On trend: text message marketing is the future of customer and client engagement
One of the first things that entrepreneurs and businesses are told when starting out is to “build your email list”, and that it is the key to getting clients and customers. So, off you go to the internet to search for and choose a platform to build that list. There are many choices. Some have free trials, free emails to a certain number of subscribers, some with a dizzying amount of features.
The next step after finding your provider is to set up your email, sign-up form, landing pages, and more. Perhaps you embed a sign-up form or widget on your website. You create a product, worksheet, e-book, or comparable media as a free giveaway to entice people to sign up for the list. When they sign up, they receive your free product. Now they are a customer you can send emails to with the hope they will get to know you and buy your service or product.
You believe you can keep getting new people into your marketing funnel this way, and the more email addresses you have, the more money you will make. Except—it doesn’t exactly work that way. Once people have your free product, most emails go unopened. Some may hang around for a while, reading your very engaging and well-crafted emails.
Then, nothing. How many actually become customers?
There are some that work well: retailers notifying customers of upcoming or current promotions, online entrepreneurs who have been long-established, and a few others. These are the exception, not the rule. Email marketers say the solution is—to get more subscribers! As if the number of subscribers equals a successful business.
It’s not you. Trends are simply changing.
Consider:
- most potential customers have a separate email they use for promotional emails, and they don’t check that email address very often after getting your freebie. When they do, they just delete most emails from their Inbox. Therefore, not many actually get read.
- most of the information and instructions on building email lists is promoted by those who provide email list software or services, Google “email list building” and see for yourself.
- millennials use email but will unsubscribe if you email too often or just delete
To stay on trend, consider text message marketing
Consider:
- reliance on mobile phones as the primary communication tool is steadily rising
- most cell phone plans in the US include unlimited texting instead of paying per text
- almost everyone who gets a text message reads it almost immediately
- if your recipient wants to respond to your message, they can reach you immediately, making communication truly two way
Here’s an article to read on this READ HERE
However, to be effective, here are some tips on using text message marketing:
- do pay attention to how many texts you send. I joined a few text message groups, only to get two or three a day, which I felt to be excessive and stopped them. I would consider once a week or so to be good. That’s what I do for my text message subscribers.
- do let people know they can respond to messages and get a personal reply. Most services allow this, and it then becomes an individual conversation, not group messaging.
- do let your subscribers take their time. It takes time for people to get to know and trust you. Some will not want to engage right away; some just want to be part of the audience. They are most likely paying attention though.
- do know your audience and engage with interesting information or specials, depending on your business. Coupons and extras if you have a product or service, links to polls, information, surveys, tips, and more.
- do use a text messaging service, NOT a group set up as a contact list on your cell phone. No one likes those group messages from people they don’t know, or even worse, your customers will not appreciate having their cell phone number broadcast to strangers and random replies showing up in their messages. Text messaging services will give your clients a keyword or shortcode with a number to sign up and they’ll only see messages from that number. Bulk texting services like ClickSend provide a lot of flexible options for handling this.
- do be ethical about your text message marketing As in other areas of your business, this reflects on you and your business. Being ethical means: never, ever call the numbers you collect with your list without getting their permission to call. Telemarketers are universally hated and you do not want to become one. Another faux pas would be adding random numbers or purchased lists to your account– always, always! let the phone owner do the subscribing (and unsubscribing).
To your abundance with love …
