Text messaging is a powerful channel for any company that wants to reach its customers with speed and efficiency. Across the board, SMS messages have higher open rates, engagement rates, and conversion rates than any other marketing channel.
We understand the appeal of throwing in the towel on everything else in order to go all in on text message marketing based on those statistics, but it’s not realistic, of course. Your customers are used to hearing from you in particular ways, and your team is used to operating through particular channels.
But what if simply adding text messaging to your marketing repertoire could increase conversions and drive better ROI?
Take this stat: When companies text customers after initial contact has been made through another channel, conversion rates can increase by 112.6 percent.
It’s clear that text messages, when integrated well with other channels, can help improve the performance of those channels and help bring in more business. Here are some marketing examples and use cases.
Here are some ways to integrate SMS with other marketing channels:
Live chat
Featuring a live chat widget on your website catches possible leads that might have otherwise left your site when they couldn’t find a way to contact you as soon as they wanted to.
If you make it easy to interact with a real human on your site—offer them the option to talk to an agent and answer their questions—you can grab the attention of someone who is already interested in what you have to offer.
Once you start the conversation via live chat, there are a few ways to push leads down the funnel.
The beauty of a live chat feature that’s connected to SMS is that you can add these leads to your list of contacts and—after making sure they’ve opted in, of course—you can use that list to send thoughtful, relevant, interesting content to your new leads.
Integrating live chat and SMS communications gets you access to leads even after they leave your site. The chat may be the entryway, but the text messages that follow can nurture those leads to make a purchase and then beyond, until you have a high value customer.
A great example of this in action is wh Law, a growing law firm in Arkansas. The firm uses live chat to generate more leads and then text messages to engage them further. The firm schedules consultations with customers quickly through SMS. Since starting to use live chat and texting together, wh Law has seen a 40x return on their investment and six figures in additional revenue.
Of course, it’s easy to cross-promote your email communications through your text messages and vice versa. Using messaging like the example below can help drive leads from your email list to your SMS list where you can send them more direct, engaging messages and hopefully move them down the funnel:
You can also integrate SMS and email in more complex ways—for example, you can incorporate both email and text message in a nurture campaign to move leads down the funnel.
Start by sending an email to get initial click throughs. Then, you can follow up with another email or a text message, depending on interest. By automating your campaign follow-ups and reaching out to your customers in various ways, you might have better luck getting their attention.
It might be best to follow up with customers who click through an email with another email, but if they drop off and don’t click through to future emails, SMS messages come in handy. Remember, email has an average open rate of only 20 percent and a click-through rate of 3.2 percent.
Text messages, on the other hand, have an open rate of 98 percent and a click through rate of 19 percent, so when you want added engagement to an email campaign, using SMS is a great channel to use.
Social media
Your social media channels are a great place to expand your reach. It acts as a top of funnel magnet, when done well, and it can be a great place to cross promote your SMS channel. Use your social platforms to encourage your followers to opt in to your text marketing campaigns. It’s always helpful to add in a little incentive—a discount or a special offer—when they do.
Social media and SMS channels work great together because of the simple fact that the average American checks their phone roughly 96 times a day. And when that same demographic spent about 1,300 hours on social media last year, there’s bound to be significant overlap. Don’t let your social campaigns bear the burden of doing your mobile marketing alone. Social is a great way to generate exposure and interest, and sending more interested followers to your SMS channel is a great way to turn those followers into leads.
Here’s an example of a great social media post that encourages followers to sign up for SMS:
Tips to integrate SMS well
Say something new
Avoid oversaturation by making sure your marketing communications between channels are varied and distinct. For example, if you offer a discount that’s specific to your text message subscribers, don’t then also offer that discount to your email list. Make sure you treat each channel as its own powerful tool. Even though many people on your marketing lists will only opt to hear from you via one channel, be aware that there will be overlap.
Salesforce integration
Whether you send marketing emails through Salesforce or not, you still keep your customers’ information in a CRM like Salesforce, and you want a text messaging software that seamlessly integrates. With salesforce sms integration, your marketing and sales teams can send SMS messages from inside Salesforce or count on any texts sent or received to have the customer data automatically updated in your SFDC records, you can automate with much more efficiency.
If you’re set up with a native Salesforce text message integration, your team can access, manage, and send texts through the text messaging tab inside Salesforce or with the widget on any particular record page.
Try automating broadcast text messages to particular segments of your audience through the text messaging tab within Salesforce for efficiency and precision.
Here are some more articles we think you might be interested in:
- 54 text messaging stats every business should know
- The Marketing Team’s Playbook for Text Messaging (Part I)
- The Marketing Team’s Playbook for Text Messaging (Part II)
- The top 6 benefits of texting in business (and how to do it well)
- Guide for text messaging in Healthcare
