The past months had been tough for both individuals and businesses alike. The pandemic has put everything on hold, and the future remains uncertain. Fortunately, we remain resilient and adaptable in times of adversities. After the COVID-19 lockdown, businesses are reopening their doors and utilizing text marketing to help promote their business and bring back customers.
As business owners, your first major concern now is how to effectively reconnect with your customers. This would require you to clearly communicate your plans to them, including updates on opening hours, products available, and the new safety and health protocol in place as precaution against COVID.
One efficient and practical way to do that is to use text messaging service for business. With over 3.5 billion mobile phone users in the world, taking advantage of text messaging platforms would help you connect to your customers amid the pandemic.
With that, here’s how you can use text marketing to promote your business’ reopening after the COVID lockdown.
1. Reach out to your customers personally and directly
Nowadays, almost everyone is with their mobile devices all the time. Whether at home or outside, these devices are safely tucked inside our pockets. This makes it the most accessible and convenient communication device for anyone. And with the prevalence of smartphones, people have become more reliant on their mobile devices than ever especially during the pandemic where physical and social gathering are still restricted.
Thus, using SMS marketing services means you can reach out to your customers personally and directly. Your plans on re-opening would immediately reach them with or without the internet. No more logins, loading times, and searching for Wi-Fi connections. Just hit send and your customers will instantly be notified by their mobile devices.
2. Show empathy and concern with your messages
During these tough times, a little show of empathy can get you a long way. This helps build trust between you, your customers, and employees. Upon seeing how much you care about their health and safety, everyone will feel safe enough to start going back to your establishments.
Compose a unified and timely message and send them through various text marketing platforms to let your customers know about your reopening plans after the Covid-19 lockdown. Likewise, include your employees and staff as well to boost their confidence and morale. Through this, you will be able to encourage both your customers and employees to return with the knowledge that they are protected when they do so.
3. Provide continuous updates to your customers
Of course, sending one empathic message won’t be enough to start encouraging your customers to come back. The key is an open and continuous communication line between you and them. Let them know about the details of your reopening plans and send updates regularly.
Most importantly, prepare yourself from possible questions from your customers. Reply to their queries and reassure them of possible concerns. Be transparent and timely about changes in your operations so that your customers are properly informed about these things. You can take advantage of mass texting to reach out to all your customers at one time.
4. Increase your open rates compared to emails
With 65% of people constantly checking their phones over 160 times a day, SMS marketing increases your open rates compared to emails. Unlike email marketing, text messages can easily be read without the hassle of connecting to the internet and logging in to your account. They simply have to whip out their phones and look at the screen to start reading.
Likewise, it has lesser chances of being overlooked by your customers. This is because SMS has no spam folders to speak of. It will be treated just like any other messages without the dangers of getting buried in your customers’ inbox. This makes it harder for them to ignore your messages.
5. Integrate with other types of marketing
The value of text marketing is that it can easily be incorporated with your current marketing strategies. With its ability to quickly connect with your customers, you can use it to promote your social media pages, websites, and products.
Picking up on SMS marketing is quick and painless thanks to the various business SMS platforms. This makes it easier for you to send mass messages in seconds while retaining its personal touch. It can also help streamline customer engagement and manage your contact lists.
Go spread the word
With cities slowly recovering from the devastating effects of COVID-19, it’s time for your business to start re-opening your doors and reconnecting with your customers, and what better way to do that than through text marketing.
Based on the mobile marketing software analysis by FinancesOnline, mobile commerce or m-commerce trends are steadily rising as new devices, technologies, and applications are innovating mobile services. This paves the way for more opportunities to connect to your customers and improve your marketing strategies after the COVID lockdown.If you want to take advantage of what text marketing has to offer, you can check out the features of TextP2P.