Mobile use is at an all-time high due to COVID and work from home. Businesses looking to capitalise on this trend are increasing their mobile communications investment. SMS and text messaging are making up a significant portion of that increased spend as business owners make the connection between clicking a link in an SMS, increased sales, and more responsive customer service.
Recent market analysis confirms text messaging is becoming an increasingly popular and effective digital communications method. Surveys indicate that nearly 90% of consumers prefer to etxt with businesses rather than call or email and etxt open rates are proving to be more than four times that of emails.
The indications to this point are that 2022 will see a massive resurgence in text messaging with a strong return on investment for businesses.
Major Market Trends
Trend 1: SMS Resurges in Popularity
For many years business SMS has been increasingly overlooked by businesses considering SMS to be older technology. However, over the course of the pandemic text messaging has proved to be invaluable for businesses being forced to engage their customers in new and different ways.
Businesses that have previously shunned SMS in favour of Google Adwords and social media are now adding text messaging to their digital marketing mix, opening up opportunities for 2-way messaging with their customers.
SMS requires opt-in, so customers that receive text messages are already more likely to convert. When combined with search engine marketing and social media ads, it amplifies the message and frequently is the final piece in the marketing puzzle that drives the sale.
Trend 2: SMS as a Traffic Driver
If one of your marketing goals is to increase website visits, mobile must be a cornerstone of your strategy. According to Statista, over 54% of all website traffic in Q4 2021 happened on mobile devices. Living on mobile has never been more important.
This trend works well with SMS, a mobile-native technology that comes to the users’ phones and encourages them to click mobile links. Using UTMs, website owners can easily see the percentage of traffic that come from text message campaigns, and track conversions for those users. Using those metrics, business owners will continue to develop campaigns that feature SMS and text messages.
Trend 3: More Sophisticated SMS Campaigns
Text messaging campaigns build a one-to-one relationship between the brand and consumer. Unlike Google Adwords that display a similar ad to all users, text messages can be customized to large groups, small groups, and even individuals. As a result, we are seeing highly sophisticated texting campaigns.
Brands are using dynamic tools to personalize bulk messages, so each recipient receives a unique message with an offer that is tailored to their preferences or needs. At the same time, brands are using consumer preferences and attributes to design small, highly targeted campaigns that deliver solid results.
Two-way messaging helps pull these campaigns together, either through automated responses or answering questions that help move a customer closer to a purchase or service decision.
Trend 4: SMS is Being Used Beyond Marketing
We’ve seen switched on businesses discover more use cases for SMS over the last couple of years and expect to see more ways to use text over the coming 12 months. In addition to sales promotions and exclusive deals, some brands are generating 5-star reviews for their site through text messages.
The uses of SMS and other messaging platforms are endless. Many companies are using two-way SMS messaging to get customer feedback through post-sale surveys. Others recover abandoned carts with combining a reminder with an offer. We’ve seen brands coordinate logistics, like shipping or pick up, and share product information. Customer service, operations changes, and other critical information is easily sent out to customers, reaching the home screen of their phone.
Use Cases
Get feedback from customers
Increase survey engagement and deal with customer feedback immediately.
Understand your customers on their terms by receiving and managing feedback through SMS surveys. It’s the most effective way to collect timely feedback from customers and rapidly resolve issues.
Faster feedback
Improve responses
Connect your tools
Stay on top of issues with a message-based customer feedback system
Text messages are 5 times more likely to be read and actioned than email
Integrate with your CRM to create and send personalised satisfaction surveys
Retail and eCommerce
Improve your customer satisfaction at point-of-sale, post-transaction and post-delivery with surveys via text message. Create loyal customers that return again and again.
Hospitality
Integrate text message surveys to understand how your customer’s experience was with your service and food. Improve your service quality and prompt customers to go online and leave a review.
Automotive
Improve the end-to-end dealer experience and identify customer drop-off points by checking in with customers through the sales and service process by sending surveys to their mobile phone.
Government
You can only manage it if you can measure it, which is why departments and agencies send SMS surveys as a reliable and effective method to measure their service quality.
Organise staff
Quickly find extra staff to fill a roster or re-engage employees when approaching peak season.
Keep operations running smoothly when you use SMS rostering to send shift notifications and reminders to staff.
Streamline rostering
Fill shifts faster
Send shift reminders
Boost productivity by coordinating staff rostering and availability centrally
Get faster responses to open-shift notifications for unplanned absences
Ensure your staff available with shift reminders and schedule confirmations
Government
Government agencies around the world utilise SMS rostering to reduce administrative costs and manage their dynamic, contingent workforces.
Healthcare
Leading healthcare providers use SMS rostering to ensure more shifts are filled and reduce costs, like Estia Health who reduced agency fees by 20%.
Hospitality
Coordinate day-to-day staff rostering sending shift reminders, available shift notifications and confirmation schedules.
Hair and beauty
Ensuring and reminding staff of their shifts is just as important as making sure clients arrive for their appointments.
Get bills paid
Let customers know when their invoice is ready or remind them their payment is due.
SMS is a highly customisable and effective solution for reducing missed payments amongst your clients. Decrease transactions associated with failed payments and help avoid situations of debt recovery.
Convenient reminders
Connect your systems
Build better experiences
Reduce missed payments by up to 66% when you send payment reminders
Integrate SMS, CRM and billing system to improve customer experiences
Help customers stay on top of payments with conversational messaging
Utilities
Remind customers of upcoming and overdue payments, and send customisable alerts about special arrangements like payment plans.
Telecommunications
Advise customers that their account is will be directly debited and manage disputes with keywords, like BILL, and send to specialist teams.
Healthcare
Ensure patients are aware of the pre and post cost of their treatment, payment schedules and any out-of-pocket expenses.
Professional Services
Remind clients about outstanding bills with SMS payment reminders and get paid faster when everyone is aware of payment terms and due dates.
Remind a customer of an appointment
Stop losing money on missed appointments and allow customers to easily reschedule.
Life is increasingly busy, so it’s no surprise that 75% of missed appointments are due to forgetfulness - easily remedied with a easy and effective reminder.
Confirm your customers
Boost your bookings
Keep your staff busy
Reduce missed appointments by sending and receiving confirmations
Make your unconfirmed appointment bookings available and fill empty seats
Confirmed bookings helps plan staffing requirements and improve rostering
Healthcare clinics
Clinics have seen up to 50% reduction in no shows when an appointment reminder message is sent. Ensure out-patient follow-ups are sent and specialist appointments are scheduled months in advance.
Hair and beauty salons
Keep your salon full by reminding your customers about their upcoming bookings. Save your time by easily rescheduling from your mobile phone if they ask for a change.
Gyms and fitness
Set a schedule with your clients so they never forget an appointment. Send text messages to remind them to visit the gym and how to book trainers or classes.
Professional Services
Ensure your clients are reminded of important meetings with a reminder service. Send them information they need to plan for or bring, such as certificates and documents.
Merge Communications etxt messaging and marketing integrate text messaging with your CRM or business application via API for business functions such as customer appointment notifications, customer bill notifications and goods arrival notifications.
Call Merge Communications to have that advantage on your etxt messaging and marketing!