The Ultimate Guide to Business Text Messaging: Key Features & Best Practices
Business text messaging is a form of real-time communication involving the exchange of text messages between a business and its customers. Text messaging services offer multiple features that enable companies to send media content, automate responses, and deploy marketing campaigns. In this article, we further explore what business text messaging is and its role in improving your business communication strategy.
Key Features of Business Texting
Text messaging for business goes beyond the typical one-on-one conversation. Text messaging services provide a wealth of features to help companies engage with customers and streamline marketing campaigns. To give you more idea of what business text messaging is, here are some must-have features you should know to maximize your business short messaging service (SMS) strategy.
Multimedia Messaging Service or MMS enables users to send images, videos, and links as well as text messages that go over the 160-character limit. Depending on the carrier, MMS messages can carry up to 3.75 MB of data, allowing them to carry media content.
RingCentral lets you send MMS messages across all your devices. (Source: RingCentral)
For instance, RingCentral, a voice-over-internet protocol (VoIP) phone service, lets you add images to your text message and use up to 1,000 characters. On top of this, you get various VoIP phone features to integrate SMS capabilities as part of your omnichannel strategy.
MMS is widely used in mobile marketing as it adds a visual effect to a plain text message.
With the right strategy, MMS can help you create more engaging content for your target audience that aligns with your branding and drives better campaign results.
Scheduled texts allow you to specify the date and time for sending text messages. This is a useful feature if you want to reach out to your customers overseas in different time zones, ensuring your messages are delivered at the most ideal time for your recipients.
TextMagic lets you send text messages automatically according to the schedule you have set. (Source: TextMagic)
Text messaging services like TextMagic include a built-in calendar that lets you specify the date and time to have your text message delivered. Whether it’s a single or bulk text message, you have the option to send it hours, days, or months in advance. If there’s a sudden change, you can always cancel or edit the text message anytime.
Business SMS offers various automated features that help businesses streamline communication and boost task efficiency. Here are some commonly used SMS automation features and how each works:
Podium’s contact card automation lets you quickly respond to texts from new leads, including a link to save your phone number. (Source: Podium)
- Auto-reply: If you missed a call from a new contact, this feature will send an automatic text response to let the person know you’re unavailable, and you will call them back. Text messaging services like Podium also lets you respond to new text leads.
- Keywords: Triggers an instant SMS response when a customer sends a specific keyword to a short code.
- Recurring texts: This feature automates repetitive messaging tasks by sending texts at the same interval regularly.
- Drip campaigns: Sends a series of pre-scheduled text messages based on a set of time delays or a specific action taken by the subscriber (e.g., opts in to your subscription list)
- Integrations: Integrating your SMS service with a customer relationship management (CRM) system lets you automatically add customer contacts to your text list.
Business texting services offer a variety of marketing tools to help businesses create targeted SMS campaigns. With a text messaging service, you can collect phone numbers and capture opt-ins from customers who want to subscribe to your mailing list.
The text-to-join feature enables leads to join your marketing list by sending a custom keyword to your company’s assigned shortcode. From there, you can segment your contact list into various demographics, such as the city, area code, and date subscribed.
Textedly lets you collect online reviews from customers via text. (Source: Textedly)
SMS providers offer customizable templates for sending promotional deals, abandoned cart alerts, and loyalty program offers. Once you have successfully crafted your message, use the mass texting feature to send your message in bulk to all your subscribers.
SMS marketing solutions have pre-built reports and analytics dashboards for tracking the performance of your SMS campaigns. You can use interactive graphs to explore trends and patterns, create custom reports, and monitor engagement metrics.
Twilio’s Messaging Insights provides real-time analytics to monitor message delivery and engagement. (Source: Twilio)
Twilio, a cloud communications platform, features Messaging Insights, which lets you visualize message data and gain actionable information. Dig deeper into your SMS engagement by breaking down the number of opt-ins and opt-outs and monitoring delivery rates by phone numbers, countries, and carriers.
Phone Numbers Used in Business Texting
When it comes to choosing a phone number for business texting, there are three options to consider: short code, long code, and toll-free. Each phone number has its unique attributes, advantages, and use case. Now you know what business SMS is about, let’s take a look at the type of phone numbers you can use.
Where to Use Business Texting
With around 4.88 billion smartphone users worldwide, SMS proves to be an important communication tool for businesses wanting to effectively connect with their customers. It presents unique opportunities, particularly for marketing, customer service, and sales.
Below, we listed the popular use cases of text messaging and how to leverage their potential to boost your bottom line.
1. Reminders, Updates & Notifications
Business texting is an effective way to send reminders and keep customers informed. For instance, you can instantly text customers if they have an upcoming appointment or remind them if they want to book a schedule. In ecommerce, automated SMS is used to alert customers about the delivery status of their order or if they have an abandoned cart on a shopping website, prompting them to complete their purchase.
