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Cell phone users don’t just text, they
text a lot. A Pew study from 2011 showed
that text messaging users send or receive an
average of 41.5 messages on a typical day.
For the 18-24 age bracket, Pew reported
an average of 109.5 messages on a normal
day. Given the thorough acceptance of text
messaging across the typical home com-
fort customer base, your text messaging
capability can take you into the home of
virtually any customer or prospect.
Not only will texts reach your target
audience, they will very likely get read
– and promptly. A recent report commis-
sioned by SinglePoint indicated that text
message open rates exceed 99 percent, and
90 percent of all text messages are read
within three minutes of being received on
the mobile phone. Compare that to e-mail,
where open rates lag in the range of 5 to
21 percent, according to a 2013 report by
MailerMailer.
When you send text messages to
customers on their cell phones, you are
entering their inner domain and, in essence,
requesting their urgent attention. This is a
privilege that you must treat with great care,
as the new legal requirements suggest. The
law merely requires you to take the kind
of steps that savvy marketers would take
anyway out of respect for their customers.
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As you prepare for launch, you’ll have
two primary considerations: How will you
use SMS to improve customer service?
And how will you recruit customers to the
service?
In the customer service arena, your text
messaging service enables you to modernize
and accelerate many interactions that are
now done by phone, mail or e-mail. For
example, you’ll be able to send text mes-
sages to your budget plan and service plan
customers annually asking them to renew,
which they will be able to do on the spot
simply by sending a short reply by text. You’ll
also be able to announce payments due and
provide the option of paying immediately
by credit card. In a discount operation, you
can text-blast your price and solicit orders,
which customers can place in just seconds
by choosing their delivery quantity.
In addition to facilitating transactions,
your SMS service opens a great new channel
for marketing your products and services.
You’ll be able to put special offers in front
of customers instantly and elicit rapid
responses for quick sales.
The special offers you send via text
must be crafted with rapid response in
mind, because that is the nature of the SMS
environment. This means that nearly every
message you send your customers should
prompt them to take action immediately.
To succeed in the text milieu, you have to
make bite-sized asks that your customers
can accept without much thought.
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That doesn’t mean that texting can’t
help you sell boilers and air conditioning
systems. In fact, SMS can be very helpful in
selling big-ticket items like those; you just
have to send the right messages.
For example, you can run a heating
equipment campaign in the text message
channel and use it to quickly identify hot
prospects. Plan a sales campaign with an
attractive special offer, and then develop a
series of informational videos on the value
of high-efficiency equipment. As you post
each new video online, announce it in a
brief text message, urging customers to
take a look and learn how they can save
energy. (Be sure to post the pieces on a
mobile website that will display properly on
a mobile phone.) Track who clicks through
to link, because those customers are strong
prospects for an upgrade.
You can also use text messaging to
support your new products and services.
Develop special offers and/or coupons and
be extra aggressive in the text channel to
reward those customers who subscribe to
your texts.
As your text subscription list grows
over time, you can segment it and target
exclusive messages for customers with
older, inefficient equipment – and any other
segments you’d like to target.
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Before taking your text-messaging
channel live, you’ll need a strategy for
getting customers to opt in. Plan on
announcing the service enthusiastically in
all your marketing channels with a message
that emphasizes the customer benefits, such
as easy transactions, exclusive discounts,
and better access to you in the event of a
natural disaster such as Superstorm Sandy.
Announce the service prominently on the
website home page and in the website sec-
tions for customer account lookup, online
payment and online rewards.
One question that always comes up is
what sort of incentive to offer. A one-time
reward such as a company credit or reward
points allotment will accelerate enrollment
but might also cause customers to view
the service as a sales gimmick that benefits
the company more than them. On balance,
a small incentive makes good sense, par-
ticularly if you are judicious in your use of
the channel and do not scare people away
with low-value messages.
Customers can subscribe in writing or
online with an electronic signature. Plan
to set up a subscription portal, paying very
close attention to detail. FCC requirements
dictate, as common sense does, that you
make a clear statement of what sort of
messages you plan to send and how often.
Describe each type of message you plan to
send and approximate how many you will
send in a month or year. For extra entice-
ment, promise to provide exclusive special
offers in the channel.
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Because these communications are cov-
ered by federal law, be meticulous in your
recordkeeping. You should have a valid
consent form in your files for every cus-
tomer who subscribes to your text service.
Federal regulation and common sense
are also aligned on the subject of opting out.
The law requires that every text you send
contain an opt-out mechanism. Frustrating
as it might be to let customers opt out, you
have to provide a clearly marked exit, or
you risk customer alienation.
Absorb all these legalities, but don’t take
your eyes off the prize. The cell phone is
today’s preferred communications device
and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable
future. Successful companies are separating
themselves from the competition by taking
customer convenience to a new level via the
cell phone, and the home comfort niche is
no exception.
PriMedia has an excellent business-to-
consumer text messaging platform that we
call TextPoint. For help in launching your
text messaging service, please give me a call
at 516-222-2041.
FCC Regulations
