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It isn’t news that people rely on their cellphones. But if you need proof, just look at research from Pew. Over 95% of Americans own a cellphone. Not only that but 43% of adults live in a household without a landline. Here’s where things get interesting—Pew also surveyed 2,188 smartphone owners and found that text messaging is the most widely used feature.
Many of us prefer to chat with our family and friends using SMS as opposed to emails and calls. Increasingly, consumers are coming to expect the same from brands. Leading marketers are beginning to take notice. Back in 2016, Google introduced the ability to include a click-to-message button on search ads. This button auto-populates an SMS message—and it wasn’t a decision that was made lightly. They conducted extensive research first and found that 65% of consumers would consider using messaging to connect with a business to get info about a product or service.
In short, people prefer texts to calls or email. There are countless other stats pointing towards this being true. But here’s one number that may surprise you: only 48% of businesses are equipped to connect with customers through messaging. This means that if your business adopts SMS capabilities, it has the potential to give you a huge competitive advantage.
This still leaves us with a few questions. Why do consumers prefer texts? And how can a business get started with messaging?
To dig deeper into this trend, SourceForge sat down with Sean Griffith. He’s the general manager of SimpleTexting, one of the leading business texting and SMS marketing services in the U.S. and Canada. Their clients include Fortune 500 companies as well as small businesses. Here’s what he had to say about the rise of text messaging.
First off, why do people prefer texts?
That’s a good question. There have been some studies done of U.S. consumers which point to the following: First off, it’s less time consuming and frustrating. Especially if a customer is reaching out for support, they don’t want to listen to elevator music or hover by their phone while they wait for an answer. Plus, there’s no need to have a pen and paper at the ready. Texts let them have a record of the conversation that’s easy to reference.
But texts can be used for more than customer service, right?
That’s right. Texts can be used to have a conversation with one person, or send a mass campaign to thousands of people at once. That’s the beauty of it—the use cases are really endless. If your business ever needs to connect with people, it can probably benefit from texting. We’ve seen people use texts to drive app downloads, send appointment reminders, raise money, recruit job candidates, the list goes on.
We can see texting is good for customers, but what’s in it for businesses?
A lot. Texts can be automated or scheduled in advance, which can save your team time. And they’re inexpensive, which is great if you’re a bootstrapped company or small business.
But the easiest answer here is higher engagement rates. Let’s look at emails, for example. The latest benchmarks show the average open rate across all industries is around 18%. The click-through rate, of course, is even lower. Around 3%. Both of those numbers are rounded up.
Texts, on the other hand, hardly ever go ignored. The average open rate is around 98%.
What about click-through rates? You can send links in texts?
Absolutely! Not only can you send links, but you can track them. Our data shows that the average open rate of links send by text is around 17%. In the end, it comes down to this: if you send out a message by text, your recipient is almost guaranteed to read it. More often than with other channels, they’re going to click on your link too. And if your CTR ix 5x higher than with email, then you’re going to see a much higher return.
While we’re on the topic of links, a big misconception about text marketing is that it doesn’t offer advanced targeted the way email down. With SimpleTexting, you can track links then segment your audience on who did—and didn’t—click. This is great if you want to set up automated drip campaigns which go out to your most and least engaged customers.
Misconceptions. Let’s talk about those. What else do people get wrong about text marketing?
The first is that sending a text to thousands of customers is impersonal. Actually, consumers perceive their text inbox as a highly personal place. It’s normally reserved for just family and friends. Remember, customers need to give you permission before you text them. So if they do, it’s because they really want to hear from you. They don’t see it as intrusive.
Another big misconception is that it’s complicated. If you can write an email, you can write a text. And unlike emails, you don’t need to worry about coming up with a nice design or writing the perfect, click-worthy subject line. As far as sending goes, SimpleTexting makes it super easy to build a subscriber list or import a list of contacts. Then you just need to write the message, schedule it, or click send now.
And finally, it’s worth mentioning that the ROI of texts is easy to measure. If you run an e-commerce store, you can include a unique link in your text campaign just as you would with an email. Or if you have a brick-and-mortar business with a POS, you can generate a coupon code that customers need to present at checkout.
You mentioned e-commerce. What other industries do you see using texting?
It’s hard to find one that isn’t. Hotels, entertainment venues, doctors offices—they all text. Because every person uses messaging, so can every business. Our e-commerce clients, in particular, have reported a huge ROI. We’ve also seen restaurants bring in customers on slow days by sending out a photo of their food with an offer. Internally, many companies use SMS to stay in touch with employees about upcoming events or HR info.
Now, let’s get down to how it actually works. What if a business already has a number? Do they need a new one?
Not necessarily. We have the ability to text-enable 10-digit landlines for 1-on-1 messaging. Calls will go through as normal, and texts will appear in the SimpleTexting inbox. If a business wants to do a combination of 1-on-1 messaging and mass campaigns, they have a few options. With a toll-free number, they can do both. There’s also what’s known as a dedicated short code. This is a 5 to 6-digit long number which can be used to send thousands of messages at once. While it’s a significant investment to provision a dedicated short code, it could be a good fit for some use cases. We’ve done it for many customers.
All of these options allow companies to both send and receive messages, right?
Exactly. Texting is all about building relationships with customers. The 2-way element is essential. We don’t charge for incoming SMS messages at SimpleTexting.
What about if someone wants to integrate with their existing software?
That’s a big reason people choose SimpleTexting. All of our plans come with API access. We’ve seen people create really interesting custom solutions for their digital products. For example, one customer created a futuristic GIF photobooth that sends out images via our API. For people who don’t have a development team, we can also connect to thousands of other apps through Zapier.
What else makes SimpleTexting different?
We listen to our customers, and take feature requests seriously. Over the last nearly 10 years, we’ve built a robust set of features. This includes the ability to send photos, track links, create templates, segment customers, etc.
Customers consistently rave about our support. That’s what really makes us different. We love when customers succeed with texting. We offer live support 7 days per week by chat, phone, and email. When a user needs help, they don’t have to wait a few days for a reply. All they have to do is click the chat bubble and someone is there for them.
Great! Well, how can businesses get started?
We offer a 14-day free trial. It’s completely risk-free with no credit card required! And when a business is ready to upgrade, we have flexible pricing plans which start as low as $25/mo for 500 credits. Each SMS message is one credit, and each MMS (that is, with multimedia like photos) is three. And of course, our expert support is always available to answer any questions.