How to Leverage SMS Automation for Your Business
Reinventing yourself as a business is crucial to survive the different economic waves and trends. But it doesn’t have to be as daunting as it sounds.
Interestingly enough, Domino’s is an excellent example of a company that reinvented itself by acting like a tech startup. A series of small changes led to their stock value growing by 90x.
So, what can we learn from a mediocre (or delicious, this is a judgment-free zone) $5.99 pizza when it comes to reinventing a business? Let’s take a look.
Small Change, Big Impact
Domino’s Pizza is known for being convenient and reliable. Despite being the first company in their industry to introduce mobile ordering, they decided to take things further and gamefy the ordering process.
In 2007, Domino’s Pizza introduced an order tracking feature where hungry customers could follow each step of the pizza-making process.
This feature dramatically impacted consumer behavior and expectations, and today we cannot imagine companies like Uber Eats and Postmates existing without order tracking.
Domino’s Pizza tracker created a type of transparency that customers never had before. With this small change, Domino’s became a leader in their industry, and everyone else followed.
How can you become the leader of your industry?
By setting yourself apart from businesses that choose to communicate with their customers through email only. Conversational business text messaging is one of the most effective ways to create a deeper relationship with your customers.
Data shows that an average person receives 121 business emails per day. We believe there’s a time and place for emailing but conversational business text messaging is the future.
Become a Leader in Your Industry
Most businesses rely on emailing their customers, and for a while, it was one of the only options to reach them post-purchase. But now emails have become a catch-all for everything, from promotions, and service recommendations, to delivery updates.
Emails have an average open rate of 21.33%, whereas text messaging has an open rate of 98%! So, do we think you should shift all your efforts toward text messaging?
Not really.
We believe there’s room for both, but to build long-lasting relationships with your customers and to stay top of mind when they need your services or products, that’s where conversational text messaging really shines.
When we’re talking about conversational business text messaging, we don’t mean sending individual texts to your customers.
What we mean is entirely transforming the way your business communicates, especially in those moments when your business or staff needs a timely response.
The numbers speak for themselves:
| Items | SMS | |
|---|---|---|
| Open rate | 98% | 21% |
| Click-through rate | 45% | 2.6% |
| Number delivered per day |
6 billion | 333 billion |
There’s no doubt that conversational business text messaging is a powerful tool for businesses, but given its novelty, there can be a learning curve on how to best use it.
Here are some workflows to show you how you can automate your future campaigns and get more Google reviews.
Put Your Outreach Efforts on Auto-Pilot
Conversational business text messaging provides businesses with the opportunity to create meaningful relationships. Let’s take a look at some workflows that are tried and tested by Ikeono customers.
For Service-Heavy Businesses
Service departments are a significant revenue stream, and texting can completely change the way you do business and improve the way your staff interacts with your customers.
One of the most important aspects for service-heavy businesses is ensuring that customers are educated on service options and making it easy for staff members to reach the customer.
With phones and emails having such slow response times, playing telephone tag or waiting for an email will come at a cost.
Here’s what our customer at BikeSource Charlotte in North Carolina has to say about sending a follow-up SMS campaigns post-service
The follow-up service campaign has been FANTASTIC in more than one way. First and foremost, the positive feedback from customers has been great for sharing with the staff. Also, there have been a few issues that continued after the repair or developed soon after the repair that customers were able to bring to our attention and give us the time to correct. In most of the cases, the customers weren’t mad or disappointed but since we asked it gave them the outlet to bring it up.
Lastly, we’ve had a few circumstances where an additional repair or replacement had been suggested during the repair or at pickup but the customer declined, and then after sending out the campaign, they indicated that they would like to schedule to have the additional work done.
🤝 Warranty Reminders
Send a warranty reminder after a specific time frame post-purchase. Your customers will appreciate it and you become their go-to expert if something goes wrong. More tips on how to improve your service department.
🛎️ Service Recommendations
Either based on product category, brand, or even an individual item, you can remind your customers to come back for recommended routine services.
🔧 Work order automation
Automate customer notifications for work orders, give updates, ask questions, and even send a new quote for additional repairs that might’ve been missed during drop-off. Learn more about Ikeono’s Lightspeed POS integration here.
New Purchase Follow-Up
Follow up with your customers a couple of days after their purchase, you can ask them about their experience at the store, their thoughts on their purchase, or even recommend add-ons to drive traffic to your store or website.
For Retailers
Post-purchase campaigns are one of the best ways to drive traffic back to your store and keep the conversation going with your customers. Remember, acquiring new customers is always more expensive than keeping the ones you have.
Follow up with your customers a couple of days after their purchase, you can ask them about their experience at the store, and their thoughts on their purchase, or even recommend add-ons to drive traffic to your store or website.
How To Automate Your Reputation Management
Most customers are willing to write Google reviews after receiving great service, and the reason that most of them don’t is that the process is not convenient for them.
They have to remember to sit at the computer or phone, look up your business, click multiple times and only then write their review. Do you see how this is not entirely convenient to the customer and only benefits you in the end?
Instead of asking them to leave you a review as they walk out of the store, you can instead strategize and automate your reputation management through texting, and this gives you control over 3 things specifically
# 1 Perfect Timing
Asking your customers to leave you a review as they are about to walk out of your store will not have the best return on investment. Your staff probably doesn’t love repeating that and the customer hasn’t even tried your product or service yet.
With texting, you can time your review request and even better, it can be specific to their purchase.
# 2 Personalizing It
Being personable goes a long way, you are already being quite personable by sending them a text, take it to the next level by using their first name and being very specific about their purchase. This type of relationship building is imperative for stores with high-ticket items. Learn more about how to get more Google reviews here.
#3 Effortless
You are able to take all the work out for your customers, now they can leave you a review by simply performing an action that they would have already done, which is checking their text message notification. Instead of them coming to you, you are going to them.
You just took all the work out of your customers writing a review, and also created a relationship with them 😁!
Phone calls go to voicemail, and emails are rarely opened, so how can you be one step ahead and reach your customers in a personal way?
We believe that people should be calling their friends and family and texting businesses. It’s a no-brainer to text your customers and you let them reply when it’s convenient for them. Most of the time they are so busy that even when they do manage to call you back, they haven’t listened to the voicemail.
Domino’s became a leader in their industry by taking customer experience and transparency to the next level, and you can do the same by becoming that “business they text” 😉.
