Group texting is one of the most popular and effective ways to reach out to customers and prospects and market your products or services. This popularity stems from the fact that consumers have shifted toward mobile reliance for daily tasks and purchases.
With integrated payment options on a smartphone, purchases are quick and easy to make without needing a laptop. Moreover, people tend to respond to texts well. In fact, Gartner reported an open text rate of 98% and a response rate of 45% – a massive jump as opposed to email’s open rate being 20% and a response rate of just 6%.
It’s plain to see that text is a marketing channel businesses can no longer ignore. And within that segment, group texting is definitely one to implement if you want to get the most bang for your buck.
What is group texting?
Group texting is the type of text messaging service that allows a user to text a group, i.e., more than one person at once. Group text service is used when you want to send the same message to many people and don’t want to do so manually. With a texting group, you can send one message to a range of recipients at once automatically. Group texting enables you to share information about your products and services as well as generate conversation within the group.
Benefits of Using Group Text Services for Businesses
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When it comes to group texting, there are many benefits you should know of before implementing your first campaign:
1. Efficient Communication
The first benefit of group texting is that it helps you communicate new information quickly and efficiently. We tend to think of promotional content first, but group texts can also help you inform customers of other things, such as your business changing locations or your services being void for a day because of an emergency. No matter what your message, the point is that group text services can help you communicate it with minimal effort in minutes.
2. Cost-Effective
Group texting, when compared to other communicative channels, is quite inexpensive. Considering the great open and response rates you can expect from it, investing in groupme text services is a great idea. It can really up your ROI numbers and help you start engaging with customers on an advanced level. If you want to run your group texting most efficiently, you should look at text marketing software, which will help you manage contact lists and create texts for various customer segments effectively.
3. Real-Time Communication
This is one of the greatest benefits of group texting – it’s real-time! When you think about customer communication channels, not many are in real-time. People tend to open emails hours, sometimes days, after they arrive in their inboxes. Not to mention that half the emails might get lost in a whirlwind of other promotional content. But with group texting, everyone in the group gets notified instantly and can open and engage with the message in seconds. Also, like in any group, once one person starts to engage, more follow, and so the conversation begins. It’s an excellent way for businesses to really get to know their customers.
4. Improved Customer Service
Speaking of getting to know your customers – group texting, therefore, also helps improve customer service. If you think about it, as a customer, you want to hear from a brand you buy from. You also want to have that brand actively interested in how you feel about their products and services. In today’s world, it’s all about customer experience, and texting groups of customers can help you achieve a positive experience. You can use group texts to ask for feedback, send surveys, or receive reviews. This all generates insight for your business and lets customers know that their views, experiences, and opinions matter to you.
5. Increased Productivity
The next benefit of group texting is that it increases productivity within your team. Let’s take the classic example of email – generally when you have a notice, change, or any type of news – you’d email recipients. But today, we get so inundated with emails that an important notice may get lost in the noise. Luckily, group texting solves this issue. Why? Because it is instant. This way, recipients can respond to urgent messages or questions in seconds. The best part of texting groups is having groups for staff and customers. It’s difficult to look back once you have groups set up and running.
6. Improved Collaboration
As we discussed before, group texting allows you to communicate in real time. This means that naturally, your collaboration and engagement levels rise. As a result, your group of recipients is more actively involved with your brand and is interested in sharing knowledge with you and others in that group. Think of group texting as recipients being a part of a community. And we all know how important communities are. It’s a very powerful thing to have team members and customers as part of your company’s community. It all relates to brand loyalty and advocacy, the golden nugget of business.
7. Better Engagement
Texting is known for its quick accessibility – it’s one of the reasons why it’s one of the most effective and popular communication channels out there today. If you think about it – texting is accessible. You don’t even need a smartphone to receive or send a text. All you need is a data bundle. This makes it available to an even wider audience and ensures your customers can be reached effortlessly. People are also more likely to respond to a text because it feels more personal when compared to other communication channels.
8. Data Collection
You can access a text message data collection feature when using group texting services or text marketing software. This feature allows you to collect and store information from your contacts on the platform. Remember, the more data you have about a contact, the smarter your marketing efforts become. With text message data collection, you can personalize messages, segment contact lists, integrate with other apps, and automate your workflow. Premium text message marketing platforms collect data and store it safely and securely for you.
9. Targeted Messaging
As mentioned above, highly curated data means you can develop extremely tailored customer segments for group texting. This leads to niche and targeted messaging. The more targeted the message – the better. As time goes on and more data is collected about a contact, you’ll slowly build an entire profile about that person, their interests, and behaviors. The more tailored we are with our messaging, the better. People appreciate a personalized experience from brands. They want to feel heard and valued, which can lead to true brand loyalty.
