Why Text Messaging is Must-have Channel

Think about the various channels you interact with regularly. There’s social media, which can often be exhausting and crowded. There’s email that’s impossibly hard to keep up with (inbox zero is a myth).  

Then there’s text messaging. It’s been a tried and true method of communication for decades. It’s how we keep up with our friends and family. It’s how we stay informed of important information in our lives. And it should be how marketers should be communicating with their customers.  

5 Reasons Why Text Is a Must-have Channel

Text messaging may feel personal, but it’s the number one way markers can communicate with their customers to share exclusive content, promotional offers, important product updates, and more. Here are five benefits marketers can see from creating a mobile messaging program.

1. Unmatched Engagement Rates

No other channel can drive the same results mobile messaging can. According to Gartner, the open rates for mobile messaging are 98 percent. Comparatively, the industry average open rate for email is 21 percent. Another study found that 83 percent  of millennials open texts within 90 seconds of receiving them. And the response rate for text comes in at 45 percent. 

No other channel witnesses that kind of engagement from consumers.

Not only are consumers eager and willing to receive messages from brands over text, but they’re also having a two-way conversation. The results alone from these studies should be enough to motivate you to launch a mobile messaging program so your brand can start taking advantage of the advantages text messaging has to offer. 

2. Capture Valuable  Customer Data 

Like it or not, changes to third-party cookies are happening. If your brand isn’t concerned with how it plans to collect zero-party data, consider this your wake-up call. 

By collecting mobile opt-ins and communicating with your customers via text, you can gather valuable insights that are more valuable than any third-party cookie. You can put more trust into the data because your brand is the one who collected it. 

3. Bridge Offline and Online Communications

If you have a physical product, you’re likely relying on traditional marketing strategies like email, social media, or even radio ads like every other brand. Bridging offline with online communications over text can increase engagement from your customers. In fact,  75 percent of consumers enjoy getting text messages from brands. 

Creating an omnichannel experience harnessing the power of text doesn’t have to be overly complicated. You can easily bridge the offline-online gap by: 

• Alerts of a product restock
• Changes to customer’s warranty
• Amplifying an upcoming product launch

4. Drive Brand Loyalty

Scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours; that’s the mantra surrounding consumers and brand loyalty recently. Consumers aren’t willing to pledge their loyalty to a specific brand as easily as they once did. In order for consumers to become long-lasting brand advocates, they require incentives. 

This can be done through various methods, including special promotional offers or an exclusive experience via text. Chipotle is a great example of a brand with an exemplary promotional text messaging program. In the 2022 NBA Finals, the brand launched a text-to-claim experience during a commercial. Within 30 seconds, all 10,000 of the offers were gone. 

Curating exclusive content for your brand advocates promoted via text is another way to drive brand loyalty. For beverage brands, this could look like developing articles, videos, or guides that help promote a healthy lifestyle if you know your customers are interested in this topic. 

5. Increase Revenue 

The number of brands competing for consumers’ attention is astronomical. In order to stand out, your brand will need to do something unique in order to increase revenue. Sending communications to customers’ phones announcing new products or personalized recommendations is the perfect way to accomplish this. 

Once an individual has opted into your brand’s mobile messaging program, you can divide your subscribers into specific audiences to send messaging highly relevant to them. 

Let’s say your brand recently launched an in-aisle product recommendation quiz guiding users to the right solution. The information you collect from this experience can be used to drive sales for upcoming product launches or recommend related products to a specific audience. 

Getting Started with Text Messaging 

Developing a mobile messaging program for your brand is a must-have. You can launch a mobile messaging program to engage with your customers via text quickly with Lumavate. We take care of the double opt-in process and have you up and running in just a few days so you can send out real-time or scheduled text messages to specific audiences in just a few clicks. 

Want to learn more about Lumavate’s mobile messaging? Click here or check out our Mobile Messaging Opt-in Template to see how it can work for your brand.