Whether you already text your customers regularly or you’re ready to finally start, this is your time to excel! We’ve got a few simple goals anyone can take on, no matter their current situation with business texting. When you focus on improving in these areas, your customer retention strategy as a whole should improve as well.
Get (more) responses
Like many goals in business, truly engaging with your customers is easier said than done. But with texting it’s a little bit easier – if only because that’s the way people want to communicate with you. One measure of texting engagement is response rate.
You’ll get more responses by personalizing messages, asking specific questions, and following up with conversations.
To personalize messages, include first names and details specific to each person. Ask open-ended questions that allow you to start and continue a conversation. And once you’ve sent a message and gotten a response, don’t forget to actually respond.
Organize your contacts
It’s great to have an address book full of current and potential customer information. But if your contacts aren’t organized in a way that’s actually useful to you, your communication suffers.
Create and refine groups
You can make groups for new leads, people in the nurturing process, current customers, previous customers, etc. By adding contacts to groups and then actively moving contacts to new groups as needed, you can tell exactly who needs to receive certain kinds of messages.
This sort of organization may take a while to set up at the beginning, but once you define your groups and commit to maintaining them, your job becomes so much easier.
Delete unuseful contacts
You probably have contacts who you never intend to actually contact or who you haven’t contacted in years. Don’t waste your time rationalizing that “some day” you’ll need their information. Your address book is full enough without keeping the information of people who aren’t going to become customers.
If you really feel the need to keep everyone’s information, create an archive and move contacts there when you’re ready to delete them from your active address book.
Find potentially dead leads
In the process of determining which contacts to delete and which to save, you’ll undoubtedly discover contacts who might now make great customers. Reviving dead leads is possible!
Update your notes
When you make notes about your customers and contacts, that allows you to maximize personalization. Keep careful track of customer purchases, future meetings, last visits, favorite products… anything you might want to pop into a message.
If you have an option for custom fields, like through Skipio, fill them out! Then when you’re ready to send a message to 20 contacts at once, each message will be customized specifically for that customer without you writing 20 individual messages.
With appropriately filled custom fields, suddenly using a messaging template becomes even easier.
Miss fewer appointments
Whether you’re the forgetful one or the people you’re supposed to be meeting with are, the more appointments you keep, the more successful you’ll be.
Help yourself and them by implementing appointment confirmations and reminders to ensure everyone shows up at the right time in the right place. Sending these via text means your contacts are even more likely to see them and respond.
If you automate these confirmations and reminders, like you can with Skipio, you’ll be in even better shape. Really think about the amount of time you would save if this process were automated. And if your texting platform doesn’t currently allow you to do that, it’s time to think about switching.
Respond faster
Customer service makes and breaks businesses. The faster someone gets a response, the faster their needs are being met (and the faster you build a loyal customer base). Responding faster to leads is also the difference between getting a new customer and not.
This is one of the simplest texting goals you can make, but it might also be one of the most difficult. If you’re not in the habit of responding in a timely manner, you’ll really need to focus your time and energy on replying as soon as possible.
But this isn’t as soon as possible for you. That could be hours, maybe even days, from now. It’s as soon as possible to give your leads and customers a great experience.
Really prioritize your own flexibility or give an employee the responsibility of responding to texts as they come in. Do whatever you need to in order to lower response times.
When you incorporate these engagement goals with your other business goals, you set yourself up for a great year.
To keep yourself accountable, make sure at least one other person knows your plan. This might be your business partner, an employee, or even a family member or close friend. Choose someone who will check in and care about your progress.
Set yourself up to reach your business texting goals by using a platform built to help you communicate and follow up efficiently. Create and manage all your contacts, appointments, and messages in one place with Skipio. Available on desktop and mobile, Skipio gives you everything you need to make this your best year yet.