SMS surveys, popularly known as text message surveys, are one of the most effective text message marketing strategies that are particularly beneficial for customers who are always on the go. In addition, these surveys are also a great option if you have to do a follow up on a phone call.

With so many options already available on the market, the only thing that sets your business apart from others is your ability to provide the best and round-the-clock customer support.

The problem is only 1 out of 26 unsatisfied customers come forward and complain – the others simply leave. That is why it’s extremely important for businesses to proactively act and make efforts to determine how a customer actually feels about their products and services.

Benefits of Using Text Message Surveys

  • SMS has a whopping 45% response rate
  • Over 50% of customers prefer SMS marketing platform to contact support over any other available alternatives
  • More than 80% of consumers prefer SMS for their routine business communication
  • Recent research conducted by the University of Michigan revealed that customers are more likely to provide feedback through texting than other available options

While there are hundreds of reasons why SMS serves as the best marketing channel, in this post we’ll keep our focus towards highlighting the best SMS survey practices that businesses use to receive accurate customer response.

Keep it Short

When it comes to text messages, there’s a limit of 160 characters and your message will be disintegrated into segments if you try to exceed this limit. It is therefore important to keep your text message survey short and to the point as it would enable you to better connect with your respondents than using long and annoying messages. Simply get your message across in as few words as possible. Also, make sure to use short branded links instead of long website URLs to save on space.

Make a Brief Introduction

Customers receive plenty of promotional texts and offers on daily basis. Hence, it’s important that you make a brief introduction about your company to introduce yourself. Keeping your recipients informed about who the text message survey is from adds an element of credibility and also increase the chances that the recipient will respond.

Get Permission

Permission-based marketing structure forms the basis for SMS marketing. The TCPA guidelines require marketers to send text message surveys and other promotional messages to the customers who have willfully opted-in your SMS service. Failure to comply with these regulations may result in hefty fines and penalties and may ruin your reputation in front of the customers.

Whether you’re sending out plain marketing texts or text message surveys, you must ensure that the customer has granted you permission to send text blasts and that they can easily opt-out at any time if they’re no longer interested in receiving texts from your brand.

Send Surveys at the RIGHT Time

Your engagement rate heavily depends on the time you choose to send your surveys. There are a number of factors that you must pay attention to before choosing a time to send out your SMS surveys  to your customers – demographics and time zones, just to name a few.

Thanks to the present-day automated software, you get an option of sending surveys at the local time of the customer. Apart from that, it’s also critical to monitor and test different send times and carefully assess your findings to identify when you get the maximum response rate.

Have a Strong CTA  

Your SMS survey must clearly explain what exactly you want your recipients to do. Including a clear call to action at the end of your message removes all the doubts and brings in better conversions.

Don’t Send Too Many Surveys

The worst thing you could ever do to collect feedback from your customers is to send out too many surveys. Keep in mind, the more often you text your customers and force them to engage with your brand, the less important each text will become in their eyes.

Unless you’re sending out a transactional message, not paying heed to your SMS sending frequency can do more harm than good for your SMS marketing strategy and can even lead to more subscribers opting out from your SMS list. So, make sure you have a carefully designed survey calendar in hand that enables you to send the right survey at the right time.

Personalize Your Surveys

Instead of sending random surveys to random individuals, make sure you personalize your surveys and send them to the most relevant people available on your SMS list.

Needless to say you have to ensure that your survey page is mobile responsive. As you’ve allocated an SMS platform to collect feedback from the respondents, it is safe to assume that the majority of users will access your survey page using their cell phones. That is why it’s crucial that you have a mobile-responsive survey page that delivers better user experience and helps you receive the most accurate data from your respondents.