How to setup SMS marketing with your outbound team.
It’s a fact; mobile marketing is growing, and it’s growing fast! SMS marketing is an easy but effective way to build relationships with your customers. Rather than waiting for them to come to you, this proactive approach meets your customer base where they are. And most of the time, that’s on their mobile devices.
SMS marketing is the key to customer interactions that other channels just don’t offer. Are you looking for a tried-and-true way to diversify your outbound performance through text message marketing? Keep reading to learn the key features and advantages of this simple approach to customer engagement.
We’ll get to the key features of SMS marketing in a moment. But before we do that, we need to cover the basics. Let’s examine exactly what SMS marketing is, why it matters, and how it benefits an outbound call center like yours.
SMS marketing is a feature included in the top small business call center software platforms, like the ones here at Auto Reach. It involves using mobile text messages to market your business, products, and services to customers.
This can be used to reach out to new or potential customers, but also to stay up-to-date and in touch with your loyal existing customers. Either way, it increases your reach and gets the job done without interfering in any way with your daily call center operations.
If your outbound call center performance metrics leave a lot to be desired, you’ll want to do all you can to up your game. Mobile marketing can help you to do that.
SMS marketing is used for the same reasons that you’d use e-mail marketing - to reach customers outside of the cold-calling scenario. You can use it to achieve a particular aim or reach several objectives at once. Promotional offers, product line launches, service updates, and more - it’s all possible.
Unfortunately, email campaigns don’t always deliver the results you want, and that can be very frustrating. There can be many possible reasons for an uninspiring email marketing campaign. Poor deliverability, incorrect formatting, inadequate automation, and customer apathy are the main issues.
While you look at ways to improve your e-mail marketing, SMS marketing will take up the torch and continue the race.
SMS marketing has many benefits for any business, and that includes the outbound call center industry.
We’ve identified 5 that you can’t afford to ignore and that stands out among the rest.
Like any marketing campaign, mobile marketing can have various features. And depending on your specific needs, you may value one over another. But some just make sense no matter the size, nature, or scope of your business.
These are the 3 key features that any SMS marketing campaign must include to make an impact:
There are many ways in which you can improve your outbound call center’s performance. But SMS marketing goes way beyond that. It increases awareness of your brand identity and solidifies the brand image you seek to create.
In any marketing campaign, you have two closely related aims. You need to promote your brand identity, but also create a positive brand image in the customers’ minds. Once that has been established, further communication will be far more productive.
Effective text message marketing is a quick and easy way to achieve both of these aims. Get your name out there, accompanied by a short but powerful message. It will keep your name (and thus your unique brand) in their minds.
While a cold call that starts with them being addressed by name may unnerve them, an SMS generally doesn’t. Personalized SMSs are less stressful for everyone concerned.
And that’s a very good thing because personalization allows you to speak directly to your customers. It enables you to engage them like never before, with offers or promotions that speak to their needs. It also introduces a less formal and more fun approach that cold calling doesn’t allow for.
An engaged customer is an attentive customer. They’ll listen to what you have to say, and consider your recommendations. They’ll perceive you as more qualified, reliable, and trustworthy than the competition. And all because of that personal touch in a short SMS.
What is the overriding goal of your marketing campaign? It’s the same as the goals you have with outbound calls. You want to introduce people to your products or services and persuade them to buy.
By inserting website links, you can direct your receptive audience to where you want them to go. By simply clicking on that link in the text message, they are instantly transferred to your platform. And that is where you’ll convince them to buy your products or use your services.
SMS marketing doesn’t replace the hard work that your tele agents do, and it’s not meant to. But with the embedded links feature, it directs people that they may not have reached on a call, to your business. That’s why it’s one of the top features that any text marketing campaign needs.
We’ve dealt with the benefits of SMS marketing for call centers in general, and the key features that it should have to bring success. Now it’s time to look at the advantages this will afford your company.
There are numerous advantages to introducing SMS marketing for your business. These are our top 5:
E-mails are still the favored method for marketing amongst many businesses, and they can lead to good results. But the problem is that most of the time, marketing emails go directly to spam folders. They never even get read!
Text messages, on the other hand, generally don’t get shuffled off somewhere. And with most people having set their phones to allow pop-up messages, this counts. Even if the preview of an e-mail message pops up, it won’t show the whole message and will be summarily discarded.
You need your message to be read, to make an impression. As text messages are short and to the point, there’s more chance of the whole message being read. And that means there’s also a greater chance of a favorable response.
Don’t you wish you could get more done and make more sales, in the time you’ve got? SMS marketing offers several advantages, and the one that stands out the most is better timing. Whereas the best time for sales calls is in certain peak hours on certain days, mobile marketing is a lot more flexible.
There’s a broader scope for reaching out to customers at times that wouldn’t necessarily work well for cold calling. Best of all, it doesn’t take any time away from your usual outbound call schedule. Now that’s productivity that can’t be beaten!
How are your agents to know if that person on the other end of the line is busy at that moment? A cold call at the wrong time spells disaster. But an SMS at an inopportune moment can still be viewed later. By reaching out to customers in a subtle way, at a more convenient time, you virtually guarantee results.
How many closed deals do you have per day? What if we told you that you can increase that number with the same number of calls - would you be interested? That’s what SMS marketing can do for you, with minimal effort on your part.
Text message marketing doesn’t conflict with outbound call rosters. It also doesn’t have to replace any other marketing (for example, e-mail) campaigns. It just leads to more opportunities, and that leads to more favorable results!
The best part about this is that it can always produce results down the line, too. Perhaps that text message didn’t get them hooked right away. That’s okay, they may notice it again later when scrolling through their other messages. And when the moment is right, they’ll respond.
Unfortunately, your agents don’t have a crystal ball that allows them to see into the future. They have no real way of knowing if the person they speak to will be polite and receptive, or rude and dismissive. It is here that their persuasion skills are put to work in a short space of time.
That’s par for the course with cold calling, but not for mobile marketing. To receive further messages from you, the recipient must ‘opt-in’ to get them. If they don’t do so willingly, you’ve reached a dead end. But if they do, there’s a reason to celebrate. And here’s why.
By sending follow-up text marketing to those who have opted in to receive them, you know that you have a receptive audience. You’ve already piqued their interest. Whatever happens next, is up to you, but it’s not as hard a sell as a cold call. They already liked what they read and want to know more.
Cold calls take a whole lot more persuasion than marketing emails do. But those same emails take a whole lot more creativity, skill, and effort than SMS messages do. But that simple text message in your mass marketing campaign? It can be highly persuasive and make a big impact, with minimal effort.
For one thing, it’s a whole lot faster to craft a short and punchy text message than a convincing and effective email. Also, it requires very little skill to pen a short but effective text message. Pop in an image, your logo, or even an emoji or GIF and you’re good to go.
It takes hard work to build up your brand and start making sales, and with dedication, your efforts will lead to great things. Yet mobile marketing is almost effortless, despite having the potential to reach a much wider audience. There are very few successful business approaches that can say the same.
Now that you’ve realized the benefits of SMS marketing and how they’ll translate into better customer relationships, how do you initiate the process? Is it really as simple as it sounds? Yes, because we’re here to help.
SMS marketing can’t produce results in a void. You’ll only see top results when it’s part of a much more comprehensive outreach program. That’s where we come in, with a platform that takes care of all your outbound call center needs.
At Auto Reach, you’ll not only find the very best outbound dialer software. You’ll also discover the ideal platform for your very own SMS marketing campaigns, and so much more. Give us a call today for more information and to book your free trial.
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