Texting is a critical part of all of our lives, and it's becoming our primary form of communication as a society. Texting is the best way to reach everybody in our lives, and, more importantly, it's the best way for your business to reach its audience.
Texting as a business is complicated, but doing it right yields drastic and valuable results.
We want to help you do it right.
This guide will teach you all you need to know about texting for business, how it'll help your company, and of course, the best texting software you can use.
Let's get started.
What is Texting for Business?
Texting for business is a pretty simple concept: it's the communication of a company to its customer base through the texting medium.
Texting is a secure, affordable, and reliable means to build strong relationships with customers.
There is over 50% of website traffic from mobile devices, and that's an indication that sending and receiving text and voice messages is one of the best ways to communicate with customers and employees.
There are many benefits of SMS communication for businesses and consumers.
How many texts do you receive every day?
A lot, right? The average American receives 94 text messages every day. And by the nature of statistics - over half of Americans spend significantly more than that.
Texting is an easy way to communicate with an audience. That's why you don't send many short messages to your friends through the mail. You may only receive paper mail from a friend or family member once or twice a year. Therefore, when you pick up your mail, you expect to see bills and advertisements. However, the opposite happens with text.
A text feels like a personal message from a friend or family member, rather than an advertisement. This concept is essential because by texting as a business, your audience views you as a friend, even if only subconsciously, rather than somebody trying to convince them to buy something.
Brands are discovering creative ways to take advantage of business texting opportunities to keep their customers and attract potential clients. EWeek reported that 80% of people use SMS for business.
As with any other marketing channel, professionals work with Simple Message Service (SMS) and Multimedia Message System (MMS) to create an outstanding customer service reputation.
How has Texting Evolved in Modern Businesses?
Ten years ago, you had probably never received a shipping update through text. Today, it's a common occurrence. Over the past ten years, business texting has exploded. If you're on a business's SMS campaign database, you probably receive their texts as often as you receive their emails.
Today we live in a completely different world, and the way we communicate is changing rapidly. We are increasingly looking for better interaction opportunities, and companies are at the forefront of business communication changes.
Modern companies need modern business communication systems. A modern business communication system is about mobility.
Here are some mind-blowing business texting statistics:
- 64% of consumers believe companies in which text value their time and are progressive.
- Approximately 85% of interactions between businesses and customers in 2020 will be managed without speaking with humans.
- 97% of companies found they communicated with consumers more efficiently after launching texting initiatives.
- 80% of businesses utilize SMS.
- The opening rate of a text message is 98%, while that of an email is only 22%.
- 90% of people read text messages within 3 minutes.
- People open Text messages at a 6000% higher rate than that of emails.
- 82% of customers prefer their notifications to come in through text messages (versus other delivery methods).
- Eight trillion text messages were sent last year!
Texting may not have been popular ten years ago, but today, utilizing texting for your entire business is key to staying up to date with a constantly evolving market.
What have we found?
Avochato recently conducted a national survey of 1,000 U.S. adults with smartphones to learn more about people's communication preferences with a business.
We found that people mostly prefer companies that offer messaging as a communication channel. Almost two-thirds (63 percent) of respondents would switch to a company that provided text messaging as a communication channel.
How Texting for Business Can Fit Into Your Business
Customer Service
Unsurprisingly, businesses with excellent customer service are far more successful than companies with poor customer service. Customer service, however, can be challenging to do well.
68% of consumers want to use mobile messaging to contact a company with questions or concerns about billing. For more than half of your customers, it would be good news to give them the ability to send text messages to the customer service team.
By texting, you can quickly and efficiently respond to customer questions and complaints and maintain a positive relationship with your customers.
Below are some reasons why customer service texting is ideal for your business:
Time-saving
Calling customer support and waiting on hold to solve a little issue is time-consuming. It is even worse when customers have to navigate a long IVR (Interactive Voice Response) before speaking with an agent.
Convenience
Texting allows people to communicate, even when their schedule is full. It is difficult and inconvenient for any to make an urgent call in a crowded room.
Using customer service texting, your customers will be able to start a conversation whenever and wherever they want.
Simultaneous service
Although it seems almost impossible to serve multiple customers simultaneously, text messaging is the channel through which businesses can do just that. You can only have one call on a phone call. However, with text messages, employees can chat with multiple customers at the same time. Time-saving and efficient, right?
