Text Message Marketing for Small Business

Looking for an effective way to generate leads, connect with your audience, and convert more prospects into customers? Then, look no further than text message marketing for small business.

Text marketing with Textedly is a powerful and cost-effective strategy that can be used by any kind of business. It can work for online businesses, retail stores, service-based businesses, B2B, and more. It's been shown to deliver outstanding results when implemented properly.

And, best of all, business text messaging has never been easier thanks to Textedly’s easy-to-use texting solutions platform.

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How Text Marketing for Small Businesses Works

It's easy to use text message marketing for small businesses. If you're familiar with digital marketing, then it is most comparable to email marketing. You start by getting your audience to opt-in to your text message list. This can be done by asking them on your website, advertisements, email, and even in the retail environment through signage or through a salesperson.
You will simply instruct the person to send a keyword that you’ve set up in Textedly to a short code number. For example, the prospect would text JOIN to the number 33222. Once the text message is sent, they'll be put on the list and agree to receive messages from your business. There are also click-to-join functions that can be used online and are specifically targeted for smartphone users.

Examples of SMS for Small Business

Just how would an everyday business use SMS marketing? A Seattle-based salon may want to target local customers but may not be seeing the results they were expecting from their digital marketing campaigns. As a result, the salon has difficulty bringing back customers even though they're using email, social media, and their business's blog.

Instead of trying to get the attention of their prospects and customers through these noisy and competitive channels, the salon decides to use text messages to stay in touch with customers. They start advertising a 15% off discount on the next visit if customers opt-in to their text message alerts. The salon would also announce special events, promotions, and discounts in the future through text.

This incentive gets many customers to join. Through the new text channel, the salon is now able to get their customers to come back more frequently. They are also building loyalty and a strong local brand as their customers aren't going anywhere else for salon services. To jump on this success, the salon starts to advertise the text promotion to all their online channels and starts to get new customers to book appointments.

How Does Text Marketing for Small Business Promote Growth?

As you can see, text marketing for small businesses is an effective way to market your brand. But there are so many different ways it can help you grow your business.
  • It Can Send Personalized Messages
    Did you know that you can use various data fields in text messages? You can even create your own fields. This allows you to customize many things from the recipient's name, birthday, last visit to the business, to past purchases.
  • It Can Send Targeted Offers
    You can also segment your text message list just as you would with an email list. The result is the ability to send highly targeted offers based on the customer segment.
  • It Can Help You Collect Valuable Feedback
     Want to learn how you can improve your business? You can ask your customers through text. It's a simple, fast, and easy way to get valuable feedback.
  • You Can Use It as a Customer Support Channel
    Because texts are hard to miss and very quick, you can allow your customers to message you their issues and respond to them immediately.
  • You Can Communicate with More Than Words
    Did you know that you can use images and videos in text messages? You can make communication with your customers come to life and make a bigger impact with every outreach.

Powerful small business-focused SMS features

  1. Two-way texting

    Two-way texting allows small businesses to engage in interactive and personalized conversations with customers. This is an excellent tool for better customer service, appointment scheduling, and promotional offers. Textedly’s two-way texting feature offers a direct and convenient way to keep client communication engaging and useful.

  2. Mass texting

    Mass texting is a beneficial and cost-effective text message marketing strategy for small businesses to utlilize. You can use Textedly’s mass texting tool to time-sensative promotions to customers or for wider reach with your SMS marketing campaigns.

  3. Customer reviews

    Small businesses rely heavily on customer reviews for growth. Our customer review software makes it incredibly easy to gain more reviews using SMS. You can also manage all your reviews in one intuitive dashboard.

Why Should Small Businesses Use SMS?

You might be wondering why small businesses should use SMS. After all, there are other channels like email, direct mail, social media, and blogs. The answer is simple. SMS produces higher response rates than the other channels.

There is a 90 percent open rate for SMS and response to messages also average 45 percent. That is incredibly high compared to the 20 percent open rate and 6 percent response rate you see with email. In addition, 75 percent of people are okay with receiving text messages from brands.

Of course, this doesn't mean you should abandon all the other channels. What you want to do is supplement them with SMS marketing. There will always be prospects and customers that prefer channels like email, social media, and blogs.

How to Start Using SMS for Small Businesses

Everything sounds good, but how do you get started? The first step is to sign up with a text marketing platform that's well-known in the industry. It'll give you all the tools to collect subscribers, create campaigns, schedule messages, view analytics, and more.
From there, you can import subscribers from other platforms like your email marketing or CRM platform. You should also advertise your text message list to your existing marketing channels including retail, website, blog, social media, and email. Once you start building your list, you can create your first text message and send it out.

SMS Marketing for Small Business Sample Campaigns

What kind of messages should you send out? Here are some example campaigns spanning various businesses:
(855) 397-6679

Hi John,

Corner Grill is having a BYOB and extend happy hour prices this Friday.

But reservstions are filling up fast, to lock in your spot visit http://clickhere,com/23Ar

Text STOP to end

(855) 397-6679

Hi Jennifer,

This is a courtesy reminder about your upcoming appointment at Astoria Family Dental. You're scheduled to come in at 10 AM on Friday, Oct. 8th.

If you need to reschedule or cancel you can text us back.

Text STOP to end

(855) 397-6679

Redy for a new look this Summer?

Butterfly Studio Salon is offering a $20 off your next cut and 15% off your next coloring. But the deal is only going to last until May 20th.

Call 555-777-9595 to book your appointment before is over.

Text STOP to end

Text Message Marketing for Small Business Compliance

It's important to note that you are compliant with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). You want to provide recipients a message or letter telling them how to unsubscribe so that you aren't constantly sending them unwanted messages. You will also need to provide information about why the message was sent, the terms and conditions, and potential data rates that may apply.

Easily integrate SMS marketing with your current tech stack

Textedly is easy to integrate with the tools you’re already using. You can connect your SMS marketing campaigns to powerful software such as:
mailchimp
Mailchimp
Google sheets
Google Sheets
Hubspot
Hubspot
Pipedrive
Pipedrive
Zapier
Zapier
View all integrations

Textedly Provides Texting Solutions for Small Business

Textedly is one of the best providers for making use of text marketing for small businesses. It has a long list of features such as personalization, scheduled texts, automatic replies, detailed analytics, and more. You can try out our platform for 14-days for free, no credit card required.
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