, sometimes permanently blocking your SenderID so you can not use it at all.

It’s confusing to many users. That’s why your messaging vendor should offer messaging infrastructure services that proactively manage carrier requirements for different number or code types, such as message volume, velocity, A2P or P2P and allowed business hours for message sends.

But what can you do concerning your specific messaging strategy and messaging content to further assure your carrier will deliver your messages?

Here are a few ideas we share with our global customers.

4 Content Checks in Your SMS Message Sends

Different carriers and numbers/codes have different requirements. So to get the best delivery possible, you need to thoroughly understand the rules and regulations individual carriers follow within their specific country.

That said, there are a few things you can always check to enhance delivery results. 

1. Use merge fields for messaging campaigns. Anytime you send a repetitive message to multiple recipients, you run a high risk of SPAM filters catching your messages, blocking them, charging you for all the messages and potentially blocking your SenderID. By adding 1-2 merge fields to your message (first name, location, other personal data,) you can avoid SPAM blockages.

2. Check your day and time of sends. It’s a simple practice to be sure your users always schedule messaging campaigns during business hours for the recipients. Or that your sales reps are only sending automated messages during business hours. Interactive conversations can continue at any time, because the recipient is responding. But A2P messaging campaigns must be properly scheduled.

3. Be sure you’re using the proper types of SenderIDs. Every Sender ID type ( e.g., number or code type) has different uses and rules. For example:

• You cannot use a long code (10 digit number) for automated campaigns to more than 100 recipients. Such campaigns require the use of a dedicated short code.
• Similarly, short codes cannot be used to reply to recipient requests interactively. So you need to use long codes for sales and service reps to have conversations with your prospects and customers.
• When you use the wrong type of number/code, your carrier will block your messages and charge you for them even if they weren’t delivered.
• By using the appropriate number or code for the appropriate messaging use case, you avoid these delivery issues.

4. Content and Words. Many carriers scan incoming messages for keywords that indicate illegal or disallowed content. Messages with sexual, political or religious content are likely to be filtered. As are repetitive content messages and any messages containing illicit promotions, such as cannabis or suspicious multi-level marketing offers that appear fishy. Avoid keywords that may be sensitive or associated with such content types to assure that your message content is not blocked by carriers due to suspicious nature.

The Bottom Line

Yes, carrier rules can seem a bit complicated. The more countries or carriers you use, the more complex the matrix becomes. But there are steps that make messaging delivery so much easier to manage to increase delivery.

Our recommendations?

• Be sure your messaging vendor’s infrastructure meets the critical requirements for carrier management and delivery optimization.
• Take the time to understand how messaging works and how global carriers manage messaging delivery so you can match their rules with your messaging campaigns, automations and interactive conversations.
• Follow the above 4 steps to optimize your content for easy carrier checks and fast delivery.

With the right messaging vendor, and a clear understanding of how messaging works and what causes delivery issues, you can and will increase your delivery results.

Loyalty programs are incredibly valuable to businesses:

• Loyal customers spend 67% more than new ones through repeat purchases, larger cart sizes, and frequent upsells.
• Customers who belong to loyalty programs generate between 12 and 18% more incremental revenue growth per year than those who do not participate.
• 81% of consumers agree that a loyalty program makes them more likely to continue doing business with brand.

But a basic rewards programs that lack personalization won’t cut it anymore.

• 77% of loyalty programs based purely on “transactional behaviors” (like earning points from purchases) typically fail within two years of launch.
• 87% of loyalty program members are interested in having details of their activity and behavior monitored in order to receive personalized rewards.
• A customer who is “highly-engaged” will purchase 90% more often and spend 60% more per transaction.

Customers want loyalty programs to make them feel like they are cared for and get personal attention, as well as save them time. And they don’t want to have to spend a lot of effort to get it. Your customers want you to make it easy to engage with loyalty programs—and with your brand.

In fact, 75% of consumers said they’d be likely to increase participation in a loyalty program if they could access it easily from their smartphone. The top answer when asked their preferred method for accessing rewards program information is via a link in a text message. That’s 25% higher than those who said through a mobile app.

Their top two communications preferences for loyalty program information are emails and text messages. Given the poor performance of emails, it’s obviously time to add messaging as a channel to drive participation and engagement for your loyalty programs.

SMS Messages and That Personal Touch

Text messaging is in demand by loyalty program members, but they want personalized messages and programs, not mass messages designed for everyone that meet no one’s specific needs. Follow these steps and you’ll be quickly on your way to better customer engagement.

Identify Customers Who Prefer Text:

When your customers sign up for your loyalty program, offer them a selection of channels to choose from.

You can also email them with an offer to opt-in to text message updates for their loyalty rewards information by texting a keyword to your short code. Or post a keyword and short code on your loyalty program page to encourage them to pro-actively opt-in for messaging.