Ease
Nobody needs a manual to send, receive, or read a text. Also, texting does not require downloading an app. With texting, your clients have easy access to your support teams and sales representatives, thereby making communication easy.
Interactive
Unlike an FAQ page, texting provides a productive two-way dialogue between prospects and brands. An interactive platform, like text messaging often leads to complete conversations, which eventually boosts sales.
Quick reference
Clients and employees can reference past texts received and sent by scrolling through their chat history.
Live Chat
A live chat widget is an interactive tool that helps customers communicate directly with web owners. After setup, it is often seen in the lower corner of a site.
Live chat widgets integrated with business texting can increase sales and boost ROI. According to a recent survey, clients who use live chat are three times more likely to buy a product or service than those who don't.
With live chat, customers will not only buy but remain loyal. Communication gets better and more comfortable with a live chat widget.
As such, through constant interaction, you understand your customer's needs and develop your product or service around the need.
Text Marketing
Text message marketing can be extensive. If you've subscribed to a company's texting campaign, think about the different messages you've received from them.
- Coupons
- Promotions
- Special Events
- Order Confirmations
- Order Updates
… and more.
Promotions
Use text messages to notify your customers or the public of exclusive promotions that are not available to anyone else. You can add a URL to a landing page with the full details.
Your audience is captive, so let them know about your business. They will see your text, so make sure you provide real value to them. Otherwise, they will ignore it.
Order Confirmation/Updates
The worst part of online shopping is waiting for your product to arrive at your door. People hate being uncertain, it makes them uncomfortable, and there is uncertainty involved in waiting for a package.
Ease your customer's minds by sending them to order updates through text.
These updates won't be sent to a spam folder or left unseen. Your customer will know where their package is and when it will get to them.
Reduce the number of abandoned carts
Ecommerce businesses can use text messages to increase engagement, especially in places where many companies lack valuable sales potential - abandoned shopping carts. SMS marketing for ecommerce can be an easy way to increase sales: getting a customer to view his shopping cart and complete his purchase.
You have done all the hard work to attract customers to your website and interest them in what you are selling. The last step is to make sure they don't abandon the cart. You can send them text messages reminding them of the goods they left in the cart.
Coupons
Coupons traditionally come in the mail and are cut out of large pieces of advertising. This is a tedious task, and nobody has time to break out the arts and crafts supplies just to save five cents.
When coupons are difficult to access, their purpose is defeated. You want coupons or promos to be easy to use for them to attract deal-seekers to your business.
Everybody has a phone, and most people have their phone on them at all times. By sending coupons over text, your customers will feel that said coupons are usable, making them more likely to enter your store. Beyond that, coupons sent through SMS can be redeemed online with a few taps, making online shopping more likely thanks to a texted coupon's power.
Special Events
Your company does a lot of exciting stuff, and you want your lead or customers to hear about it and be there for fun. Spreading the word, however, is difficult.
Texting is a great way to tell customers about your business's cool stuff relevant to them. A tent sale, community fundraiser, or even special hours are significant events that can be conveyed to customers with a fun text.
Piggyback vouchers and flash sales:
Using SMS when launching a product can reward your efforts. Potential customers who receive text messages concert at a higher rate of 40%.
Appointment reminders
If your business is service-oriented, it is essential to use texts to confirm and remind people that they have an appointment. Not only is it convenient for your customers, but it also keeps the cancellation rate low.
For example, using SMS in the healthcare industry can help patients keep track and manage vital appointments.
70% of respondents agree that using SMS is a good way for a company to attract their attention.
When it comes to texting, the options are endless. Be creative and use the medium in fun, original ways that engage your customer base.
Texting for Sales
Currently, 89% of customers prefer to communicate with businesses through texts. Texting for business converts at a higher rate compared to other channels, and it increases customer satisfaction.
Selling is the soul of every business, and SMS is one of the simplest but most effective ways to increase sales. How?
- Interact with new prospects through text messages
One of the main aspects of running a business is getting people to buy your product or service. However, people need to know that you exist before you can sell them anything. If potential customers are also showing little interest in your company, ask them to sign up to receive your text messages. Therefore, you can use SMS marketing to keep them up to date on promotions, events, and other important events in your company.
