Analyzing pros and cons of texting and understanding how to best utilize this strategy
Nowadays, text messages have quickly become the preferred method of communication for both individuals and businesses. Likewise, a great number of companies around the world have already adopted this as a more efficient way to communicate with their customers.
In what’s certainly a crazy-sounding statistic, texts boast a 98% open rate (and 45% response rate) versus a scant 2% rate for email.
In this article, I will reveal the benefits of text-based communication and provide several tips to follow while leveraging this strategy. Without further ado, let's jump right in.
Text-based communication is a form of information exchange through text, including—but not limited to—SMS, email, and instant messages.
This is currently one of the most popular types of interaction among both people and businesses. As such, businesses now widely adopt electronic mail, short messages, social media, and instant messaging applications to hit their goals. For example, they may use text-based communication to send out messages about product updates, new services, and special offers—or to distribute valuable (and timely!) information to clients.
Text message marketing places information directly in front of viewers and catches their attention via direct notifications. By texting instead of calling, you can blast out meaningful marketing messages and help boost the chance your audience will read them.
Text messages are replied to more quickly than other forms of communication and are cost-effective to boot. Moreover, each individual at your company can answer just one phone call at once, whereas each staffer can engage in multiple text conversations simultaneously. You can also join new conversations while your first interlocutor takes time to reply.
Overall, text messages encourage clear-cut communication (as you are forced to stay on point with your message) and help boost motivation and engagement among both customers and your team.
Here are five reasons why text-based communication beats out emails and phone calls:
Nevertheless, it’s important to understand that text messaging simply can't replace email or voice communication completely—it merely complements them. Text-based communication has some drawbacks as well. Let's take a look at some of them:
Despite these aforementioned cons, many marketers and salespeople may deem instant messages the most suitable means of communication to serve their mission well.
A text-based communication strategy is the plan of action a business uses to send the right message to the right audience through a text-based medium at the right time in order to achieve a business objective. The most popular text-based media employed by businesses include:
Examples of business goals you can achieve with messengers and emails include:
A text-based communication campaign involves crafting a list of contacts who would appreciate receiving communications from your business. Hence, before you begin texting with your audience, you must first get their permission to receive text messages from your brand.
Now, let’s learn how to effectively leverage text communication to transfer your thoughts and ideas to a broad audience.
Follow these best practices to effectively communicate through text and leverage text message platforms as part of your marketing efforts.
Instant messengers and SMS can improve your work performance since you can employ these mediums simultaneously and less involvement is required to process incoming requests. For example, you are free to copy and paste text or use templates when answering frequently asking questions. Moreover, automation is possible for text-based communication—saving you and your customers a ton of time. For instance, chatbots can reply to client requests with suitable information based on keywords. When a client sends an inquiry about office working hours, appointments, or invoices, he or she can receive an instant reply from a bot—meaning your customers must no longer wait for a response and your staff is not required to reply on a manual basis.
Furthermore, you can plan and schedule text messages to deliver information to your recipients only when they need it or at the right time. For example, your sales staff can spend a few hours at the beginning of the week scheduling all of your appointment reminders and in turn stay focused on closing deals instead of reaching prospects through manual calls.
Want to know the best part? You can systematize and unite all text-based communication within one service, so there’s no need to switch between several instant messages, social media, and other communication channels. Hence, you can store and access all of your chats in one place.
Text-based communication is a valuable investment, as these channels can help you build trust and engage your audience both professionally and effectively. Nevertheless, it’s sometimes challenging (and frustrating!) to operate various email accounts, SMS, multiple social media accounts, and instant messengers separately—causing you to miss an important inquiry from one of your best customers or your boss when shifting between messaging applications on your smartphone, for example.
To improve text-based business communication, omnichannel messaging platform Umnico allows users to utilize messengers, email, and other 25+ text-based communication channels all in one window. To take advantage of this service, you can first set up all necessary platforms—such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, or Telegram—without the need to involve IT professionals. What’s more, Umnico offers a customizable sales funnel so you can convert dialogues with your clients into deals. Templates and hotkeys? They allow you to process inquiries at a greater velocity and boost retention rates among your customers.
If you manage a team, you will also appreciate incoming message analytics provided by Umnico—allowing you to monitor the quality of work executed by your employees.
Without wasting any time, I encourage you to sign up for a free trial to learn what omnichannel messaging can do for your business.
Text-based communication is a win-win for both businesses and consumers. Over the next few years, text messages may in fact grow into one of the most effective strategies to reach clients and drive incremental sales. For individuals, messengers help get things done and supply them with direct content while they’re on the go.
Now that you know the benefits of this popular type of communication, are you ready to start texting your contacts and customers?
Feel free to launch your new marketing efforts with Umnico Live Chat: our chat widget that allows you to communicate with your website visitors in a highly efficient manner. Free of charge, it takes mere minutes to install.
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