Have a sales alert sent to your customers? A simple text or an automated voice call to get the message out? For promotions that are time sensitive, text messaging is an obvious choice. In an average email campaign, only 50% of total opens will have taken place after six hours. Where time isn’t such a factor, you might consider using SMS to bolster your email campaigns rather than replacing them.
Although most companies allow mobile payments, an SMS allows you to validate an order quickly and effectively. Filling in seemingly endless forms is a big barrier to entry and in cases where most orders are likely to be a straightforward repeat of your last purchase (which definitely rings true for things like pizza and coffee orders), texting is one way to simplify ordering “the usual”.
Creating discount vouchers and coupons can be a bit of a headache, especially with all the sites on the web dedicated to sharing promo codes. Sending an SMS of a potential discount is also a nifty way to build a database for future bulk texting.
Virtual gift cards, sent via text message that allows recipients to collect a real gift in a store. For example, you could use it to send a gift voucher to a friend to cover the cost of a meal in a particular restaurant. If you’ve ever gone shopping or ordered a meal with the intention of spending a gift card, only to realize that you’ve left the card at home, you know how frustrating it can be; putting the gift card right there on a smartphone is much more convenient.
Using a business texting service is an excellent way to promote a new product using SMS for marketing offers. All the advantages of business text messaging still apply when you’re using a third-party list – the only difference is that it will cost you to get access.
APIs can be used to integrate mobile phone number verification using SMS, Voice Call and Missed Call on iOS, Android and online. If you’ve ever signed up for a service like WhatsApp or Tinder, are familiar with this verification process. There’s an additional benefit since it means you can build a database of 100% legitimate, authenticated phone numbers.
One of the biggest problems for doctors, dental practitioners and anyone else who operates their business on an appointment basis is no-shows. Manually making calls or sending out emails about appointments can help reduce this, but it’s also very time intensive. With Primal Cloud you can send a descriptive message with the final phone number. The Primal Cloud will convert the message with Text to Voice and place an outbound phone call to the destination.
With just a little tweaking, you can use your mobile phone to receive email alerts as text messages. For example, Primal Connect makes it possible to receive their service notifications as an SMS message.
This is particularly useful if you spend a lot of time in an area with poor mobile phone coverage, don’t have your emails set to push to your phone with regular frequency, or just want to take some time off from your emails.
Is the school being hit with a snowstorm? Send an SMS to your list telling them at 7:01AM that school and school buses are cancelled. Everybody will be happy the message is clear.
Using texting to gather customer feedback might sound awfully fiddly, but it’s a really good way to do some market research with a quick turnaround time. Qualtrics and various other providers make “text to survey” a possibility without requiring additional admin to register and analyse responses.
Human Resources sometimes gets a bad rap for not being very…human, so it might seem like an odd idea to introduce yet another piece of technology into the mix. Anyone who’s worked in HR will tell you that the main reason for this is that most departments are overworked and understaffed. Firstly, it’s more efficient than sending an email. Brevity is expected in a text message, and that can work to an HR consultant’s advantage. Secondly, we’ve already seen above how texting can be used to automate the process of making and adjusting appointments. Thirdly, SMS makes for an easier conversation than email. The latter is drawn out and considered, whereas SMS is immediate and less formal.
It’s now the norm for both brands like Amazon, Argos etc. and delivery providers such as Yodel and Hermes to offer delivery updates and tracking notifications. In most instances, this includes SMS. If it means less time spent waiting around for deliveries. Having an effective tracking system in place can also reduce costs due to lost/wrongly delivered items.
As well as being able to check in using SMS, airlines are taking text messaging even further. You can request arrival and departure information using the flight time and number, and they’ll also text you important information about your flight like delays or gate changes. Clearly, this is useful for business travellers, but it also represents an interesting shift away from the tendency to use apps to provide this sort of information