As a business owner, you should understand the power of text message marketing. If your brand is looking to get in front of customers and prospective customers in a new way, SMS messaging (short message service) is the answer. If utilized well, text message marketing can build brand loyalty and increase sales for your company—here’s how. 

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Capture Prospects

Recent ecommerce statistics show that an average of only 2.17% of e-commerce website visitors converts into a sale. This is good news for companies with a text message marketing strategy. 

It means that website visitors are primarily coming to gather information on your business and products—give them the option to do just that by subscribing to your text marketing channel. By capturing them with an opportunity to subscribe, you can connect with these potential customers that would otherwise have fallen through the cracks through mass texting. 

Community offers a convenient Website Sign-Up Unit as a handy tool to guide your site visitors to a registration form. Once members complete the form and input some of their basic demographic information, they’ll be added to your Community audience and ready to engage with your brand in real conversations. 

You can also use your custom Community My URL link to embed as a clickable button in the header or footer (or anywhere) on your webpage. Convert more visitors into sales by giving them convenient ways to opt-in to your SMS service. 

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Retain Customers

Customer Retention Data shows the probability of selling to an existing customer is typically between 60% and 70%. Customer retention needs to be a focus for any company looking to increase its sales. With a text message marketing tool, you can not only stay in contact with your current customers, but you can get to know them personally. Learn from the relationships you build with your audience to make better decisions in developing your products for the future.

This same data set also shows that existing customers are 50% more likely to try new products when your business creates them. Nurturing customer relationships and focusing on meeting your clients’ needs is easily achievable with SMS marketing campaigns. The Community platform allows you to interact with your audience at scale personally so that you can keep retention rates and engagement high.

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The Community Difference

Community’s text marketing platform stands out from others by focusing on personal connections as the foundation to increasing sales. Community lets you get to know who your audience is, what their interests are, and makes it possible to interact with each one. 

Here’s how to increase your sales and use your Community phone number for text message marketing.

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Build Personal Connections

The Clustering feature on the Community platform makes mass text messaging with large groups of individuals possible. Your audience member recipients won’t be interacting with a live chat-bot or automated message service—they’re able to speak directly with you and vice versa. 

Clustering lets you group similar messages together so you can send one reply or marketing message to several people at once. Community focuses on maintaining real, personal connections with your customers, which builds higher brand loyalty and leads to more sales. 

Stay top of mind in a market where consumers are presented with many buying options by getting into the palm of their hands via SMS.

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Audience Segmenting to Create Customized Content

Data on segmentation and personalization shows 71% of consumers feel frustrated when their experience with a company is not personalized. Segment your audience into customizable subcategories—called Communities—based on various characteristics, demographic information, or interest. 

Send more personalized content by better understanding the needs and lifestyle of each audience segment. Keep your members subscribed and continuously engaged with the messages you send by catering to what they care about. 

Community offers two ways to sort your audience to provide a better customer experience and ultimately increase your sales.

Keywords

The Keywords feature automatically segments your audience into groups or “Communities” by using the designated words you choose. All you have to do is text your audience to ask them what they are interested in and give them the Keyword options to use in their response. When a member replies with your chosen Keyword, they’ll be sorted into the respective segment so you can stay organized regardless of how big your audience grows. 

For example, if you’re a local bookstore that wants to segment your audience by the genres they love, you can assign different Keywords like Romance, Horror, Non-Fiction, and more. Use this information to craft messages that your members will care about and want to engage with. 

The key to increasing sales and retaining customers is personalized content that leads to authentic interactions. Achieve this through audience segmentation with Community.

Filters

In addition to Keywords, there are a few Filter options to help you organize your audience members based on the information on their Contact Profiles. 

Use the Location/Radius filter to see where your members are located and target their campaigns accordingly. The Join Date filter lets you message groups of people who joined your audience after a specific date, such as an event or big sale that you hosted. 

Demographic filters make it easy to curate content for a specific age or gender identity group. Use filters to send a personal message to the appropriately correlated segment of your audience—they’ll appreciate you taking the time to keep the conversation relevant to their lifestyle and be more likely to complete a sale with your business.

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Insights

Whether accessing your Community account through the mobile app or the Customer Web Dashboard, you can view the Insights feature to manage your campaigns and audience relationships. 

Insights let you track the interactions your texts have received, such as the “likes” and other reactions members give your messages. Insights also let you see click rates and open rates, so you’re able to monitor the success of each one of your campaigns. 

Use Community’s Insights feature to learn the best times and types of content to send to your audience.

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Ideas for Increasing Sales with SMS

Text message marketing can provide a direct and instant line to your customer base like no other channel of communication. You’ll best utilize text marketing in your strategy by getting creative. 

There are dozens of ways to maximize the technology of text message marketing to boost your business. Here are just a few ideas to get you thinking of ways your brand can incorporate SMS to increase sales.

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Create Exclusive Promotions

In addition to building a personal relationship with your audience members, you can also encourage them to stay subscribed to your texting service by offering them exclusive deals. Help increase your sales and keep your retention rates high by incentivizing members to stay subscribed and engaged. Try hosting private promotions, sending behind-the-scenes information, or giving early access to your SMS audience. 

Your business can also hold a flash sale promoted through text to create a sense of urgency and drive instant results. To promote these exclusive deals, send anything through Community that you’d usually send in a text message: links, images, emojis, GIFs, and even Audio Message clips. Mix it up and review your Insights to see what your customers seem to enjoy.

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Easy Polling to Get Feedback

The best part of texting is the two-way conversation that lets you collect information directly from your customers. Ask your audience to provide you with customer support feedback in a way that’s convenient for them, like a texting poll to their mobile devices. You can ask them how their customer experience was or how they’re enjoying their latest purchase and provide a few short words (or even emojis) as multiple choice answers in a poll text. 

Meet the needs of your customers by asking them directly what those needs are. Community’s text message marketing platform lets you hold real conversations so you can ask real people real questions and collect the feedback you need to shape your brand’s products. Increase your sales by analyzing your strengths and weaknesses with a simple text message poll.

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Direct Notifications of New Products

Provide your SMS audience with an exclusive inside look at your new products when they launch. Easily send links and photos via text of your latest products. Your brand-loyal customers will love the instant notification and ability to be first in line. 

Use the combination of Insights, Filters, and other data you collect from your members to send them the notifications of the products they’re most likely to be inclined to purchase. No other service lets you get in front of your customers so quickly and conveniently. 

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Summary

Using text message marketing to increase sales for your business is easier than you think. Community’s SMS platform has the options and the personalization features you need to create strong bonds with your clientele.

Grow your audience and increase sales by maintaining a constant connection to each member. Use business text messaging alerts to notify customers directly and instantly about coupons, invitations, products they like, or just to create customer engagement so they’ll stay loyal to your brand—ultimately increasing your sales. 

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Sources:

Forbes 50 Stats Showing The Power Of Personalization | Forbes.com 

19 New E-Commerce Statistics You Need to Know in 2021 | Sleeknote.com 

70 Powerful Customer Retention Statistics You Need to Know in 2021 | SEMRush.com