Finding effective ways to communicate with your customers is crucial to building and maintaining a loyal customer base.
As our world continues to become more digital, paper mail is no longer the best method to reach your customers. Although we typically view texting as an informal method of communication, implementing texting campaigns for your business is one of the most successful ways to be in touch with your customers.
Why it Works
“One of the reasons why texting is so important in repair shops these days is because that's what the consumers expect,” said Rick Sage, Vice President of Marketing at KUKUI. “Everybody is used to using their phones and they expect to be able to communicate with businesses using their phone through texting services. It's fast, it's immediate, and it's a great way to share communication and updates.”
When compared to alternate forms of communication, texts have a high probability of success.
“The open rates on text messages are far better than that of emails, snail mail, anything like that,” said Heather Myers, CTO of KUKUI. “A 25% open rate is good on email whereas text messages open rates are upwards of 90-98%.”
Getting Started
Before you can launch a text marketing campaign, you need a list of customers who have opted in to receive text communications from your business.
“The biggest hurdle to getting started with text campaigns is collecting opt-ins,” said Myers. If you don't have those explicit opt-ins, it's not legal to market and you start getting that fatigue and people getting tired of receiving messages and opt out straight away.”
Offering coupons through text can be a great way to start collecting opt-ins from your customer base and reward them for opting in.
Once you have a legal list of phone numbers, you can start developing your marketing plan.
“Appointment reminders are a perfect entry level to text messaging,” said Myers. “You don't have to set up a bunch of campaigns or get creative with your messaging. It's just getting them used to getting texts from you, continue collecting your opt ins, and then as that base grows, then you're able to really focus more on those other types of campaigns.”
Keeping Up-to-Date with Current Regulations
In order to make sure your messages are not getting filtered and to avoid fines, properly registering your business is crucial. Starting this fall, the consequences for not doing so will get much worse.
“It's evolved over time,” said Myers. “Late last year, it was a simple registration, and if you didn't, there would be some additional fees for text messages and possible filtering. They were collecting minimal information at that point. As of this year, they've gotten a little bit stricter. In the past, people would just pay fines and keep going. Now the fines and fees are much steeper.”
This summer is your last opportunity to make sure you are properly registered before the switch occurs at the end of August.
“As of July 5, any brands that aren't registered as well as their campaigns, are running the risk of potential filtering,” said Myers. “So what they're doing is ramping up from July 5 through August 31. Like a grace period, in essence, to get everything registered. And then, as of August 31, the carriers have announced that they are going to filter messages that go out, which means if you send these campaigns they won't be received and will show as error messages.”How KUKUI Can Help
If these registrations and regulations feel overwhelming, you may want to enlist a marketing company to help. KUKUI provides an All-In-One-Success-Platform to make sure you are staying current with trends, rules, and regulations. KUKUI does all the work for you. All you have to provide is your business name and address.
For more information on KUKUI’s Text Connect platform and how you can get your next campaign started visit: https://www.kukui.com/text-messaging
