20 Creative Ways to Use Texting for Business Communication

In a recent survey, 75% of consumers admitted they prefer texting for business communication over email or social media. This doesn’t come as a surprise — if you check your phone right now, chances are the number of unread emails and social media messages you have are much higher than the number of unread texts.

The average open rate for SMS marketing campaigns is as high as 98% while only a meager 20% of emails are opened--plus, it works for all industries, including real estate, staffing, automotive, finance, fitness, and more. So how can you best use SMS messages in your marketing campaigns? 

There are a wide range of text messaging applications and strategies, so read on for ideas and templates to get started.

What are the Benefits of Business Text Messaging?

Before you jump into messaging your customers, you need an understanding of the benefits of text messaging for your business. The top benefits of SMS marketing are:

1. High open rates: Customers are more likely to open text messages than emails or answer phone calls. According to Forbes, 98% of all SMS messages are opened.
2. Better response rate: Business SMS messages enable you to effectively grab the attention of recipients and engage them in your promotions and offers in real-time.
3. Easy integration with CRM tools: An SMS-CRM integration allows the two platforms to communicate with one another, share data, and improve the overall customer experience. Most text messaging services come with CRM integration capabilities
4. Cost-effective: SMS marketing is a cost-effective approach because you only pay for the texts you send. It allows you to communicate to hundreds of customers with as little as a few cents per SMS.
5. Better customer satisfaction: Text messages from the business to the customer should have a personal touch. The customer feels that the business cares and may want to engage further with the business.

For more details, read about the top ten benefits of texting.

20 Creative Ways to Use Texting for Business Communication

There are so many different ways to implement your SMS strategy. Start by choosing a text messaging service that is easy to use and offers all the tools you need to reach your audience. Then, use these creative strategies to start building relationships that build your business growth.

1. Automate Customer Communications

Not all customer inquiries require a personalized response. You can easily set up auto-responses through your SMS software. This allows you to respond to customers around the clock, regardless of time zones or location. 

Plus, you’ll avoid keeping customers on hold just to get a response. With automated business text messaging, responses are sent immediately.

Here’s an example: 

This clinic uses Facebook bots for customers book an appointment. Once the customer responds, the text messaging software reads the information provided and requests for the customer’s full name.

This will free up the clinic’s employees to do more pressing tasks while AI (artificial intelligence) takes care of the inquiries or schedules appointments.

2. Contest Entries

Customers don’t enjoy the hassle of going through websites and filling in long forms just to enter a contest--but text messaging can easily take care of that.

Promote your contests through SMS! It’s a great way for large and small businesses alike to boost engagement and response rates.

3. Order Confirmations and Delivery Updates

Customers always want to be kept in the know after making an order. For retail or ecommerce businesses in particular, sending order confirmations and delivery updates via text is ideal. Text messaging for business communications like this puts your customer’s mind at rest. 

4. Emergency Alerts

Emergency text alerts are able to provide a quick response time that’s beneficial for both the sender and the receiver. Sending an SMS messages isn’t time consuming- it takes less than a minute to create a 160-character SMS and send it immediately.

SMS messages can also be used for internal communications, whenever you need to send mass text to alert employees of an emergencies.

5. On-Demand Advice and Counseling

Have you ever heard about text therapy? It’s an ideal way to create a confidential crisis line for your employees or clients. For people in crisis, placing a phone call or even writing an email may feel overwhelming--but texting can help them get the right support as soon as they need it. 

6. Text to Donate

Trying to find a communication channel that helps gather donations for your organization? Text messaging is likely the most streamlined and convenient solution. Global organizations such as UNICEF will often send out text messages asking volunteers to donate.

Text messages are much easier for well-wishers to respond to because they don’t have to go through the process of entering their credit or debit card details. 

7. Text-to-Order

Allow customers to place an orders via text message! With SMS, your customers can purchase coffee, food, or even household goods and streamline the order process.

