Can Integrating Text Messaging (SMS) into your Sales Process your sales by 328%?

A recent study by Velocify suggests that including text messaging in the sales process can increase sales by 328%.

Mobile phones and by design text messaging has become so much a large part of our daily lives they are literally indispensable. Consider the latest statistics from Pew Internet Research:

• 91% of American adults have a cell phone. (5/2013)
• 56% of American adults have a smartphone. (5/2013)
• 87% of US smartphone owners regularly send and receive texts on their devices (Harris Interactive 1/3/2013).
• US consumer sent over 2.3 TRILLION text messages in 2011. (CTIA 5/17/2012)
• 67% of cell owners find themselves checking their phone for messages, alerts, or calls — even when they don’t notice their phone ringing or vibrating. (4/2012)

So how can this help your business? It's clear your customers’ attention is focused on their phones. If you can find a way to have a presence on your prospects and customers' phones, at the very least your phone number, email addressor website, you have a much better chance of getting their attention.

• “30% [of survey respondents] have used their phone to “Decide whether to visit a business” in the past 30 days. (Pew Internet 5/2012)

Let’s just text them! ~ Not so fast…While it’s obvious from the statistics above that texting could help engage prospects, marketers would be well advised to consider how to avoid being viewed as a spammer.

• 69% of those [mobile phone users] who are texters say they get unwanted spam or text messages. Of those texters, 25% face problems with spam/unwanted texts at least weekly. (Pew Internet 5/2012)

The Velocify study cited above actually suggests that texting without permission can hurt your sales conversions.  So just as Permission Marketing is the rule of thumb for email marketing, your prospects and customers CAN BE PERSUADED to give you permission to text them and in the process you’ll get to establish a presence on their phone.

Tokens of Appreciation

What would persuade a prospect or customer to allow you to text them?Offering a small token of appreciation (less than $2) or gift sent via text is the perfect way to get permission to text a prospect. For example, at txtMovies, we enable businesses to text a Redbox(tm) Movie Rental Code good for 1-Day rental of a DVD or Blu-ray disc. 

Redbox(tm) is the leader in movie rentals having rented over 3 Billion DVDs and Blu-ray discs via 34,500+ locations nationwide.  As a bonus, a custom message and business contact information can also be sent allowing you to establish your presence on the prospect’s phone.

There are a number of common business activities where using a text message incentive/reward could make a huge difference in prospect/customer engagement. Consider the following use cases:

• Converting Phone Inquiries to In Store Visits – A salesperson trying to convince a phone prospect to come into your business could tell the prospect he/she will text directions to your store with a map, the salespersons contact information and a Redbox Movie Rental Code as an incentive if they agree on the phone to come in for a visit.
• Converting Visits to Test Drives – A car salesperson could offer a Movie Rental Code as an incentive to take a specific car for a drive.
• Post Purchase Follow Up – A business could reward a customer with a Movie Rental Code for taking making a purchase.
• Service Department Completion – A service department could use texting to notify a customer that their product is ready for pick up and deliver a Movie Rental Code as a token of appreciation for their business.
• Customer Appreciation - Businesses could send out a the Movie Rental Code as a 'Thank You gift' as part of a Customer Appreciation program.
• Customer Birthdays - Everyone loves receiving presents on their birthdays. Delivering a Movie Rental Code on your customer's birthday reminds them how much you care about them.
• Volunteer Gifts - Businesses and not for profits that rely upon volunteers can easily and cost effectively acknowledge a volunteers efforts.
• Customer Satisfaction - When doctors and other healthcare providers make patients wait too long for their appointment, they use txtMovies as a simple strategy to overcome patient wait times.
• Survey Incentives - Increase your customer satisfaction survey response rates.

These are just a few of the innovative ways to incorporate a permission based texting program into your business. You are welcome to try a demonstration of how easily texting could be incorporated into your business by clicking here.

With over 80% of cell phone users texting (Pew Research Center 11/2012), now is the perfect time for your business to incorporate texting as a sales tool.

About txtMovies

txtMovies enables businesses to deliver customer appreciation via cost effective, easy to use tools for businesses and salespeople. In addition to texting Movie Rental Codes, we offer custom texting solutions. Our customers come from a variety of industries including healthcare, automobile, financial services, retail, associations and not for profits. For more information please visit www.txtMovies.com.

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