Create Your Message Strategy:

Determine which information should be sent within an SMS message, and when inserting a link to loyalty program information is the better option.

Here are some Ideas for information to include in your SMS messages:

• Welcome them as new loyalty program members
• Monthly notifications of their rewards status
• Confirmations as they earn more points or rewards, or reach a new tier
• Notices of upcoming reward expiration dates with prompts to use them
• Keyword surveys to gauge affinity toward a specific feature of your program

SMS messages with links could include:

• Notices of their monthly rewards statement with a link to view
• New rewards they may be interested in with a link to more information
• Updated terms and conditions with a link to the policy web page
• Confirmation of a reward redemption with a link to track their order

One point to note. Visuals attract 6600% more than words, so think about using MMS messages with images and videos to deepen engagement in your loyalty programs.

You can create all these messages in templates, then automate them so they are scheduled, or sent when certain Salesforce statuses change. Additionally, your agent can easily send a 1:1 text confirming any confirmations about rewards.

Consider Blending Channels to Increase Engagement:

Since email and text messaging are the two most preferred channels for loyalty program engagement, blending their use can be a boon for participation.

Let’s say you send an email with details of their monthly status in the program. A few days later you see that a percentage of your members haven’t opened the email. Pull a list of those customers and send them a message that suggests they check their email to see their rewards standing.Since  SMS messages have a nearly perfect open and read rate, this approach can keep your loyalty program emails from languishing in your customers’ inboxes.

Give Your Loyalty Program Members What They Want

Simple messaging platforms, like Converse, make using SMS messaging for loyalty marketing simple and effective. As interest in messaging continues to grow with consumers, you don’t want to be left behind.

It’s never been easier to use SMS messages to build better relationships and program participation. Reach out if you want to learn how you can increase engagement and learn more about your customers!

That’s just what we wanted to do in this article. Answer that simple question, without all the acronyms.

What is SMS?

SMS is an acronym that stands for Short Messaging Service. It’s become the defacto name for text messages that come to your phone. Technically, it refers to the text messaging service that sends text-only messages to mobile numbers. That’s a carrier thing.

If you’re interested in knowing more about using SMS in business, check out this post!

What is MMS?

The acronym MMS stands for Multimedia Messaging Service. It refers to a text message that includes multimedia content such as pictures or video.

With MMS messages you can send:

• Audio files
• Documents
• Video
• Photos
• Vouchers

MMS messages get your audience’s attention. Since our brains process visuals 60,000 times faster than text content, we are automatically attracted to anything visual.

Want to know more about using MMS? Check out how you can leverage the power of MMS messaging for your business.

SMS vs MMS

So when do you use SMS vs MMS? SMS and MMS use the same text messaging service, they both send to mobile numbers. The obvious difference is that one can have text and multimedia and one contains strictly text.

For business messaging, there’s a difference in cost with SMS vs MMS.

• With text messaging, cost is associated with the amount of message credits used.
• 1 SMS message costs 1 credit. That’s a standard SMS message of 160 English characters.
• 1 MMS message costs 2 credits. Since you’re sending multimedia, it;s more dense and the carriers charge more for the extra data.

For interactive conversations and some automated campaigns, you can use SMS. This includes things like scheduling, appointment reminders and follow-ups, as well as rep conversations, compliance consent messages etc. SMS messages are also great to ask questions that capture deeper and deeper profiling information, so you can deliver an even more personal touch to every buyer, candidate, student, client and more.

If you’re using messaging to attract attention, think about an MMS strategy. Since 90% of the information processed by the brain is visual, sending videos or photos will grab the attention of readers.

Some examples of powerful MMS include:

• BMW sent personalized MMS messages to customers reminding them that winter tires are important during the cold months of the year. By targeting them based on specifications with their particular vehicle and emphasizing the importance of these specific tires, paired with an image, they saw a 30% conversion rate on 1,200 messages.
• PopSugar, the shopping platform ShopStyle, uses MMS to send messages to customers about abandoned shopping cart items. They include the image of the item and remind the customer it’s time to purchase! Often they include a discount code to incentivize the sale.

Companies can also use MMS for contests, coupons and holiday promotions.

Regardless of which messaging type you choose, you’ll enjoy the benefits of attracting more new prospects, converting more new clients and serving them better than you ever imagined possible. All with that personal touch that makes your business extra successful!

At SMS-Magic, we make sure there is no SMS vs MMS. For our customers, it’s SMS and MMS. Plus Facebook and WhatsApp. Our Omnichannel support seamlessly routes, blends and manages conversations across SMS, MMS, Facebook and WhatsApp.

We’ll be showing it off at Dreamforce. If you’re there, please come say hello and check it out! W’ll be at booth #210 showing off our Messaging Magic.