Let’s face it: competition is getting stiffer than ever. Every business wants to gain the lion’s share of the available market share in its sector. This scramble has led marketers to get creative with their marketing strategies and develop innovative way to interact with or engage their customers, and the most popular platform remains the bulk SMS platform due to its ease and speed amongst others.
Here are 5 innovative ways businesses are using bulk SMS to enhance their customer service and boost loyalty to their brand today:
- EVENT NOTIFICATION
Man is curious by nature: tell a child not to open a covered jar and that becomes his/her life’s ambition. This inherent human nature can be subtly but effectivelyexploited using event notification bulk SMS. With eye-popping open and read rates, a great percentage of your recipients are sure to read the message almost immediately, and that’s where human nature takes over.
So long as yourtext message is well worded, maybe with an incentive or two, most people would check out your event, even if it’s just to satisfy their curiosity. Shrewd businesses have noticed and have been reaping from this practice.
- TWO-FACTOR AUTHENTICATION AND TRANSACTION NOTIFICATION
Two-factor authentication simply refers to the new practice by most financial institutions of sending a code via SMS to your phone to enable you verify that you are really the one trying to complete a transaction in your name.
This means of authentication has enhanced the security of online transactions, and security is something we can never have too much of, especially when it comes to our finances.
Also, transaction notification after every successful transaction is a noteworthy, creative use of bulk SMS – part of the checks put in place to ensure customers are kept in the loop of activities on their accounts.
Bulk SMS makes these possible, and woe betide any financial institution or payment processor whose innovation hasn’t evolved to this level.
- INSTANT POLLING/FEEDBACKS
Business owners do send out bulk SMS to their clients containing a link through which they can access a short questionnaire, so as to gather opinion or obtain feedback. Most people do oblige because, besides the fact that any rational customer would love to help the business owner serve him/her better, you have reached out via their most preferred channel. This is a great and innovative way to engage one’s customers through bulk SMS.
- OUTREACHES
Many NGOs and humanitarian bodies are taking advantage of bulk SMS to obtain assistance/donations from concerned individuals with just a single, well worded text: water, food, blood, money, etc.
Also, texts are also sent each time one’s donation has been used to save someone, for example blood donation, giving the donator a sense of fulfillment and strengthening in him/her the will to keep supporting that particular cause in whichever way he/she can.
- REMINDERS, INCLUDING OPTIMIZATION OF EMAIL CAMPAIGNS
A thoughtful SMS reminder concerning an important appointment, a pending transaction or a subscription renewal goes a long way to help customers stay organized. Businesses have also been leveraging on the power of bulk SMS to optimize their email marketing campaigns by notifying or reminding customers on why the emailthey just received is a must-read, with stellar response rates.
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