10. Versatile
Group text messaging is also versatile because it allows you to do many things using just one communication tool. These marketing activities include communicating to your customers about products or services, communicating news and notices, sending staff updates, sending promotional or exclusive offers, etc. And the best part is that it doesn’t end there. You can combine group texting with other strategies such as email, social media, etc. This helps you stay close to customers and build a valuable relationship with them.
How to Use Group Texting for Your Business?
Step 1: Choose a group texting service
The first step is to select the best group texting service for your business. Generally, your group texting service should allow you to reach large groups of recipients with just a single text in seconds. But the service should also enable you to send alerts, stay in touch with customers quickly, coordinate your team members, and integrate with other communication channels such as email and your website.
Step 2: Create groups
The next step is to create groups. Groups are contact lists of people categorized according to specific criteria. For example, if you own a gym or salon, you can create a group for new customers. This group would have texts sent about your services, additional products, and onboarding information. Your group texting service should allow you to easily import contacts and build lists.
Step 3: Set guidelines
Once you have groups created, it’s important to take the time to set some guidelines. These guidelines should outline what can and cannot be discussed in your group texts. Your guidelines should also outline the rules of conversation. This will help everyone stay on topic and keep the chat safe and secure. You should also be able to send personalized messages to groups, no matter what size that group is.
Step 4: Create templates
Your group text service should allow you to create messages, add media or links, upload or import your contact list, and send text messages. But in addition to this, it should also offer templates. These are great because they help you create, save, and schedule common messages which should be sent out on a particular day or time. Templates are excellent for communicating a refer-a-friend program to recipients or sharing exclusive offers for annual sales.
Step 5: Encourage participation
Once you have your templates ready to go, it’s important that you take group texting to the next level by actively encouraging participation from recipients. You can do this by making group texts enticing and fun. One way to do this is to use visuals and emojis to enhance your message. You could also offer exclusive deals to a group, with the entry mechanism being to reply to group texts.
Step 6: Integrate with other tools
It’s a good idea to check that your group text service integrates with other tools. This will help you, your business, and your team manages communication, bookings, scheduling, time-tracking, and more from one source. This all works towards streamlining your business, ensuring accuracy and increased daily productivity.
Step 7: Use automation
Another way in which you can increase productivity is by using automation when sending group texts. This avoids manual labor and allows your communication strategy to work seamlessly without you having to remember finer details daily. Not to say that details are forgotten – just that they are set up and saved within your text marketing platform. Once automated texts are running, it’ll be difficult to turn back.
Step 8: Track results
Some people may feel that once messages are set up and automated, the job is done. However, you should take a few more steps to ensure that your group text campaigns are optimal. One of those is tracking the results of each group text campaign. You can track results from within your group text platform and ensure that each campaign is measured precisely.
Step 9: Use analytics
At this stage, it’s a good idea to ensure that reporting and analytics is configured in your text marketing platform. Analytics can help you gain insight from your tracked results in the step before this. In order to be efficient, you should pull analytics reports after each campaign or within a set timeframe. This way, results can be analyzed against the previous period to help measure success accurately.
Step 10: Test and iterate
The last step in this guide is to test and iterate your campaign effectiveness. Group texting is a very efficient way of communicating with clients and staff, but it should be tested and adjusted as need be. This way, your overall communication strategy is improved based on the recipient’s reaction and actual results. It’s the best way to make your marketing and communication efforts effective.
FAQs
1. How can I use group text services for marketing?
You can promote your products and services using one text to a group of potential customers with just a few clicks. You can also share exclusive deals and promotional offers using group texts.
2. Are there any privacy concerns with using group text services?
All recipients must opt-in before receiving a group text. This will allow your business to safely and securely communicate with them having their consent. Guidelines should outline any information that must be prohibited in group texts.
3. How can I measure the effectiveness of my group texting campaigns?
Measuring metrics such as click-through rate, open rate, opt-out rate, and conversion rate will help you understand your overall group text campaign performance. You can track this after each campaign to check which campaigns perform the best.
4. How can I ensure that group texting is used appropriately in my business?
Some ethical rules to adhere to include; ensuring every recipient has opted into the group, keeping it professional, sending group texts at appropriate times, and keeping on topic.
So, if group texting has caught your eye, it’s time to start today. To learn more about maximizing your group text service, read this blog post.
If you have questions about group texting services, schedule a demo with our team today.
Get the full story here:
- Maximizing Your Group Text Service: Tips and Tricks
- The Pros and Cons of Using a Group Texting Service