TextTastic!

Text messaging is part and parcel of today’s commercial communications landscape. A key driver of these communications is the adoption of application-to-person (A2P) messaging by businesses seeking to enhance their customers’ experience with their brand or service.

Looking across business sectors, some of the general text usage trends for business communications are promotional campaigns and information services, as well as the increased use of text messaging for notifications, alerts and reminders, to actively engage with new and existing customers or clients.

Immediate experience
Promotional campaigns using text messaging aim at providing an immediate and interactive experience with a brand via a consumer’s handset. Many lifestyle brands and retail stores blend above-the-line and below-the-line advertising and marketing strategies when implementing text campaigns.

These promotional campaigns take either a text push or text pull approach.

In a text pull campaign, a promotional competition, voting line, customer satisfaction research, or in-store activity is used to attract customers’ attention. The call to action is an incoming number service and keyword to which customers send their text. They then receive an automated reply via text message that confirms the interaction and may prompt further brand interactions. For example, a retailer runs a campaign where customers get a discount on their next sale by sending a text with a unique number associated with a product to the promotion’s incoming service number.

In a text push campaign, promotional messages are sent by a business to a specific customer demographic. These customers have given their explicit permission for the company to send them text messages and expect to be kept updated on promotions, product launches and the arrival of new stock. Messaging of this nature keeps a commercial conversation alive with customers – a consumer may even reply to the initial promotional text to ask the retailer to keep an item aside for them.

Event logistics
Text messaging can also take some of the administrative hassle out of sporting event logistics. For marathons, triathlons and cycling events, text messages are sent to participants to confirm entry to a race, and to send notifications on race start times.

Texts are also used to send urgent alerts if there are any last minute changes to the location of the start or starting time of a race due to unforeseen circumstances. And text messaging has a further use in informing competitors of their race times and providing information on when race highlights will be shown on the television.

Watersports events that are dependent on good sea conditions also benefit from sending a timely text to contestants. For example, a surfing event organiser is able to quickly inform all contestants on the morning of a surf contest where and when heats will be run that day. However, if surf conditions are not conducive to holding the contest, a call to put the contest on hold is then communicated to all participants, saving them the time and effort of turning up.
 
Appointment times
Service industries rely on managing client appointment times to ensure the smooth running of a business – whether it’s a medical or dental practice, a hairdresser, or sales representative on the road. In these and other cases, text messaging is increasingly becoming the standard way of confirming appointments and sending out appointment reminders a day ahead of a scheduled appointment.

Much of this uptake can be put down to the reduction in time spent on the telephone making calls and the hassle-free factor in sending meeting notifications via a text messaging service, plus the ability to keep a record  of these messages. Additionally, text messaging software has the capability to enable the scheduling of appointment reminders for sending out at a later date – a further efficiency that can save time on administrative tasks in a busy day. 

The travel and tourism industry has made good use of text messaging to provide increased levels of certainty for the traveller by sending booking confirmation to their mobile phone. This makes it easier to keep itinerary information on hand and accessible for quick reference when travelling.
Airlines, accommodation providers and tour operators have also taken up text messaging to confirm booking reservations. These processes are usually automated so that when a flight is paid for, accommodation booked, or a tour selected, the customer receives a text generated by the provider’s system confirming the booking. If a traveller requires changes to their itinerary, these are also confirmed via text.

Estate agents
Estate agents are also using text messaging as a convenient way to communicate with prospective buyers to tell them about a new property that has come on the market. If one or more buyers are interested in viewing the property, then only at that point does the estate agent need to pick up the telephone to make arrangements for a viewing. In this context, text messaging is also used to confirm appointments.

Estate agents are also using SMS for incoming numbers when advertising properties. A prospective buyer is able to respond to the advert by sending a text to incoming number service to make an enquiry or make a booking to view the property. These incoming text messages are then followed up by the estate agent.

Companies using text messaging for business communications are finding that text messaging’s unique  features, such as near-instantaneous delivery of succinct messages to targeted consumers, as well its ability to initiate a conversation with a new customer using an incoming number service, fits well into their business operations and plays a big part in reducing their marketing communications costs. No wonder it’s so popular.

Pieter Streicher is managing director of bulk text messaging solutions provider BulkSMS.co.uk, a service run by Celerity Messaging UK