Consumers are bombarded daily with marketing messages vying for their attention. Despite the many communication avenues available, engaging consumers can still be challenging. Considering 85% of smartphone users prefer marketing text messages over calls or emails, it’s no surprise text automation has become a key marketing tool.

Businesses must embrace texting if they want to ensure their marketing messages reach their customers. A text is less disruptive than a phone call, and it’s more convenient for the recipient. It also allows users to interact with the message at a time that suits them.

However, sending manual text messages is laborious and time-consuming. It’s also prone to error, which means your communication can be delayed. By contrast, text automation lets you send strategically timed messages to build stronger relationships with your customers.

Companies that implement text automation are always a step ahead because their communication is instant and accurate. With numerous benefits for both the consumer and the business, text automation can significantly impact your marketing success.

Source: Shutterstock

How Does Text Automation Work?

SMS marketing can include promotional or transactional messages, as well as news and updates through texts. Text automation implements an easy-to-manage system for sending messages to a group of customers. But unlike traditional campaigns where everyone receives the same message at once, text automation delivers personalized and strategically timed messages without manual intervention.

For example, a practitioner can automatically text clients after they make an appointment to confirm their consultation date, time, and address. Doing this manually would be laborious and prone to error. But automating this function results in automatic message delivery as soon as you book a customer appointment in your calendar system.

Text automation is convenient for you and your clients, and it elevates the customer experience. Here are five reasons text automation can be highly beneficial to your business marketing strategy:

1. It Saves Time and Cost

If you were to phone every customer to confirm an appointment or booking, you would incur significant call costs. You’ll add labor costs as well for the employees handling these communication duties. Plus, there’s no guarantee you’ll reach every client on the first call. This further drags out a simple task.

Suppose you want to send a text message to clients who have made a purchase or used your loyalty program. Doing this manually after each interaction is time-consuming and eats away valuable productive hours from your team.

When you automate text messaging, you save on both call and labor costs. Your team is then freed up to spend its time on more important activities while maintaining an effective customer communication strategy.

2. Text Automation Minimizes Errors

Manually sending text messages, especially when working with an extensive contact database, requires accuracy and high attention to detail. Typing errors can have disastrous results, from communicating incorrect booking details or dollar amounts to misspelling names or addresses. In addition, a single incorrect digit can result in the message being delivered to the wrong person.

Double-checking every detail is essential, but it eats up time when you’re communicating manually. Mistakes create an unprofessional and careless impression that can do more harm than good to your customer engagement efforts.

When using a text automation solution, you’ll create a message template to suit your business communication style. Your system then automatically inserts the relevant account or appointment details, mobile number, and recipient name. This means you only have to check one message for errors, even though hundreds of customers will receive a personalized marketing text.

In addition, your text automation solution keeps track of which messages go out, when they go out, and the response rate. Use this data to gain insights into the type of messages that are effective and whether the timing of the message impacts engagement. You can also avoid sending too many or too few marketing messages by knowing exactly who has received promotional content.

3. Instant and Direct Delivery

SMS marketing is the most immediate marketing communication channel—you know your message is delivered directly to the intended recipient. Since messages are short, direct, and non-invasive, recipients are much more likely to read them than emails. In fact, research suggests 100% of text messages are viewed and 55% are read.

What’s more, marketing communication can be sent to customers while their interaction with the company is still fresh in their minds. For example, if a customer visits your physical business location, you can send them a service rating survey via text straight after they leave.

Instant text delivery is also highly effective for short-notice specials, flash sales, and time-sensitive promotions. This type of direct communication can prompt immediate purchases.

You can further enhance the customer experience by automating message replies to common events in the consumer journey, such as the next step in an enrollment process. This means regardless of when your customer responds to a text, they’ll still receive an instant reply. This builds trust and improves engagement, both of which are key to cultivating lasting relationships between your brand and your clients.

4. High Open and Conversion Rates

Marketing SMS open rates are five times higher than email open rates, 98% vs 20%. This is a significant return on investment (ROI), especially since text messages are less time-consuming to create and don’t require catchy headlines to entice a user to open them. The response rate to text marketing is also significantly higher (45%) than that of email (6%). This is because messages are short and concise with no other links or images to distract the reader from the call to action.

By automating text message campaigns, you gain the benefit of immediate message delivery as well as a higher conversion. What more can a business want than instant results on their marketing campaigns?

Although many text messages aim to drive engagement and build trust rather than direct sales, the effectiveness of text automation is still amplified due to the high open rates of this marketing medium.

Source: Shutterstock

5. Highly Personalized and Customized

Text messaging is one of the few marketing avenues that lets you personalize your communication with your customers. Mass marketing messages adopt a one-size-fits-all approach. The problem is, people have individual needs and preferences. Since your messages light up your customers’ personal mobile inbox, it lets you adopt a friendlier and more casual approach as opposed to formal sales language.

And while personalized messages contain details relevant to the recipient specifically, that doesn’t mean you need to do any manual processing.

Automated customized messages integrate user data in your system, including the customer’s name, time zone, birthday, location, and buying behavior. This lets you create promotional and transactional communications that are highly relevant to each individual.

For example, you can automate a welcome message to send instantly to users who have just signed up for your loyalty program. You can also offer customers discounts or notify them of exclusive deals on products they may be interested in by integrating buying behavior data.

Follow these steps to effectively personalize messages:

Segment Your Customers

By segmenting customers, you can send out campaigns that apply to a targeted interest group or to consumers who live in a certain location. For example, this can be effective when running in-store promotions at a specific outlet. You can notify your regular customers in the area and avoid sending irrelevant notifications to customers who live on the other side of the country.

Provide Value

If your messages don’t provide value to recipients, they’ll unsubscribe from notifications altogether. Whether it’s a flash sale or an alert their purchase has shipped, ensure every message provides value and is relevant.

Consider the Customer’s Time Zone

Sending messages at inappropriate times can also cause users to unsubscribe from text notifications. Messages sent at the wrong time won’t be effective. Unless an automated message responds to an immediate consumer action or request, stick to business hours and segment users according to their geographical location.

Optimize Text Automation Results With Landline Remover

Text automation is one of the most effective marketing strategies available to businesses. Whether you’re sending hundreds or millions of messages, text automation lets you personalize marketing without blowing your budget.

There is, however, one catch. Text messaging is only cost-effective if your contact list contains the correct mobile numbers to reach the intended customers. Sending messages to landline numbers or disconnected numbers is futile and eats into your profits. In addition, sending telemarketing material to numbers on the Do-Not-Call (DNC) Registry can result in Federal Trade Commission (FTC) fines.

While manually sorting through your database is ineffective and impractical, there’s an instant solution to ensure every text you send reaches a mobile phone. Landline Remover filters your contact list and removes landline numbers within seconds. It also incorporates a DNC Registry filter with updated data from federal and state levels.

You can now ensure your text automation campaigns are always successful. Sign up with Landline Remover today and get 1,000 free credits to get you started.