Text to order is quite popular with coffee shops and restaurants but can be adopted by any business that wants to increase its customer base. 

8. Appointment Reminders

Customers schedule appointments for treatment and other purposes, but a study conducted by the Journal of Family Medicine and Disease Prevention showed that 37.6% of clients missed their appointments because they had forgotten about it.

You can prevent these missed appointment times by automated appointment reminders. It’s extremely easy to set these up with the right text messaging services.

9. Connect Landlords and Tenants

For landlords, reaching out to tenants through a text messaging service has its advantages. For one, you essentially guarantee that your tenant will receive the message notification. It’s also been proven that people are more likely to read a text message than an email communication.

Plus, even tenants can receive text messages even without a smartphone or wi-fi connection.

10. Promotional Offer

You can engage your customers with promotional offers and get more sales via texting for business communication. The instant messaging makes it easy for brands to send out highly relevant local offers to their customers.

11. Payment Reminder

Just like people miss appointments, sometimes they also miss payment deadlines. Luckily, you can avoid an awkward phone call by sending SMS messages and making it easy for customers to take care of their bill immediately.

12. Workforce Dispatch

Although emails can communicate to a large number of people at the same time, they are often unread for at least Workforce Dispatch. With business texting, you can communicate with the same number of people instantly.

There are several feature-based benefits of SMS marketing that serve needs specific to a dispatch team. With shared logins, one system can enable several dispatchers to communicate with drivers from the same space. For instance, When a Coca-Cola vending machine needs urgent repair,  they simply send a text message to their technicians and they are dispatched as quickly as possible.

13. Collecting Surveys or Feedback

Getting online or in-person customer feedback can be difficult since the majority of emails go unopened. However, SMS surveys give customers a quick and easy way to make their opinion heard. You can even make it easy by asking a yes or no question.

An SMS-based survey is cost-effective, reaches a wider audience, and is quite easy to deploy. Read more details about how to use text polls in our guide.

14. Social Media Integration

Many consumers engage with brands on social media, so it’s best to connect SMS marketing and social media marketing. This helps you build brand recognition and loyalty. You can even give a reward to your customers for just checking out your account! 

15. Personal Shopping Experiences

Why not offer customers the opportunity to shop via text message? It can provide a personal experience for customers and build a personal connection with them.

16. Picture Message (MMS — Multimedia Message Service)

Text messages with images are Multimedia Message Service messages (MMS messages). Images generally outperform text in all facets of marketing, so MMS can sometimes grab attention more effectively. Use images to showcase products, send business cards, share image-based polls and surveys, or share receipts. 

17. Branded Chatbot

People hate waiting for long periods to get an answer to a basic question. With a branded chatbot, your customers will get instant responses, anytime, anywhere. You can even personalize it to give customers a more customized experience.

18. Service Request

The quality of your customer service can make or break your business. With text messaging, your customer service team can provide fast, easy, and personalized services to each customer.

19. Closing Deals

Many buyers are more comfortable communicating with businesses via text over phone or email. Your prospects might be too busy to email you, but they can take a few seconds to send a text. This presents an opportunity to more easily schedule meetings or ask and answer questions.

20. Billing Alerts

Some of the most important customer communications aren’t deep conversations, but simple updates. These help customers feel like their needs are being managed and build their trust. SMS alerts can be automated to take care of many updates, like billing, which serves to keep communication lines open between your business and your customers. 

Start Texting with Smarter Contact

Unfortunately, a lot of businesses are missing opportunities to connect with their audience. Take advantage of business text messaging and give your customers the best possible experience with your brand. 

If you have any questions about SMS for business or wish to learn more about how to design an SMS Solution that fits your current business, get in touch with us today.

Fortunately, getting started with an Start Texting with Smarter Contact takes only a few minutes. Smarter Contact helps businesses in a wide variety of industries build relationships through texting--all without breaking the bank or investing too much effort and resources. Start your free trial of Smarter Contact today!