5 great tips for using business SMS

Business SMS is one of the most powerful and effective communication methods for businesses around today. With many businesses from small start-ups to large corporate enterprise businesses taking full advantage of the benefits of SMS to enhance their business.

Benefits of Business SMS

Quick and easy
Sending an SMS message is quick and easy, especially with FastSMS. Simply write your message and then either enter your specific number that you want the message to go to, or select a specific contact group, which could have hundreds of thousands of contacts in.

Low cost
There is no need for any designers to create expansive and elaborate designs, no need to hire a Google ads expert, it’s a simple effective message that could reach thousands of customers. With FastSMS you could send out a marketing campaign to 10 thousand people for £360.

Effective
The best thing of all about business SMS, is it’s immensely effective. 98% of all text messages are read, and 90% of all text messages are read within 3 minutes. Whereas email has an open rate of around 20% (Source: Gartner).

These are just some of the benefits of business SMS which are just some of the reasons why business SMS is proving so popular today and why it continues to grow exponentially.

However because of the immense open rates of SMS, it can be a little daunting to start with. So we have put together a list of some great tips to follow to make sure you start off on the right path.

Tell your customer who you are
Seems an obvious one, but without the ability to put your logo or branding on your message, you need to make sure you set your Sender ID as your business name, this tells the customer straight away who the message is from.

Keep it short and sweet
As you know 98% of all the recipients will read your message, there is a tendency to try and say too much and cram lots of details in. This often ends up confusing the customers and causing them not to respond or stop reading. Keep it short, sweet and to the point.

Segment your database
Within your business and database you may have customers who are only interested in certain services you offer, for example in recruitment, an applicant will only want to hear about available jobs within their sector. So spilt up your database, by interests, age, sex or services – whatever it takes to make sure you are sending relevant messages to your customers.

Use an easy to follow call to action
Make sure your call to action is not only simple to understand but also easy to follow. Include a link to your website or the URL link of the webpage you want them to visit, or the email address or telephone number you want them to call.

Think about the timing
Make sure you think about the day and time of the message you will be sending, what will your recipients be doing at that time? Obviously you do not want to send a message during the middle of the night, but think about the content of your message and the action you need the recipient to take – does it match the day and time of your message? There is no point sending an SMS reminder a month before their appointment, alternatively don’t send it 5 minutes before their appointment. 

We hope this list of tips will help your business along its business SMS journey. If you would like to discuss further how SMS can help your business then please do get in touch.