SMS has been around since the 90’s and is still a communication channel that mobile users prioritize over virtually every other chat or alert system out on the market today.
Let me ask you this, how long does it take you to read your text message once you become aware that a message has come through? For most it is inside 30-90 seconds, compare this to email which can be days if you see the message at all in amongst the dozens of others messages you received that day.
That brings me to another point, how many of your text messages do you read? If you are like most you probably read close 100% of the SMS messages that come through.
Compare that to other forms of communication, email, social media notifications, etc. SMS messages even after all of the great new technology that has been created still gains more attention that the others.
It’s about on par with an actual phone call but less invasive.
This of course makes it one of the most effective tools not just for user- to user communication but also business to user communication.
Imagine being able to grab the attention of prospective and existing customers in 30-90 seconds? Imagine being able to get the attention of 97% of the people you send a text message to?
In this article I’ll share with you the many different ways to can use SMS messaging to optimize different areas of communication.
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Tradingview Email To SMS
Crypto trading has really taken off in the last couple of years which has brought many every day people into trading platforms like tradingview.com to help them jump in and out of trades.
Due to the nature of crypto, things can happen very quickly, much more so than the traditional markets so people need to be updated quickly on when the best entry and especially exit points emerge.
Tradingview email to SMS is a fantastic feature because it allows you to receive instant SMS messages whenever a certain price target gets met.
This requires setting it up inside the tradingview dashboard, 160.com.au has a great guide on how to setup the tradingview email to SMS function.
Natively, tradingview will send email alerts but a lot of emails get bounced, sent to spam, etc. with SMS it hits your phone instantly and allows you to take action faster.
Appointment reminders
If you are in a business that has clientele then this SMS feature is a must have.
One of the biggest problems with these types of businesses is no-show i.e. someone who has not shown up for their appointment.
This is has become so much of the problem that verticals like hair salons, beauty clinics, massage therapists, and even restaurants etc. charge you if you fail to show up.
Obviously charging a customer who hasn’t shown up is a tough conversation to have and actually erodes the customer experience.
One effective way to reduce no-shows is to send them a friendly reminder via SMS.
This way you know that it’s guaranteed to get read.
A good SMS appointment message will go out a day or more earlier giving you enough time to replace that appointment if they are unable to attend.
Driving Sales (Marketing)
One of the most expensive activities in any business is customer acquisition.
Businesses will typically pay 3x the cost of a sale (likely more) to get a customer through the door which means driving sales from them becomes an essential part of your business model.
The traditional way to do this is either through a phone call or email marketing but when it comes to driving maximum sales SMS is actually pretty good.
While working for an online retailer our SMS marketing campaigns would outperform our email campaigns by around 400-600% depending on the promotion.
That was a big deal.
This was mostly due to the promotion actually being opened and read.
If you send an email it has to jump through to many obstacles hence the low 20% open rates that email delivers and while making a phone call to a customer is lucrative it is incredibly time consuming, there are only so many hours in the day, SMS allows you to combine the effectiveness of a phone call with the scalability of email.
Generating leads
While there are plenty of ways to generate leads it’s important to use each lead generation strategy for their strengths.
For example, email lead generation is the most common form of lead generation used by business and for good reason it can deliver a tremendous number of leads which is great if you are looking for volume the downside is that you need an effective lead nurturing system because most email leads are not ready to buy.
SMS works in the opposite way, you get less leads but those leads are of a much higher quality, simply because they had to offer up their personal mobile number which is a much higher level of commitment than an email address.
If you only want you sales team talking to highly qualified sales leads then SMS is a great option, if you have a lower priced product and you don’t mind the longer journey to a sale and you don’t have a large sales team then email is the best tool for the job.
Reduce call center congestion
Along with driving revenue SMS can also help with improving the customer experience by cutting down the time your customer service team spends on calls.
Not every customer need to (or even wants to) engage with a customer service rep on the phone sometimes they just need a quick answer which can be easily done via sending them a templated answer to those simple questions.
This ultimately means customer service reps are able to deal only with more complex issues and customers who want a quick answer don’t need to spend all day on waiting in a call queue.
