How Conversational Text Messaging Can Help You Build Your Community
Customer satisfaction plays a huge role when it comes to customer loyalty. If customers feel you meet their needs and address their concerns, they will ultimately value your brand. SMS text messaging can help your brand develop a personal relationship with customers.
The numbers don’t lie: One study shows 76% of companies that exhibit above-average customer service surpass businesses financially that don’t do as well in that area.
When you text your customer’s phone number, it feels personal. After all, when you message your customers this way, you gain direct access to them on demand. SMS marketing works for several reasons, but a key factor is meeting people where they are – on their phones.
When you cater to the customer’s communication, product, and service preferences, you create an effective customer experience. Studies show that customers prefer SMS marketing over email due to the open rates for messages. In fact, SMS marketing open rates hover at almost 98%!
What is conversational text messaging?
Conversational text messaging creates a two-way conversation with your customer. For example, suppose you send a mass text message to all customers about a marketing campaign, and your CRM for SMS messaging allows for conversational messaging. In that case, this lets your customer text you back with questions or points of clarity.
Conversational SMS provides a casual environment for stronger customer engagement, which builds trust and customer loyalty. Two-way messaging provides the customer with a convenient way to respond. This marketing channel effectively helps build your community within your brand.
How does conversational text messaging work?
As a more efficient two-way communication platform, you may set up SMS conversational text messaging with various conversation flows. You may base these on templates where chatbots respond through automation. Alternatively, you may set up conversational text messaging through an agent, depending on your staffing and business models.
TextSanity allows two-way text conversations, which provides many options for customer-friendly marketing messages. Whether you choose to set up an automated chatbot or respond with a live representative, TextSanity works for you. It also includes an API that’s easy to implement.
Four ways to build your community with conversational text messaging
How do you implement conversational text messaging and get ideas for specific ways to use it to build community? The most common use cases include when you answer customer questions, ask for feedback, promote exclusive deals and limited-time offers, and provide updates about products, services, and events.
Below, we discuss these further and highlight a few examples.
1. Answer customer questions
If you send a message via SMS about an order, the customer may ask questions with conversational texting. Rather than simply push the information out, the engagement becomes a two-way conversation, and the bot answers the customer’s questions without a wait.
Inconvenient communication methods include when companies route customers to customer support via a phone call. Long hold times often become a problem. Plus, if the agent doesn’t speak your native language, phone calls for customers are more frustrating than helpful.
2. Ask for feedback
To enhance customer relationships, show customers that you value their feedback. Surveys or other feedback forms feel simple when you rate customer care numerically, and they reduce any trouble for the customer.
Feedback requests seem more elaborate, and they offer the customer a series of questions to answer with the option to take the conversation offline. You see endless options to get customer feedback with conversational texting.
3. Promote exclusive deals and limited-time offers
When you receive an exciting message, such as an exclusive deal, limited-time offer, or a big sale, conversational texting lets the customer react and ask questions about the promotion.
Once you engage them, the promotion or offer becomes top-of-mind after the fresh and recent interaction. This works well for many types of businesses, including brick-and-mortar stores, e-commerce businesses, and subscription services.
4. Provide updates about products, services, and events
Your best customers want to get updates. Your loyal brand advocates relish it when they get notifications from you, especially about a beneficial product update, special event, or service.
Shipping updates provide another potential use case. One great way to use conversational marketing for this purpose regards shipping updates. Customers love to get a heads-up that the product they bought finally shipped! It lets them know you didn’t forget about them or drop the ball on their order. This builds trust with the customer.
Another use for this type of conversational texting involves event promotion. Your customers may ask questions about it, find out details, and react. Let them sign up, give an RSVP, or simply show up at the location.
What are the benefits of conversational text messaging?
Conversational text messaging doesn’t just help with customer retention and building community. It also offers other benefits, including increased ROI, faster customer responses, creating more of a human feeling, and increased customer satisfaction.
Let’s dive into these important benefits that come with conversational texting!
Increased ROI
Due to the low cost of implementing conversational text marketing and the high open and response rates, this marketing strategy yields a higher ROI than other marketing strategies. Customers who love your brand want to engage with you and love that they avoid the need to pick up the phone or spend a long time on hold.
Because they know you are only a text away, this builds trust and gives them an avenue to reach out when convenient. For a low level of effort, automation or a combination of chatbots and live agents in conversational text messaging provides a high ROI.
Faster customer responses
Because your customers receive SMS messages on their phones, they often respond in real time. This allows you to react to customers interested in your products or services as they move along in the customer journey.
Faster customer responses equate to a more efficient customer journey, fewer costs, and more efficient use of time and money in marketing campaigns and follow-ups.
More human and personal
We get text messages from friends, family, and colleagues. It’s part of how we conduct ourselves personally and strengthen our personal communications. That’s why conversational texting with businesses feels normal and fluid, like how we speak with people we know. This creates a more personal experience and builds customer loyalty and community for your brand.
Increased customer satisfaction
We can’t overstate the importance of customer communications. Let’s face it: Customers expect more than in the past, and SMS marketing presents an opportunity to build strong relationships with your customers and increase customer satisfaction.
How does conversational text messaging differ from standard SMS?
Conversational text messaging steps up from standard SMS messages. Standard SMS feels more informative and less about interaction with customers. Conversational texting lets you communicate with your customers and a back-and-forth exchange of information, more like a phone conversation or in-person interaction.
How can TextSanity help?
TextSanity can help you build loyalty with your new and existing customers. When you implement an SMS marketing plan, you may achieve higher response rates and greater customer satisfaction.
Cover all of your bases with an omnichannel approach, and we’ll show you how to add SMS to your messaging channels as part of your overall marketing strategy.
What to do next
Contact TextSanity today to find out about pricing options. No matter your business size or budget, we provide options for you.
We cater to small businesses and entrepreneurs to large enterprise businesses. Contact TextSanity today to up your game to build loyal customers with SMS!
