Telemarketing Software Featured Article

Meeting your customers where they are is important to ensure business success. And, increasingly, customers are on their mobile phones and prefer to communicate by texting. That said, VanillaSoft notes in a recent blog and video, businesses may want to consider using texting to do prospecting. But, the company also notes, they need to be careful in how they approach this medium in those efforts.

In addition to texting being a preferred channel for many customers, including the large and important millennial generation and those that follow, texting is also attractive given the fast and high open rates of messages in this medium, notes Josiane Feigon, president of TeleSmart Communications, in her VanillaSoft blog. Research indicates that text messages are commonly read within the first five seconds of being received, she says.

However, as we all know, being contacted by businesses via any medium can be considered an intrusion by customers and prospects.

To help businesses best navigate reaching out via text, Feigon offers some best practices. She suggests immediately identifying yourself, paying attention to tone, using proper grammar and spelling, avoiding abbreviations such as LOL and OMG, and using links sparingly and with caution.

She also offers examples of where text messages to customers and prospects are appropriate. That includes leveraging texts to confirm or offer reminders about appointments. Thanking customers and prospects for something – like their business or a recent meeting – and following up with them, is another such example. Feigon says that texting can also be an ideal way for a business to keep in touch with customers and partners with which it has existing relationships.

“As people get numb to social and email, messaging is still the unpolluted medium,” Matt Mazzeo, a Lowercase Capital managing director, told Ad Age last year. “It hasn't yet been diluted by massive spammy marketing channels.”