- Follow up new customers faster than your competitors.
Between 35% and 50% of sales go to the company that follows first. It is easier and faster to connect with your potential customers via SMS than other forms of communication. When a new prospect arrives, quickly follow up with a message.
The message could follow their request or even say, "Hi Liz, I received your message. Give me a few minutes to obtain this information for you. Thank you!
Texting puts you ahead of the competition when people are comparing brand options.
- Qualify your potential customers via SMS before you call
Businesses often waste time with customers who do not need or want the product or service offered. Sending texts to a potential customer with the right information will help them determine whether they are good candidates for your services/products. If you use a two-way business SMS, you can let your customers make certain selections for more information.
- Reminders and Schedule settings
Personalized appointments or schedule reminders help your clients remember they have an appointment in a way that makes them want to meet up or buy from you.
Advantages of mobile app use for traveling sales team
Every salesperson knows that to rake in sales, you need to be on the move continually. Your products and services should get to as many people as possible; hence most sales teams are usually traveling. In this case, a mobile app for communication is the best option for this set of people.
Here is why:
A mobile app allows them to personally monitor the marketing campaigns and give responses to issues that may arise from customers based on the campaign.
Moreover, a mobile app allows the traveling sales team to keep tabs on prospective customers. This helps them convert these prospects to full-time customers.
Texting For Operations
Business texting is not only for customer satisfaction, but it also contributes to improving companies' overall operational efficiency and increasing productivity and employee satisfaction.
Businesses should consider using text messaging software to manage internal and/or customer communication.
Easily manage your team, in and out of the office using text messaging
Using a text messaging app for business can drastically improve your business's operational efficiency. A business texting app helps you to get more done by eliminating tasks that can be automated:
- One-To-Many Messaging: A click on the send button, hundreds of messages sent. Avochato's one-to-many messaging feature allows you to send messages to all the team members with just a single push of the send button.
- Mobile Apps: Manage your team on the go with mobile iOS and Android apps. You can send reminders, automated response, scheduled notifications, etc to your team from anywhere via a texting platform.
- MMS: Share photos and communicate instructions with your team easily with Avochato's MMS functionality.
- Keep your inbox organized: With business messaging services, you can record conversations with all customers who have interacted with SMS. This is very useful for business operations in two ways:
First of all, it gives companies the ability to analyze the message's content to determine if there is any useful information to improve the business.
Second, customers usually don't remember what they said the last time they spoke to you to resume previous conversations quickly. Employees can quickly determine where the conversation was left to get things done instead of finding notes in files that no one can see or have no access to.
What Texting Software Should You Use?
Choosing the right text messaging service for your brand is the first step to a lifetime of effective business communication.
To do all these effectively and efficiently to give the brand a maximum ROI through texting, you need to choose the perfect Business Texting Platform, which provides a messaging platform for small and medium businesses with powerful business-level features.
Here are some of the features to look out for a while choosing a business texting app:
- Automation technology: look for a platform that uses keywords and tags to automate frequent tasks. This helps you to concentrate on the more important things while the platform handles others.
- Use a platform that can seamlessly integrate with your CRM and other apps for efficiency.
- Go for software that offers more than ordinary business texting. It should have features like automated reminders, easy keyword reservations, personalization token, and MMS functionality for attaching images and videos.
- Look for a platform that will provide you with data and powerful administration and management tools to ensure that your campaigns effectively generate the best possible investment return.
- Be on the lookout for software that has an excellent customer service reputation. This is your go-to if there's any mishap; hence, you don't want to deal with unresponsive customer service.
- Your provider must have a contextual solution. This means that the platform listens to and learns from customer interactions to interact with customers in the same way that they generally send messages to friends and family.
Our platform offers all these and even more. Avochato is the ideal platform when it comes to texting services for businesses. With loads of useful features, including intricate data-analysis tools, Avochato takes text message communication to the next level.
- Text Message Management: Send SMS/MMS to thousands of customers or clients through broadcast messages. Create, modify, edit, and delete messages to match your tone.
- Third-Party Integration: Easily integrate tons of outside apps and services to maximize the power of texting for business.
