Small businesses across the UK use text messaging to save time, be seen and increase touch-points for loyal customers. Read on for top things to consider when choosing an SMS platform – plus some ways you can use SMS to outdo your competition.
Check out the recent reviews of SMS providers
We actively encourage enquiring small businesses to take a look at reviews across SMS providers. You only need to check our reviews to see that we provide responsive support, 1:1 chats to understand your business and we help you transform your content. All elements that focus on your long-term success, not just a single quick win.
If you’re checking out reviews across the board, watch out for the catch: a complicated platform, a questionable recent review or unresponsive customer support.
SMS takes up much less time than emails
Having used emails as a marketing channel ourselves, we understand how long it can take to mess around with design templates. We could easily spend 3 hours creating a banner image for an email.
With SMS, you can be as quick as you like. You write out your message, you choose the group you’d like to send it to and you decide if you’d like to send it from your brand name or from a dedicated reply number (which allows you to receive responses back into FireText).
Social media relies on algorithms, SMS relies on great content
We know that particularly for small businesses in retail, a lot of visibility – particularly online – comes from awesome products worthy of word of mouth, positive reviews, engaging content and good Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Large companies typically have bigger budgets and more resources to promote their business, especially on social media, making it hard for smaller businesses to be seen and heard in all that noise.
SMS breaks those boundaries.
If you need to generate leads: Give customers the option to opt in to SMS when they buy your products or visit your website. Offer incentives to encourage them to sign up to SMS updates or exclusive offers. A platform like Zapier allows you to connect form plugins (like Gravity Forms) with FireText. A set-up like this allows your mobile opt-ins to be uploaded straight into your FireText account as contacts. For more options, check out our SMS lead generation blog.
If you have an existing list of contacts: You can upload them straight into your account via a CSV file. A text messaging service like FireText offers a 1:1 channel for you to contact your recipients. No competition versus the big-budget players, just a direct connection to your customers and leads.
SMS provides multiple communication touch points
From providing updates on orders to offering early-bird discounts, SMS is a great channel for providing direct touch points to your leads and customers. It’s instant, has open rates a high as 98% and can be as personalised as you like with custom fields.
The goal? A smooth customer experience, so that buyers – and their friends and family – keep coming back for more. You can create multiple touch points across the journey: let them know their order has been dispatched, follow up to make sure they’re happy with their order, and then ask for a review.
Try texting out!
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- Want to learn more? Head to our small to medium business page