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The fast-pace of technology and media consumption today means marketers need faster and more direct methods of breaking through to potential customers. Through SMS marketing, it’s easier than ever to expand your audience and build a successful business.
The Community platform is a text marketing and communication channel that allows small business owners to have real conversations with each member of your audience, all at one time. Connect with your members at scale—instantly and directly—in an authentic way that will keep customer engagement high and lead to rapid growth for your company.
The difference between other marketing options and SMS marketing is that your current customers are getting to speak and engage directly with you through texting, not a chatbot or an anonymously written email.
Get Subscribers
Step one is to get a number from Community and download the app. Don’t worry, Leaders are the only ones who need an app, and your messages will appear as regular texts to your audience, also known as Members on the receiving end.
There’s no need for your existing customer base to do anything other than text your number to sign up. Once your Members are subscribed, they are ready to receive your text notifications and engage in conversations with you.
Here are some ways to help you learn how to promote your Community number and start using our SMS marketing platform to see real growth in your company.
Promote Your Custom Number
After you sign up to receive your Community phone number, you can start promoting it right away. You can post the number itself to your About Me area of social media pages, or you can use the custom URL link we provide you.
Embed the custom URL of your Community number anywhere that you can embed a URL — even use it as a Swipe Up link in your Instagram stories. Create clickable buttons on your company’s website as a convenient way to guide members to sign up.
When members text your number or click on your URL, they are instantly added to your Audience.
Stay in Touch with Your Audience
There is scientific research behind the theory that customers will choose the brand they are more familiar with when presented with a choice.
Staying in front of your audience Members is a vital part of any strategy for growing a business. Familiarity will lead to brand loyalty and a higher likelihood of your customers choosing you when presented with a choice of you against your competitors.
With Community, once Members sign up to become a part of your audience, you can stay in frequent contact with them and engage them in two-way conversations. Send them texts and notifications directly to the palm of their hand.
Send messages about:
- rewards for loyal customers
- your customer loyalty program
- free trials or giveaways of new products
- customer feedback surveys
It’s easy to talk with large groups of people by using the Community’s Response Management tool. When you text multiple people, Response Management lets you easily organize all of the similar messages that come in and then reply to them all with one response. It’s the best way to hold real conversations with every audience member.
Community’s SMS platform makes it easy for you to communicate with dozens or even hundreds of people all at once. Through this direct communication, you can cultivate authentic and personal connections with your members and become more familiar with them.
Organize Your Audience
Personalization data shows that an average of 71% of consumers will feel frustrated if their shopping experience is impersonal. This means that personalization matters, and today’s customers expect more from the companies they shop with.
Send personalized content customized to your audience members’ interests, using Community’s SMS marketing platform to grow your business.
Community lets you organize your audience into segments based on their varying interests. Your company can send texts to each subgroup with the personalized message that each group would find relevant and interesting.
Each customer is a unique person with their own interests—Community lets you embrace this and connect with your audience in a way that makes sense for your community.
Keywords to Help You Segment Your Audience
The Keywords feature of Community helps you get to know the interests of your audience members and automatically sorts them into segments. Assign simple words or even emojis as designated Keywords that your members can text to you.
For example, if you want to categorize asian pear flavored hard seltzer lovers and keep them separate from lychee flavored hard seltzer fans, you can send a text asking members to reply with the word pear or lychee. Use these segmented groups to personalize the texts you send to them to build better relationships and encourage retention.
Send Quick and Easy Text Polls
Text marketing allows you to poll your audience in a uniquely convenient way that other platforms simply can’t offer.
To take a poll using SMS, simply text out a question and give recipients multiple choice answers — Group similar responses to see how many answers each choice received. Use text polls to help you make decisions for your next product or event, ask members to rate a specific item, or more—the options are endless!
The results are fast and easy to organize within your Community app.
Use Emojis to Keep it Fun and Convenient
For the ultimate convenient text poll, use emojis as answers to your polling question.
For example, you can ask customers what they’d rate one of your products or their customer service experience with your company. Then tell them to answer with a thumbs up or thumbs down emoji.
This is a great method of collecting data that can help you improve your customer experience and eventually lead to you growing your business.
Engage in Real Conversations
The number one reason that SMS marketing will help you grow your business is that it gives you effective ways to build connections with your customers.
Any good digital marketing strategy emphasizes engaging in real, authentic conversations. Your members won’t be texting a robot — they’re texting you. You’re able to show them what your business is all about and how you’re different while also getting to know them on a personal level.
Recent customer experience research shows that customer experience overtakes price and product as the key differentiator for brands. These results are good news for businesses that offer an SMS platform because it’s a great way to stay informed on the customer experience.
Make Your Customers and Employees Feel Seen
Another great feature of the Community app is that it allows for a customized target audience and marketing efforts. Customized audience experiences are what the platform does best. For example, it lets you see how many audience members have birthdays on any given day. So, it’s easy to send them a “Happy Mother’s Day” message that adds an extra touch of authenticity and personalization.
Your CEO, Investors, or Founder can communicate directly with employee segments to company-wide engagement. Discuss business growth strategies, advertising, marketing campaigns, or your marketing plan at scale with different internal teams or franchise owners.
Whatever message you decide to text, Community’s platform makes it easy to hold real conversations with any group of people within your audience by using our Filters function and Response Management tool. You can send photos, GIFs, emojis, and anything else that a regular text message can send.
Schedule Promotional Texts in Advance
The text scheduling function of Community lets you set up your notifications in advance. This is helpful if you have a big event or holiday coming up and want to prepare your notifications beforehand.
Set your texts to notify audience members of holiday hours, special promotions, exclusive drops and other pre-scheduled events. Your audience will grow to depend on you to notify them of important announcements, which is an important aspect of growing any business. You can also stay in contact with your customers even when you’re out of the office.
Track Campaigns from Anywhere
Tracking and managing your text campaigns is easy through the Community app. You can check your open rates and other Insights that will show you the success of your messages. Do this from anywhere that you can access your app—no office required.
Community makes it convenient to monitor your audience's reactions to your SMS conversations so you can use that data to help shape your future messages and campaigns. As a Leader, you’ll use the Community app to send messages, but your notifications will appear as regular texts to all of your audience members. No other method of marketing lets you connect with your customers in such a personal and direct way.
Summary
To summarize how you can grow your business and increase profits with SMS marketing—it all comes down to the strength of the relationships you can build with your audience.
Community’s technology lets you manage your entire audience and stay organized so that you can focus on engaging them in real conversations. The more you learn about their interests and preferences, the more you can shape your marketing strategy and products around what they need from your company. Keep retention and subscription rates high by providing people with the custom curated content that they want, which will, in turn, breed brand loyalty from your audience.
Sources:
The science of staying top of mind with customers | Medium
26 Essential Personalization Stats for 2020 | Smarterhq.com
37 Powerful Customer Experience Statistics to Know in 2021 | Superoffice.com
Photo by Carlos Muza on Unsplash
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