Company Blog
Take Texting Out of the Box
by webmaster — April 7, 2014
When you think about a texting program, what does it mean to you? The traditional approach to texting is to send out an email blast to your customers, and send out the same message via text (compressed to fit the character limitations, of course). This approach can work, to an extent, but remember texting and email provide very different channels of communication. Using the abbreviated structure of texts to do work better served by longer-form formats like email is akin to drinking a Big Gulp through a coffee straw.
The place where texts excel over email is in the speed and immediacy of their delivery. Email is a form of communication that is much more passive than texts; a sent email must wait in an inbox for the customer to go and open it, but a text is delivered almost immediately and appears instantly on screen. What this means for a retailer is that it gives a superior method to deliver certain types of messages, which in turn creates the opportunity for some out-of-the-box thinking about ways to use texting programs to communicate with your customers to build loyalty. Here are some examples of alternate ways to implement texting programs.
Offer a free item with additional purchase
Marketplace Foods uses a program close to “traditional” texting. Their implementations is to send out a weekly text with a free item offer included with any purchase of $20 or more. The difference in this case is that the specials come to a group that has signed up specifically to receive these offers, which are delivered separately from the regular weekly ad eblasts and other regular communications that those on the main email recipient list receive. This is a great way to maintain regular contact with the customer, while giving them a valuable incentive to sign up for the program and return to the store regularly.
Inform customers of time-sensitive offers
Another client, Jensen’s Foods, has recently implemented a texting program to promote their wine and craft beer offerings. This allows them to immediately inform their interested customers when products they are interested in have arrived in store. As these are sometimes products in very limited supply, being able to quickly inform their enthusiasts about these new arrivals and give them first crack at them is a great way to forge new bonds and strengthen loyalty.
Provide useful information to customers quickly
As a final example, and one of the more unique implementations of a texting program we have seen, Town & Country Market has recently begun a major renovation project on one of their stores. This is going to create situations of limited store and parking availability that can change on a daily basis. This client already has a strong relationship with loyal customers, so in this case they are using a texting program to help maintain that loyalty by making their customers’ visits to the store as convenient as possible.
The best way to implement a texting program for your customers is to understand their needs and where they might benefit from being able to receive messages of a more immediate nature, and as you can see by these examples, there are ways to do this that you may not have considered before. As you seek to to provide timely and useful solutions to your customers, they will recognize your effort and appreciate it.
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