Reaching potential customers and making sales is the only way businesses can survive. Small businesses should use communication channels that are effective, affordable, and produce great results. Although traditional channels like email and calls have been around for a long time, text messaging is emerging as the preferred way to reach customers. Here is how small businesses can use it to increase their sales.
Use Texting to Reach Out to Leads Faster
Over 50% of sales usually go to businesses that reach out to their customers soon after the customers leave their contact information. The only problem is that most people do not answer calls from numbers they do not know, emails can have a very poor open rate, and voicemails might never be heard. The only solution remaining is texting.
According to some studies, about 99% of all text messages are opened or at least looked at. Additionally, the same studies show that text messages receive a lot more replies than other forms of reaching out, as well as a higher percentage of positive responses than phone calls.
In most cases, people leave their personal numbers instead of their home or business number, meaning that the text messages businesses send reach the intended recipients. It is, therefore, a great idea for businesses to get in touch immediately or soon after someone leaves their contact information.
However, traditional text messaging has several downsides that VoIP testing helps eliminate. VoIP texting makes it much easier to automate messages, especially those that you would like to send to a lot of people, it allows more than one person to reply to text messages, it is easier to set up canned messages, which reduces response times, and is a lot cheaper than traditional texting when texting a lot of people.
You can find more information about VoIP texting in this guide to VoIP texting from OpenPhone. OpenPhone makes communication easier for businesses by providing them with a business phone number they can use for calling and texting over VoIP. In addition to helping record messages, rerouting them to relevant parties, as well as allowing businesses to call using local numbers, OpenPhone is also a collaborative tool for businesses. It allows team members to communicate with each other from within the app, as well as see who was responsible for a specific call or text message for easier follow-up.
Carry Conversations with Potential and Existing Customers
While text message automation can be a great way to make the first sale, some people do not respond well to it. For these people, businesses must make an effort to nurture a relationship with them. Customers who have such a relationship with businesses are more likely to become loyal customers down the line, and this is why nurturing customer relationships is so important.
But how can businesses build these relationships? Using text messages is a great way to do so because text messaging is more intimate and often makes people feel like they are talking to a friend. When customers perceive businesses as an ally, it becomes easier to build a relationship with them.
Businesses can use a lot of conversation starters to get things going, including asking if a customer who has already been on the business’s website wants to talk about a product, alerting customers to articles and posts about products they are interested in, or simply asking for feedback. Over time, successful relationships will lead to more sales.
Use Text Messaging to Send Promotions
Sending promotions through text messaging works similarly to email marketing. The success of using this strategy is based on the fact that customers who have already bought from a business are much more likely to do so than new customers. Because of this, even a small percentage increase in retention can increase sales massively.
Businesses can re-engage past customers by sending messages about promotions, sales, new products, features, opportunities, and more. Additionally, businesses can use keywords to create subscriber lists. For example, everyone who sends “Promotions” to a given number is sent an immediate response and then added to a subscriber list for targeting and re-engagement.
Businesses are not limited to a single keyword or phrase as they can set up different mailing lists based on topics their customers are interested in.
Use Texts for Social Validation
Social validation, where past customers say something positive about a business or its products and services, is very powerful. It is the reason why people read reviews before purchasing a product. Businesses can use text messages to ask past customers to leave a review somewhere online. These reviews can then be found online, where they provide social validation and act as a crucial tool for attracting new customers and increasing sales.
Although email has taken over as the primary way a lot of businesses reach out to their customers, text messaging should not be discounted. It remains a powerful tool for increasing sales if used properly.