- Automation: Avochato uses keyword data and surveys to send automated responses to frequently asked questions to customers.
- Web and mobile apps: Avochato works seamlessly on Android and iOS devices, and all web browsers.
- Mass Texting for Business: Send personalized, custom-tailored texts to your entire target audience using localized phone numbers.
- Security: Focuses heavily on the security and privacy of all the users of the platform.
How can texting Integrate with Other Platforms?
Good business texting service software allows you to integrate tons of outside apps and services to maximize text marketing power. SMS integrations connect the applications most used by companies, allowing teams to use data from the existing platform and integrate text messages into existing workflows.
The question is, which services are essential to integrate into your business' SMS plan?
Here are some apps the best texting services integrate with.
Salesforce
Salesforce is a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool with a plethora of features and services. As the #1 CRM tool, Salesforce is a quality investment. When coupled with an excellent texting service, Salesforce can take your CRM to the next level.
FEATURES:
- Text or Call directly from a Salesforce record and automatically track all touch-points within a Salesforce instance.
- Sync contact data and custom fields to new or existing records in Salesforce.
Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams allows for easy inter-office communication. When Teams are integrated into your business texting service, you can easily track and manage your business' customer communications. Keep track of all your customer communications with Avochato's Microsoft Teams integration.
FEATURES:
- Easily and quickly send and receive text messages, make phone calls, and log activity directly from Microsoft Teams.
- See the two-way messaging history between your business and your customers in real-time.
- New conversations appear the moment someone calls or texts your Avochato number, notifying you within Teams so you can respond immediately.
Slack
Similar to Teams, Slack is an inter-office communications tool. Though it has fewer features than Teams, what Slack does it does beautifully? Focused on instant messaging, you can create groups to chat about projects, send individual messages, and even join the client's Slack channels to communicate better.
FEATURES:
- Send and receive text messages directly from the Slack channel of your choice.
- Replies made in Slack threads are sent back as a text message.
Zapier
Zapier allows you to automate customer engagement with useful forms and powerful AI. Zapier receives a "trigger" when a customer completes a desired action, like filling out a popup ad. Zapier will then take action, like sending whoever initiated the trigger a signup form. You build your workflow, and from trigger to action, and watch it work for you.
FEATURES:
- Use Avochato's native Zapier Triggers and Actions to connect your inbox to thousands of CRMs out-of-the-box.
- Use Zaps to send a message, create a contact, or populate a spreadsheet with survey responses, among other actions.
What is the Future of Texting for Business?
If only we could see the future, and adapt our businesses to prepare for that future. Unfortunately, nobody can close their eyes and view the business landscape 10, 20, 30 years down the road. Luckily, in some cases, we can reliably predict the future for small portions of the business.
This includes texting.
It's pretty clear that texting will continue to grow and continue to be an integral part of the business industry for years to come. Think of it like this:
- People are using text messages more than ever
- There is no clear replacement or substitute for texting on the horizon
- All modern mobile devices and plans are optimized for text
That last one is extremely important. 81% of Americans currently have a smartphone, and every single smartphone comes with a texting app and mobile texting service.
In two to three generations, will smartphones lose their texting capabilities? That must be the slimmest chance in history. Texting is going to be huge and will grow for at least ten more years. That's ten years in which you can take advantage of the best texting tool for your business.
What Next?
Texting is an effective way to reach and please your customers. As texting continues to grow in popularity, its importance in business grows with it. There are so many ways to implement texting in your business. And so many services to maximize your business' texting strategy.
You need the best texting service around.
This cannot be stressed enough. Statistics can show the popularity and importance of texting, but employing the best text for business service is the only way to see results.
Since customer satisfaction is the goal of any good business, providing a channel for your consumers to contact you whenever they want helps keep them satisfied. It also means being available on all their favorite channels, whether it's Facebook Messenger, a chat button on your website, or a simple text message. Let your customers know you will be there when they need it.
Avochato does it all.
All of it and more. You understand how big texting is, you want to see those improvements in your business. Avochato can bring all the pieces of a texting campaign together. Texting for business is a puzzle, and Avochato is your missing piece.
Avochato provides loads of powerful features that help your business build stronger business relationships with your clients, employees, and partners while growing your business to its maximum potential.
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