Customers are the driving force for any business. Text message marketing, thanks to its effectiveness and result-driven approach, has proven to be a persuasive marketing strategy of many successful businesses. But, how can you boost customer engagement for your business with SMS blasts?

Here are 3 ways to increase customer engagement with text blasts that can help you listen to and talk to your customers, share alerts and important notifications and keep them coming back for more.

Relationship between Customer Engagement and SMS Blasts

If you haven’t used SMS marketing earlier, you may not able to identify the true power of this simplified marketing channel. According to a recent study statistics, 90% of text messages are read within 3 minutes of being received, making them one of the most compelling means to engage with present and prospective customers.

But before we start, first have a quick look at some of the best practices you must follow to improve engagement.

Text Message Marketing – Best Practices to Improve Engagement

SMS Opt-In

First things first, it’s critical that you only send text blasts to someone who has granted you permission to do so. Also, you must adhere to CTIA recommendations which provide customers protection against undesirable solicitation. To attract your users to get SMS blasts involving updates, alerts, or other useful information you should integrate permission-based marketing strategies into your current marketing framework and request opt-in through an online form or asking them to send a specific keyword to a phone number.

Call to Action (CTA)

Text message marketing is an instant and direct way to engage your customers. Make sure you always include a perfect CTA to convince customers to give you their phone number.

Send the Right Messages to the Right Customers

Market segmentation is a key to successful SMS marketing strategy. Especially, if the purpose of your campaign is to do targeted promotion, you should assess the location-based demographics along with purchase history to segment your clients. CRM is one of the ways you can ensure that a text is welcomed and contributing to the growth and familiarity of the brand. Today, many prominent SMS marketing services like SaturnText integrate CRM with their text messaging platform that significantly changes the way your business maintains customer engagement and also helps boost your marketing and service activities. 

Top Strategies for Better Engagement

With some of the most effective practices to improve engagement under your belt, it’s time to shed light on some specific text marketing strategies which will help you stay connected with your target market and quickly achieve long-term business objectives.

1. Special Deals and Discounts

With permission-based marketing, your recipients for mass SMS messages will already be confined than with other marketing channels like email or social media marketing. So, it would be great if you reward those who have invested their time to register by offering amazing deals and discounts. This way you can make your customers feel valued and they’ll show more interest and engagement in your future projects and announcements.

2. Surveys and Polls

Another compelling way to engage customers with text message marketing is through polls and surveys. Customer surveys are a sure-fire way to drive smooth communication between you and your customers. Luckily, there are many ways you can get them right. For instance, you can either send each survey question separately in your message or can also share a link where users can fill out an online form and share their opinions. Either way, this will help you find out the areas that need improvement and also prove that you value your client’s feedback.

When you opt for this type of marketing campaign, it’s critical to recall the best practices we’ve discussed in the previous section. Keep in mind, you can easily lose your subscribers if your text blasts are pushy or annoying. So, make sure you never force your customers for answers as it can result in more harm than good for your advertising campaign.

3. Customer Loyalty Programs

Over the past few decades, many organizations across different industries have integrated the customer retention technique called ‘customer loyalty programs’ into their campaigns. These programs reward customers for being loyal and sticking to a single brand. SMS marketing is one of the ways you can increase customer engagement and also accentuate your loyalty program. You can engage your customers by sending updates about redeemable products or a referral bonus/reward. 

Conclusion

Text blasts have emerged as one of the most powerful and reliable ways for both small and large-scale businesses to communicate with their customers. Whether you’re using text message marketing to conduct surveys and polls, boost engagement, expand your loyal client base or run support, these strategies we discussed above can help you make an impression and provide value-added service to your customers.

All in all, if you want to minimize your marketing costs and also want to increase customer engagement, text message marketing can be your safest bid.