Email marketing and direct mail is a thing of the past when it comes to lawn care. Service providers in the lawn care business no longer have to suffer the 1% conversion rate of direct mail marketing or 15% open rate of email campaigns.

With SMS marketing tools, and now SMS subscription services, landscape companies can avoid the inconvenience of unopened emails and the drain of endless mailers by benefitting from text open rates of 99%. Offering text message membership programs to lawn care clients allows lawn companies to grow client relationships, efficiently manage appointments, and convert less popular services during off-seasons.

In this guide, we’ll cover everything your lawn business should consider when building a text message subscription product and what to look for in an creating a Subscription service of SMS provider. 

Step 1: Consider Key Features Your Business Needs From a Text Membership Provider

With the increasing number of tools at our disposal to make life more convenient, busy individuals are opting for the path of least resistance in most things they do. Eighty-five percent of today’s consumers prefer texting to other methods of communication, making client management via text message a beneficial investment for business and consumers. 

To actively keep clients engaged with your lawn care business, an SMS membership product is the way to meet the needs of your clients and increase your sales without a ton of extra effort. However, not all text message providers are created equal and not all will allow for membership product creation.

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Key Features to Look for in a SMS Membership Provider:

• Customizable Product Offerings
• Intuitive Software Interface
• Two-Way Texting Capability
• Cost Per Text Message Sent 
• SMS Provider Customer Service
• Autonomy Over Subscription Product Pricing
• Number of Text Products & Subscribers Allowed on Plan
• Simple Payment Collection & Management

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Step 2: Decide If You Will Send Maintenance Appointment Updates via Text Message

Missed appointments, late arrivals, and unfamiliar field workers mark some of the highest complaints made by lawn care customers. With a text message subscription product, you can send appointment reminders, confirmations, arrival time updates, and even digital introductions to your law crews. 

With the right SMS subscription service and membership provider, ou should be able to easily implement these little customer service touches that will go a long way in helping your company stand out in the groundskeeping industry. Should you decide to use mobile subscriptions for customer service, your clients are likely to be happier, more at ease, and prepared for your arrival.

Step 3: Brainstorm Valuable Industry-Related Content Ideas That Would Benefit Your Clients

To be more effective than email marketing, you’ll want to provide consistent value to your clients with your text message subscription product. Consider educational content that is beneficial to your client and doesn’t necessarily sell them on a service. 

For instance, nearly 31% of Americans admit they’re unsure of how often to water their lawn. As an industry expert, lawn care companies can provide simple, educational content to their customers via text message to increase their company utility and improve the subscriber experience. 

Step 4: Plan & Offer Lawn Care Promotions via SMS to Increase Revenue During Slow Seasons

Dwindling cash flow is a main contributor to landscape business failure as many new businesses often don’t fully account for the off seasons and lessened revenue of groundskeeping. To help account for the slower, colder months, landscaping companies should promote less-common services to their customers via their subscription text product. 

As the weather gets colder and the grass fails to grow, aim to solve problems related to the weather or the season—such as snow shoveling or hanging Christmas lights—and offer these services to your current subscribing customers. Not only will your business make it through the winter, but you’ll still be fresh in your client’s mind come Spring. 

Step 5: Consider Building a Text Membership Loyalty Program for VIP Lawn Clients

Another way to maximize your ROI with an create SMS subscription service to build a loyalty program for dedicated customers. This can look however you’d like it to, but consider rewarding customers for bundling services, signing contracts, or referring your service to a friend. 

In a case study by Garden Center Magazine, a landscape company with a successful loyalty program found that their engaged and loyal customers spent nearly eighty percent more money with the business than customers that did not actively partake in the loyalty program. By implementing a loyalty program into your text subscription service, customers will feel pleased and encouraged to opt for your promotional services when they know it will be rewarded. 

Step 6: Ensure Your Text Provider Offers Payment Collection & Two-Way Communication

As mentioned above, subscription payment collection and two-way communication are key features of a text messaging service. The point of the membership is to make client relations and engagement easier and more effective. If you or an office administrator has to spend time accounting for and collecting subscription payments, the investment in the service begins to cost more. 

The same goes for texting. If a client receives a text message and needs to communicate about one thing or another, a company employee will need to be able to speak with the customer quickly and easily. This level of communication will enhance your lawn care company’s customer service in a time when 60% of landscape companies don’t even pick up the phone when called. 

Step 7: Start Building Mobile Subscriptions with SubFlow Today—for Free!

Once you’ve outlined your text membership model approach, it’s time to start building your first product! SubFlow is the leading text message best membership platforms provider due to their ability to conform to your business. 

With SubFlow, lawn care businesses can build as many subscription products as they would like with no limit on subscribers and no initial cost investment. For all revenue gathered through SubFlow’s efforts, SubFlow will take six percent of revenue, only after your mobile product is up and running. 

Never worry about collecting membership payment, missing a client reply, or sending unwelcomed text messages—this is all managed by SubFlow and agreed upon when your client opts for the service. With a management dashboard and a dedicated account manager, SubFlow makes building authentic client relationships straightforward and successful. Schedule a demo with a SubFlow rep today to get started on a path of creative entrepreneurship and new age marketing!