2. Sales Conversions
SMS is an invaluable tool in driving sales strategy and simplifying the purchase process for customers. Retailers do this by announcing flash deals like coupons, promos, and discounts via text message. This creates a sense of urgency for customers, encouraging them to make a purchase.
3. Personalized Greetings
Most companies send tailored text greetings to make customers feel acknowledged and valued, helping boost brand loyalty. Personalized messages may vary from birthdays, holidays, and anniversary greetings. Take advantage of any special occasion by sending promotions related to the customer’s interest, which helps increase the likelihood of a purchase or conversion.
4. Marketing Campaigns
SMS marketing is one of the most widely used forms of text messaging in businesses, specifically for generating interest in a product or service. In a 2024 report by SimpleTexting, 91% of business owners and marketers witnessed higher conversation rates in their marketing campaigns that include SMS. Depending on your marketing strategy and target audience, SMS campaigns may include incentives, product releases, event notifications, or welcome messages.
Benefits of Business Texting
Texting for business communication provides a wealth of benefits across industries and business sizes. With its quick and straightforward format, business texting ensures cost-effectiveness, high deliverability, and greater customer engagement. Let’s go into further detail about the advantages of business text messaging.
- Cost-effective: Compared to the cost of running a social media ad or incurring per-minute charges for phone calls, texting typically costs from 1 cent to 5 cents per SMS, making it one of the most cost-effective marketing channels available. A survey reveals that successful text messaging campaigns contribute from 11% to 20% of business revenue, presenting a higher return on investment.
- High open rates: One of the top motivations of businesses for investing in text messaging is the higher open rates (31%) than any other channel. That’s because emails may get lost in spam folders while phone calls might go unanswered. SimpleTexting reports that 81% of customers check their text alerts within five minutes of receipt, increasing the chances of your text message being opened and responded to.
- Increased deliverability: A text message uses a minimal amount of data and is delivered instantly as long as the recipient’s phone is connected to a cellular network. Due to its high deliverability, you can ensure your text message doesn’t just arrive but will also be seen in real time.
- Rapid engagement: SMS is an effective tool for engaging with customers immediately. Text messaging apps offer various personalization options to tailor your message to your customer’s preferences. You can also include coupons and sales offers to promote conversions. Moreover, due to character limits, text messages are generally shorter, so the recipient is more likely to interact with them as they require little effort to read.
Best Practices for Business Texting
In the US, the use of SMS marketing involves a set of rules that businesses should comply with. There are also guidelines you need to be aware of to craft a successful SMS campaign and maximize the benefits of business text messaging. Here are some of the best practices to succeed in your approach:
- Personalize your message: Personalizing your text message builds engagement and allows you to tailor it based on your customers’ interests. If you’re sending bulk messages, segment your contact list to reach your target audience based on a specific demographic, behavior, or preference. Add images or emojis to make it more interactive.
- Ask for consent: The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) requires businesses to obtain consent from customers before sending them any marketing message. Send an SMS invite to your customer contacts to join your subscription list if they wish to receive updates and promotions. Also, make sure there’s an option for subscribers to opt out.
- Limit the message frequency: Despite the high engagement rate of SMS marketing, it’s not an excuse to bombard customers with too many texts. Be mindful of the timing and frequency of your message delivery, as you don’t want to appear too spammy. The TCPA prohibits marketing messages from being delivered during quiet hours that fall between 9:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m. in the local time of the receiver.
- Be concise: Given the character limits of text messaging, you want to keep your texts short and relevant. Use a conversational tone and provide all the key information without sacrificing clarity. You may want to maintain your brand voice so customers can easily recognize who sent them.
- Add a call-to-action statement: Like any marketing strategy, it’s important to include a clear call to action in your text message to guide customers on how they will engage with your brand. You can send them a link or set up an automation to respond to your text campaign.
Top Texting Services for Businesses
Text messaging services make a valuable asset in starting an SMS campaign. They offer a variety of useful features to boost engagement and achieve your marketing goals. In the table below, we listed the best text messaging services, including their key features and monthly starting fees.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Yes. Google Voice for personal use allows Google account users to send and receive SMS and MMS messages within the US. However, it doesn’t support key SMS features like mass texting. You can utilize the free trials offered by text messaging apps like TextMagic and Textedly to explore their full functionality.
Some potential drawbacks of text messaging include the character limit and strict legal requirements. The character limit for SMS requires businesses to keep their texts short, which poses challenges in effectively conveying a message. In terms of legal requirements, violating SMS marketing regulations can result in massive penalties ranging from $500 to $1,500 per message.
In the US, a text message blast is considered legal if the business obtains explicit consent from the customer to receive marketing texts. This can be done by sending a text invitation to the customer to opt in to an SMS mailing list.
Bottom Line
Business text messaging involves the use of text messages to facilitate communication between companies and customers. It includes a variety of features that, when implemented effectively, can be a powerful communication tool to enhance customer engagement and marketing efforts. To ensure the success of your SMS campaign, adhere to SMS compliance laws and utilize text messaging services to refine your strategies.
