If it seems like many modern brands today are asking you to opt into their texting community, so they can stay in contact with you, it’s because there is value there. More businesses are implementing mass texting services into their marketing strategy to reach their customers, and there are several reasons why. An SMS marketing service like Community offers the ability to connect, organize, and track the relationships with your customers in a new, easy, and efficient way. 

If you’ve found yourself wondering about the functions of text marketing services or if all mass texting services are the same—you’re in the right place. Here’s what you should know about text message marketing and how you can use our mass text software to connect with your audience on a personal level.

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The Statistics

Let’s start with some statistics. An estimated 95% of people today own a cell phone that does not need an internet connection to operate. It’s important to remember that a smartphone is not a necessary component for utilizing SMS messaging. 

This means the vast majority of people can be reached by text message. Research also showed that 48% of the people in this marketing survey prefer to communicate with businesses through SMS. These statistics tell us that people not only own a phone with texting capabilities but that a significant portion of them want to use those texts to contact companies. 

That same research also found that most texts are read and responded to in an average of three minutes of their delivery time. Now that’s fast. These statistics support the idea that SMS marketing and mass texting services are the communication method of the modern-day for brands that want to contact their audience instantly and conveniently. 

Lastly, this same data set also shows that 48.7 million people opted into a business’s text messaging service in the year 2020. Based on these figures, it’s safe to say that mass texting is the fastest growing marketing channel and the most convenient way to get in front of your audience—instantly. 

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Email Can’t Compare

How is a mass text messaging service any different than just sending an email marketing? The first and most significant difference is the ability of mass SMS to notify recipients directly on the home screen of their cell phone. In contrast, email marketing campaigns require the opening of an inbox and is checked less frequently. 

Since brands offer an email newsletter, the amount of emails consumers receive is higher than their SMS notifications. This leads to a lesser chance that emails will be opened as they can easily get buried in people’s inboxes. 

SMS marketing studies show the average email open rate to be around 20%. When you compare that to Community’s text platform open rate of 95%, SMS is clearly the better choice for meaningful communication with your audience. 

Here’s why and how the Community SMS platform can help you reach your audience members conveniently and directly.

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Community is Not Your Average Platform for Customer Engagement

Case studies illustrate how Community is not like other SMS marketing platforms. There is no chatbot or automated conversation function. With Community, Leaders are engaging in real conversations with their audience members. People can connect with other humans, not robots. 

Secondly, Community’s user-friendly app and Customer Web Dashboard make it easy for anyone to use their service. 

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For Businesses and Individuals

Anyone can sign up to get their own Community phone number—businesses and individuals alike. If you’re an individual looking to develop your personal brand, Community allows you to build personal relationships with every one of your audience members—at scale—in a way that just wouldn’t be possible on your own. 

Whether you’re a company or an individual, your Leader account with Community will let you manage and organize your audience’s information from the convenience of a mobile app and send messages that appear as regular texts on the phones of your receivers. It’s convenient for both you and your members.

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You Can Embed Your Custom URL Anywhere

Community Leaders can promote their phone numbers and encourage people to sign up to join their audience. Promoting your number is easy with your customized link. Leaders receive a custom “My URL” link that can be embedded wherever links can be used. 

This makes it easy to create a clickable link to your Community registration form on your brand’s website or insert it into your Instagram stories as a Swipe Up link. Your customers will simply click and be directed to a short registration form where they’ll fill in their basic information. Then, just like that, they’re a part of your audience and ready to interact with your business.

Another way to promote your Community number is with a Website Sign-Up Unit on your website’s homepage. The Website Sign-Up Unit is a small pop-up window that offers webpage visitors the chance to sign up for your audience directly without needing to get their phone out. 

Use it in conjunction with your custom My URL link to grow conversions and to stay connected with your clients.

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One Response for Multiple Texts

Once members join your audience, they’re ready to start receiving your texts and engaging in actual conversations with you. Connect with your entire audience at scale with Community’s Clustering feature. 

The Clustering function in the Community app allows you to group multiple similar texts so that you can send one response to all of them. This allows you to truly hold and participate in conversations with every member of your audience in a way you’ve never done before. 

There’s no limit to how much you can grow your audience while keeping your communications personal and authentic with Community.

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More Ways to Use Community to Help Your Brand

There’s more to know about mass texting with the Community platform. You can use these additional features of your Community number to reach your audience and ultimately grow your brand.

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Community Keeps Your Contacts Organized

Stay organized no matter how large your audience grows with segmented “Communities” for your contacts list. You can sort your Communities into groups based on their interests by having them use various Keywords. Designate a Keyword that will automatically categorize the members who text it into their respective groups. 

You can also apply Demographic Filters to sort your audience by age, gender identity, or location. With so many ways to organize your contacts, Community helps you send more personalized messages by understanding the traits of the people you’re engaging with. 

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Community Integrates with Shopify

If your business is a part of the one million companies that use Shopify—you’re in luck. 

Community’s dashboard integrates with Shopify so that your customers can convert into your SMS audience seamlessly. 

Track important data from their previous transactions and view all of their information in your Community dashboard. The Community and Shopify integration provides another way for you to expand your audience.

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Community Gives You Insights Into Your Audience

Learn your audience and track the success of your campaigns with Community’s Insights. By analyzing your Insights, you can break down your audience’s demographics and see the rates at which they’re interacting with your messages. 

See how many reactions, clicks, replies, and opens your texts have received so you can monitor what’s working for your brand and what needs improvement. Use this data to shape your content, wording, and times you send your campaigns. Insights let you create more engaging campaigns so you can provide the content and interactions that your customers want.

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What Not to Do

With mass texting, it’s important to know the most meaningful way to engage with your customers. Like in the days when cold calling was popular, there are hours when it is frowned upon to send text notifications. 

Community’s platform makes it easy for Leaders to send texts at the right times with our Quiet Time reminder. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) regulations recommend not sending texts to large groups of people outside of the hours of 6 AM to 8 PM. If a Community Leader schedules or sends a text outside of these hours, they will be prompted with a Quiet Time reminder message. 

With our Quiet Time setting, you never have to worry about remembering the rules of sending bulk text messages. You can focus on providing personalized content for your members.

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Final Thoughts on Mass Texting Services

Bulk SMS services are the modern marketing channel that businesses are flocking towards, and with good reason. Community stands out as the choice for group texting that connects customers to real people, not robots. 

Hold conversations and build relationships on a large scale with Community’s SMS platform. Organize your members and campaigns with user-friendly features like Keywords, Clustering, Communities, and Insights. Promote your number and grow your audience with your custom My URL link. For businesses or individuals looking to connect personally with their audience, Community is the mass texting service you need.

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Sources:

48 SMS Marketing Statistics You Must See: 2020/2021 Market Share Analysis & Data | Financesonline.com 

Tap Into The Marketing Power of SMS | Gartner.com 

16 Mind-Blowing Shopify Statistics You Need to Know (2021) | Sleeknote.com