SMS Alerts for Businesses: Key Benefits and Best Practices

Building long-lasting and strong relationships with clients is a must for every business. SMS alerts play an instrumental role in forging trust, enhancing communication, and ensuring timely updates, which eventually lead to stronger and more reliable business partnerships. Owing to the countless benefits, a message alert offers, enterprises across the world are already using it to engage and nurture customers, boost sales, and transform customer service like never before. Wondering how SMS alerts can take your business to another level?  In this post, we will take a deep dive into the advantages of message alerts, vital strategies, and the best practices to follow for optimized customer engagement, lead generation, and business efficiency. Let’s get started!

What is SMS Marketing and How Does SMS Alerts Accelerate Business Growth?

A form of opt-in marketing communication strategy, SMS marketing involves using text messages to engage with clients or customers. Text marketing for business could include a wide array of messages, including promotional ones. As a business, you could send message alerts about your new products, services or important updates, special offers, appointment reminders, and event invitations, ensuring timely and relevant communication.

5 Text Alert Benefits at a Glance

Instant SMS alerts are a fast-paced way to reach out to your customers and stay connected with them, no matter where they are. It is one of the most effective communication channels that cut through digital noise. “SMS has an average open rate of 98% and a click-through rate (CTR) of 19%”- Forbes. 

Here’s a list of the advantages of notifications for messages, which can streamline your communication and enhance customer experience.

1. Higher Deliverability

Text messages are less susceptible to getting buried in spam folders than emails, provided you follow the compliance rules. Besides, most people read text messages within 90 seconds of receiving them, giving you a higher chance of getting your message across.

2. Personalized messaging:

SMS marketing allows for highly personalized communication. You can tailor your text alerts based on customer segmentation, behaviour, preferences, or past interactions, making them feel more relevant. You can personalize every SMS by sending customers-specific deals based on their purchasing history or needs. Personalized message alerts generate better leads and increase the click-through rate.

3. Valuable real-time analytics

Instant feedback through real-time insights allows you to track open rates, click-through rates, and response times of your SMS alerts. This data helps refine your marketing strategy further, improving the effectiveness of your campaigns and boosting ROI.

4. Simpler marketing with text alert automation

As opposed to email or social media marketing campaigns, creating text-based marketing campaigns is way easier. By eliminating the need for manual effort, you can spend more time on lead nurturing than content creation.

5. Increased Revenue

Text messaging for business offers an exceptional ROI (return on investment) of approx. $71 for every dollar spent underlining the effectiveness of notifications for messages. It exceeds email marketing ROI which is roughly $36 for every dollar spent.

A Sneak Peek into 4 Powerful Ways of Using SMS Alerts

Your business can leverage text alerts to your advantage by following a few simple strategies that help you nurture leads, boost sales, and enhance client retention. Your SMS alerts do not need to be promotional every time for a positive impact on your sales and revenue. Here are 4 effective ways to use them for optimal benefit.:

• Notification texts: Sending timely SMS alerts about service outages, or a change in your pricing strategy plays a crucial role in maintaining long-term relationships with your customers.
• Transactional messages: It is needless to mention that transactional text messages are important to your customers. Use SMS alerts to keep your customers updated about their order status, payment deadline, or refund processing.
• Feedback messages: Regular feedback from your customers helps you understand what they like or dislike about your products or services. You can invite customers to leave a Google review that you can use as social proof, or ask them to participate in case studies.
• Educational messages: You can harness the SMS route to educate your customers by sharing links to whitepapers, case studies, upcoming webinars, or even onboarding materials that could be handy after a purchase.

4 Best Practices & Tips For Message Alerts

Whether it’s for customer support, marketing, or transactional alerts, these platforms ensure you can deliver your message effectively and build lasting relationships. Now that you are aware of the benefits of business text messaging and strategies to increase lead generation and sales, it is time to share some best practices you should bear in mind.

1. Adhere to SMS compliance: Adherence to compliance guidelines for text marketing holds utmost importance. You should follow CAN-SPAM text guidelines to avoid penalties and loss of reputation.
2. Timing is important: Timing becomes important on account of two reasons, the first being compliance. Adherence to compliance guidelines prohibits enterprises from sending messages at inappropriate times. Secondly, the right timing also improves your chances of lead conversion.
3. Keep your messages succinct, personalized, and professional: Respect your customer’s time and keep your messages straightforward, succinct, and professional. Refrain from using excessive punctuation, capital letters, or hyperbolic statements.

Personalization helps you collect more details about your customers throughout the SMS opt-in process. Details such as their industry, budget, and location come in handy in the future.

4. Track engagement and conversion rates: Have a robust analytical and reporting process in place and make optimum use of your tools. Experimenting with different CTA (call-to-action) strategies, messaging times, and SMS alert campaigns while drilling down into your results in tandem based on specific customer segments and periods allows you to further refine your strategy.

The Bottom Line

SMS alerts have been a game-changer in business communication since the year dot. Their effectiveness is unquestionable due to unmatched open rates and instant reach and they are a no-brainer for businesses looking to streamline their operations, increase customer satisfaction, and boost sales. To maximize the benefits of text alerts, businesses must implement the right practices, ensure compliance, and hire a reliable service provider like Devotel.