Enhance Your Small Business Marketing with SMS Solutions
As a small business owner, you know how challenging it can be to manage all aspects of your business. Often, that means you’re not only the customer service representative but also the head of marketing and the chief technology officer, among many others.
One of the best ways to streamline your business is to utilize SMS text marketing. SMS texts can be used to help improve customer service, increase sales, and streamline operations.
How SMS is Transforming Small Business Communication
Small business owners like you work hard every day to build your business, making personal connections with many customers. In the same way that your customers value these personalized interactions, SMS provides a personalized messaging experience. Because most customers carry their phones on them and check them frequently, SMS texts have higher open rates than traditional phone calls or email marketing.
Easy to Use and Implement
With SMS text messages, you’re delivering your message right to the palm of customers’ hands, and Sakari’s easy-to-use platform helps you get started quickly. Our interface doesn’t require any technical experience, and you can set up keywords and start collecting customer opt-ins within minutes. Plus, click-to-join makes it easy for customers to opt-in to receive your company’s texts.
Increase Customer Engagement with Personalization
Small businesses excel at providing personalization, and SMS marketing allows you to text your customers with that same level of personalization. Utilizing customer data like name, past purchases, appointment histories, or birthdays, you can create personalized SMS messages that drive better engagement with your customers.
Efficiently Send Important Updates
SMS messages make it easy to send relevant messages to a broad group of people. Whether it’s a change to business hours, alerts about service, product restock notifications or time-sensitive promotions, SMS provides a trusted way to ensure customers see messages quickly.
Our inbound lead-to-sales opportunity conversation rate has improved by 174%... Our sales representatives use it for initial customer outreach, updates, and general communication. We also use it with HubSpot, which allows us to automate lead nurturing, reminds, and promotions.
Kaemon Maggard
Lead Application Analyst, Appsketiers
SMS Helps Customers Find and Support Your Small Business
SMS can help small businesses reach new customers while building deeper relationships with current customers. Small businesses can use SMS for:
- Appointment Reminders: No-shows can be detrimental to your business, but automated SMS texts can help you confirm customer appointments and reduce no-shows.
- Special Offers and Discounts: SMS allows businesses to offer customers exclusive deals or discounts they can only get by subscribing to a text list.
- Service or Product Launch Updates: Tell customers about new offerings and encourage them to try the new product or service with a limited-time offer.
- Follow-Up Surveys: Get relevant and timely feedback from customers while automating the process to ask for reviews.
- Booking Confirmations and Event RSVPs: Let customers know you’ve received their appointment booking or RSVP for an event.
SMS Solutions Streamline Small Business Operations
SMS texting can help your small business reach customers, but it can also help you streamline business operations. Small businesses can use SMS messaging for:
- Shift Scheduling and Employee Notifications: Improve the shift scheduling process and quickly send important and relevant messages to your entire staff.
- Inventory Alerts and Restock Notifications: Integrate your inventory system to get SMS texts when you’re running low or when it’s time to restock popular items.
- Event Coordination and Planning:
Use SMS texts to communicate with your staff and make sure every aspect of your event is covered. - Payment and Billing Reminders: SMS can provide a way to nudge customers that they still need to pay without sounding overbearing. Plus, when integrated with a payment processing tool, these texts can help customers pay right from their mobile devices.
- Emergency Response and Critical Updates: Send quick notifications in emergency situations, alerting staff of threats and critical emergency response.
Key SMS Features for Small Businesses
Landline Enablement
Even when customers could call a landline, some prefer texting. Texting a customer from your landline can be a valuable tool for ensuring you’re reaching them how they want to be reached.
Appointment Reminders
Reduce appointment no-show incidents by utilizing SMS reminders. These reminders allow customers of the appointment date and time, and usually include a “Reply YES to confirm” message.
Scheduled Messages
Scheduling messages can be a great feature for small business owners like you who have a lot to manage. Automation can help you send relevant messages at the right time to customers while eliminating the tedious nature of manually texting each customer.
Two-Way Messaging
Two-way messaging is a way to talk with customers and answer their questions quickly. This functionality can help small businesses maintain a constant form of communication with customers and quickly resolve questions or issues.
Integration with Existing Systems
Sakari’s robust integration tools make it easy to streamline all aspects of your business, including popular business tools such as HubSpot, Google Sheets, Mailchimp, and more.
Mass Texting
Mass texting gives you the ability to reach many different subscriber lists all at once. From new product launches to special offers and discounts, mass texting lets you reach large audiences quickly.
“SMS is truly the simplest way to get participation from a busy client type.
Sakari has allowed us a highly scalable, engaging, and powerful way to connect with customers, store structured data, and bring transparency across teams. We've never been closer to our clients!”
Paul Wurth
Head of Sales, RenoRun Inc.
SMS for Small Business FAQs
Why is SMS marketing effective for small businesses?
SMS marketing can be an effective tool for small businesses because of its immediacy and flexibility. SMS texts get delivered right to your customer’s hands, and they’re more likely to open text messages than other types of marketing messages. In addition, SMS can be used in various ways, including customer loyalty, product help, customer service, exclusive offers, streamlining business processes, and more.
How do I ensure compliance with SMS marketing regulations?
Working with an established SMS marketing software like Sakari is one of the best ways to ensure compliance with SMS marketing regulations. Sakari helps ensure your texts are only being sent to those who have opted in and that you’re following TCPA regulations.
Can small businesses use SMS to improve customer service?
Yes, small businesses can put SMS messages to work to improve customer service. Responsiveness is a key component of customer service, and automating responses makes it easy to ensure customers get the help they need. Whether it’s an automated response that shares business hours and location or a text message that says when a customer can expect to receive a text back, SMS can greatly enhance the customer experience.
What’s the best way to build an SMS marketing list?
Building an SMS marketing list from scratch may seem overwhelming, but Sakari can help with every step of the way. Learn the best ways to build a SMS list.
How can I integrate SMS with my existing email marketing platform?
Sakari’s API makes it easy to integrate SMS marketing into your existing email marketing or CRM platforms.
What are the costs associated with SMS marketing?
At Sakari, we take pride in offering flexible pricing plans to meet the needs of businesses of all sizes. Our plans have no commitment, no setup fees, and plans start at just $25 per month. Visit our pricing page to learn more about all our pricing options.
Goodbye isolated communications.
Hello Sakari.
Where every message meets its perfect match, right when it matters most.
Goodbye isolated communications.
Hello Sakari.
Where every message meets its perfect match, right when it matters most.