Text messaging is the quickest and most effective way to reach your clients, with 95% of text messages being opened within 3 minutes of receipt. While we believe that SMS is the best way to communicate with your clients or followers, we also believe that with great power comes great responsibility.  

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In order to effectively implement an SMS membership or subscription with your audience, companies and individuals should be careful to respect the wants and needs of the subscribing audience members. SMS overload, whether in frequency or irrelevant content, can be damaging to the consumer-business relationship and is considered spam.

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As you consider the 10 possibilities below and how they can elevate your current business, keep the notion of SMS best practices in the front of your mind: The ultimate goal is never to spam your audience via text. (Stay Tuned—We’ll discuss a spam solution at the end of this article)

Practice 1 - Offer Improved Customer Support with Direct Communication

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A 2021 study found that US customers are 5X more likely to engage via text message than they are by phone and that over half of consumers actually prefer texting to other forms of communication.

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By deploying an SMS service that allows for 1:1 customer conversations, businesses and providers can more effectively learn of customer problems, understand their grievances, and offer quick resolutions to increase customer retention. As an added bonus, you can now monetize all your time being spent on customer service.

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Practice 2 - Increase Engagement by Sending SMS Service Reminders

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When it comes to sending client appointments, billing, or progress reminders, SMS notifications are a no-brainer. Due to the efficacy of text messages in reaching the intended recipient in the least amount of time, important SMS reminders can prevent customer oversight and lost business resources.

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Practice 3 - Deliver Order Updates and Product Information by Text

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In data collected by Allies Computing, it was found that 84% of consumers want to know their expected delivery slot when purchasing products online. Whether awaiting a product's arrival or expecting content during a program, consumers like to be informed of the status of their purchase.

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Delivering order or service updates by SMS can improve your client satisfaction and open the door for a stronger client relationship.

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‍Practice 4 - Increase Conversions with SMS Promotional Notifications

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Across many industry reports, SMS conversion rates average from 22%-27%—a far jump from the 2%-5% conversion rate that is considered good for emails.

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By strategically and considerately deploying sales notifications and promotional reminders to your subscribed SMS base, you can take advantage of the high SMS conversion rate and increase revenue in your business.

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Practice 5 - Improve Client Success Rates with Text Check Ins and Surveys

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If you’re in the service industry, text messaging can be a great way to improve your client satisfaction and success rates. Text message services that allow for direct messaging can be creatively used for client check ins or journaling progress updates.

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If client check-ins are not necessary for your business, deploying client surveys and feedback requests via SMS can be an effective way to better understand the needs of your customer base.

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Practice 6 - Offer Exclusive Contests via SMS to Strengthen Your Customer Base

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Exclusive content and VIP programs have been used to increase customer loyalty for decades. SMS subscriptions that provide access to gated or more premium is a simple avenue to increase engagement in these programs and drive continued conversions.

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Practice 7 - Increase Your Value to Client by Deploying SMS Educational Content

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The consumer relationship can be significantly improved by increasing the educational value you provide to your customer base. Using text message subscriptions to send relevant and informative content can help you stand out in your industry, increase customer engagement, and drive sales.

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Not to mention engaging in educational content more frequently is known to increase the adoption and comprehension of said knowledge.

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Practice 8 - Help Your Audience Navigate Your Digital Offering by Sending Texts that Link Out to Other Content Forms

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The beauty of implementing SMS in your business lies in its ability to connect your client to your other content forms. Whether you have an ecommerce website, communicate with your audience via IG Lives, or upload long-form content to your YouTube channel, creating a text message subscription for content navigation is a must.

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It’s important to use an SMS service provider that allows for linking out to any type of content. Once that’s covered, use SMS to direct your base to whatever content you need to by sending a brief broadcast text and a link.

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Practice 9 - Keep Your Customers Informed with Community or Company Updates

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If your audience is interested in receiving community or internal company updates, an SMS subscription can easily be created to send this content. Beware—This is a mark many company’s miss that can easily take their content from “informative” to “spammy.” Ensure that this content is relevant, interesting, and gives more to your clients than it makes in demands or calls to action.

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Practice 10 - Work Smarter Not Harder with SMS Group Engagement

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If you’re looking to save time, SMS broadcast memberships are the key to offering your subscribers a 1:1 communication experience, but at a scale and with ease.

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With Subflow, your text messages can be broadcasted to a segment of your contacts list with little effort or stress and providers can engage more clients in less time.

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Subflow's Web-Based Platform is the Best Choice for Optimizing Your SMS

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With so many options out there, it can be overwhelming to choose the right SMS provider—we get it.

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That’s why Subflow created an easy-to-use and quick-to-begin SMS platform to improve the consumer-business relationship. Features like 1:1 messaging, SMS broadcasts, multiple product subscriptions, and payment collection make Subflow the leading text message solution for businesses and individuals.

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By creating SMS subscriptions with Subflow, businesses can easily foster a more engaging direct connection with their audience while implementing one or all of the strategies above. Subflow allows users to create various subscription products, giving your client base the freedom to choose from any of the SMS content programs you offer and limiting the deployment of unrelated content.

To better visualize how Subflow can increase your customer operations, watch this short video, request a demo, or sign up and get started today!