Are you listening to your customers?

 research has shown that over 80% of individuals reach out for their smartphones within the first 15 minutes after waking up. This, they do to check their emails, SMS messages, Facebook or weather. The same researchers have argued that about 79% of those who own smartphones have their phones with them 22 hours per day.

It is this close relationship that people have with their phone that has made SMS marketing one of the most effective ways to grow the company’s brand awareness besides customer engagement. SMS is a unique tool since it can be used with the basic mobile phone and also with the most sophisticated smartphone. SMS marketing has stood the test of time and remains unbeaten even with the recent high-tech marketing channels.

 Customer engagement through 2 way SMS.

Some of the benefits of SMS as an easy way to engage with customers include;

Flexibility: Companies can use mobile marketing by sending either a bunch of SMS messaging to all the customers or they can opt to divide the subscribers’ list into various groups according to their needs and send out personalized content. To enhance the effectiveness of your campaign, you can match SMS with other marketing channels. For instance, you can use SMS to remind customers to check their email that was sent some days ago or to check a promotion sent in social media platform.

SMS is immediate: SMS is one of the most immediate and direct channels of communication. An SMS takes the shortest time to get to your audience. Since most people always have their phones on hand they can be able to access the SMS within the shortest time of delivery.

Direct two-way communication

At Beem, we know that genuine and meaningful communication with customers is very crucial to a successful marketing campaign. However, more often than not we get SMS from unidentified numbers and therefore we are not able to respond. Worse still, sometimes we find ourselves sending a response that does not get to the intended destination. The failure to communicate with customers, has led to not only companies making loses but also to loosing customers’ loyalty. The need therefore to boost customer interaction cannot be over emphasized and this can be achieved by having a two-way, real time dialogue with your customers. SMS marketing is the ideal channel as it provides the opportunity to take advantage of a two-way SMS and this helps you to enter into a direct communication with your customers. The two-way communication helps in the establishment of a good rapport between you and the customers.

Two-way the way to go

Today, the desire to build positive and long lasting relationship between companies and their customers has prompted many companies to adopt a two-way SMS marketing channel. But, why use two-way SMS as a marketing tool?

• SMS is a comfortable method due to its discrete and personal nature and therefore, many people tend to be more comfortable when using SMS as opposed to channels like voice calls. Consequently, it is a good way to convey information to your audience without having to chase them using ill-timed-phone-calls.
• It is important that customers know that you actually care about their perspectives on your business. Through the two-way messaging you can ask the customers questions, get feedback and also you can give recommendations. The one-on-one nature of this channel makes people to feel valued and heard. It brings out the human nature of your business.
• 2-way SMS is a vital tool for conducting surveys to recipients through questions in the form of SMS messages that allows you to gather the opinions of a large sample through an SMS dialogue that resembles a chat flow. Unlike emails and other communication channels, SMS are the most effective tool for gathering customer feedback due to their ability to obtain higher reading and interaction rates than those of other means.
• Using Two-way SMS, it is possible to inform the customers of the available promotions. Two-way SMS allows you to send codes and offers that are fully tailored to the user. By asking the recipient to confirm their willingness to receive these promotions, they are going to be interested in them and are going to be primed to make a purchaser and generate revenue for your business.
• The Two-way SMS cannot not only be used to remind customers, it can also be used to confirm, cancel or move appointments without the usual calls, emails or other forms of communication from the customers. This saves on the operational time for managing appointment changes and the customer can benefit from faster and easier management.

Have you considered the power of SMS Surveys? Find out how simple it can be to integrate with our Two Way SMS Surveys API by giving us a call on +255 659 457 652