Whether you’re a nutritionist, a personal trainer, a tutor, a church, or an influencer, you can grow your audience and increase your engagement with some kind of SMS marketing program. There’s not really a “wrong” way to begin to engage your audience with text based membership marketing, but the campaigns should make sense for the people within your community. 

Depending on the size and the nature of your audience, you can use text-based marketing in a number of ways. Creativity pays here! With businesses around the world trying to gain space in the direct eyes of their audience, your goal as a business owner should be to stand out amongst the crowds of spam that take over our inboxes. 

The best way to avoid becoming spam, is to engage your audience with a text based membership program that will change your communication with your audience from a marketing campaign to an agreed upon relationship where text messages are expected and anticipated. 

Throughout the course of this article, we’ll introduce you to 6 creative ways you can grow your audience, and actionably increase your revenue, through the means of text message membership program for your clients. 

Idea #1— Offer Premium Content When Your Audience Joins Your Text Based Membership Program

The first way to get your audience interested in a text membership program is to offer exclusive content when they sign up for the program. Depending on the nature of your business, you can offer things like “Weekly Meal Plans” or “Habits to Incorporate Each Week” for a small subscription fee. If operated correctly, you can create a passive income stream that actually allows you to help your clients on a deeper level with SMS based memberships. 

Imagine that you’re a freelancer that offers Spanish tutoring to your client base. In this business, you likely spend the majority of your time in a client-facing role, without the ability to help your clients beyond this point. If you were to create a text based membership program, you could charge a small subscription for weekly worksheets or links to created content that would maximize the users learning experience. By signing up for this membership, your clients will understand that they should be receiving texts from you and you can offer more services to your clients, without taking up a considerable amount of your time.

Idea #2— Create a Text-Based Loyalty Program 

If your business offers services or products with discounts on a regular basis, you might benefit from creating a loyalty program that can be joined for a small subscription. With this method, your clients or audience knows that they will be rewarded with exclusive discounts to your products or services. Loyalty programs have long been proven as an effective method for increasing consumer purchases and it has even been surveyed that more than 60% of the younger generations (GenZ & Millennials) are not interested in engaging with a brand without a loyalty program. 

Idea #3— Offer Availability to Appointments & Private Events

Another way to maximize your offerings with a subscription text program is to give your customers first access to premium features within your business. If you have a long waiting list or want to offer your current clientele access to exclusive events, you can manage both of these things with a text based membership. 

With this approach, clients would receive a text message when an appointment became available and be able to fill that spot in a moment's notice, as text messages have a 99% open rate. This can also decrease revenue loss from missed appointments and increase event turnout. 

Idea #4— Run Contests to Increase Customer Engagement

Running contests with a text based subscription is a simple way to keep your customers interested in your brand. Contests have a conversion rate of 34%, making them an effective method of promotion for your business or service. Combine that conversion rate with the text message open rate and you have yourself a potentially very lucrative subscription program. 

Idea #5— Increase Customer Interaction Across All Platforms

As a business owner, you likely already understand the importance of increasing your following across all of your digital channels, and may even more so understand just how difficult of a task this can be. In 2020, the number of businesses that offered a multi-channel experience increased by 80%, highlighting the trend and importance of servicing your audience across multiple platforms. 

Text message subscription services offer business owners another means of promoting their social media platforms or driving customers to their website. Throughout the creation of your subscription program, try to involve your web presence in a way that feels authentic and gives your subscribers reason to explore your other channels by using text based membership platform. 

Idea #6— Maximize the Client Experience with SMS Program Features 

With a text subscription program, you can send follow up texts to your clients, offer alerts on the status of their order or appointment, and send reminders about upcoming events. These automations work together to improve the infrastructure of your business, which should benefit the customer experience as well. 86% of customers report that they would pay more for a product or service if the customer experience was superior. 

An effective and long-standing way to analyze your business and monitor how you can improve has been through the use of customer surveys, which can also be employed through your text based membership program. Collecting data from customers with SMS will be the best way to alter and adjust your practices so you’re providing the best customer experience possible.