Good levels of communication and support are crucial for small businesses to succeed. A personal relationship with customers is also key to establishing customer loyalty to a business and SMS messaging provides a perfect manner in which to achieve this.

Text messaging is extremely personal as it provides businesses with the opportunity to target precisely the intended individual they desire to receive a message by delivering it directly to their phone number. SMS messages can be personalised even further through the use of a recipient’s name or referring to a particular event they are attending.

SMS messages also provide businesses with the ability to contact their customers within seconds. Text message delivery is instant so businesses are able to immediately relay information to their customers. SMS messages have an open rate of 95% in contrast to the less than 25% rate of email opening.

Mobile Marketing

It is imperative that small businesses aim to keep their relationship with their customers alive and build upon existing rapports. There are a number of ways in which to ensure this occurs, for example sending SMS appointment reminders to customers with scheduled consultations. This not only benefits the customer by reminding them to attend, it also benefits businesses as their presence could result in them paying for a service, for instance a haircut.

Another opportunity that SMS provides businesses to improve their relationship with their customers on a personal level is through the delivery of holiday and birthday text messages. Customers will feel valued and will appreciate a thoughtful message on these special days. Though a subtle form of marketing, this is highly effective in the long-term as it proves to customers that as a business you always have them in mind.

SMS messages also provided an excellent chance for businesses to notify their customers of special promotions or sales which are currently available to them. As SMS is such an instant form of communication, subscribed recipients of text messages will be the first to be rewarded. SMS marketing provides businesses with the possibility of instantly sending coupon codes and special deals directly to their customers.

SMS for Administration, Information, Business Processes and More

SMS is not just used for Marketing purposes. As you can imagine, being able to communicate with staff or customers instantly has so many uses for a businesses. For example, many firms use SMS to keep their clients updated when a service is interrupted, which can be vital to prevent a surge of enquiries. Furthermore, mass text messaging can be particularly useful when other forms of communication are down or if a business requires online connectivity to function. SMS messages provide businesses with the best way to keep their customers informed about unexpected and uncontrollable situations.

But what about staff? Many, many businesses use an SMS system to inform their staff about key information, such as where a staff member needs to be at what time, or if anything about their tasks have changed for that day. Having staff who travel between jobs means something like SMS can be hugely valuable. Combining SMS with an API to generate this kind of automated communication can save a lot of time and money.