GOLD! Text / SMS Marketing, Any Case Studies from Fastlaners?

[MJ DeMarco]

Anyone use TEXT / SMS marketing extensively in their business?

For customer acquisition?
For customer service?
For improving lifetime customer value?

Care to share your story?

If not, how could you use this in your business?

For example, here's a company that provides such a service.

As @Kak said in the Undercover Billionaire thread, practically every human on the planet carries around with them a black device that allows you to contact them immediately. Quite a powerful reality!

 

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[Greg R]

@AllenCrawley

 

[Scot]

@AllenCrawley

And @amp0193 has some good experience here.

 

[Ecom man]

I use SMS Bump for my Shopify store for abandoned carts. Spent $17 on texts and recovered $5300 in revenue.

Haven’t set it up like an email list yet but you can do that on sms Bump too.

 

[RazorCut]

Spent $17 on texts and recovered $5300 in revenue.

That is an awesome return on investment even if some of those abandoned carts would have converted given time anyway.

 

[Dan_Cardone]

Ive set up it for businesses on their FB profile.

At the top of their profile on the big banner picture ill put "Text KEYWORD to xxxxx for OFFER" and it usually results in quite a few leads.

 

[458]

Added 2x more clients to the board when we started doing it consistently. The main things are:

1. Only text prospects or customers
2. Run all numbers through DNC and litigator database.

Depending on number of area codes you'll be texting will determine your yearly cost plus cost of manually texting each person, I don't recommend using an autotexting service as you can get dinged multiple times for litigation and it's all on paper.

Access to DNC for all area codes will run you $16k plus cost of a human to send out the text messages. You can use an automated service but the level of consent required to stay safe and out of litigation is high and again, it's all on paper and evidence for class action suit is easy to gather.

Bottom line, big upside but high risk if you do not protect yourself.

 

[Kak]

Subscribed!

 

[Andy Black]

Subscribed!

Me too.

We’ll be testing tap-to-text buttons on our landing pages soon.

 

[Felix Page]

Yes it is a must if you're running an ecommerce business. Use SMS for abandoned cart follow up on my store that sells furniture.

As you can see the ROI is very generous

My go to app for shopify is SMS Bump (not affiliated-just a reliable app).

 

[MJ DeMarco]

772,524% ROI? Yikes!

Based on the early feedback, this is already notable.

My go to app for shopify is SMS Bump (not affiliated-just a reliable app).

So I'm guessing your cart asks for cell phone info? Required field?

 

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[Felix Page]

772,524% ROI? Yikes!

Based on the early feedback, this is already notable.



So I'm guessing your cart asks for cell phone info? Required field?

I don't make it a required field on my shopify cart but I do add in an incentive in the text field

"enter your mobile number to receive order tracking and exclusive futures offers"

Really looking to make a big push with SMS marketing this year. Hands down has the highest open rate out of all channels and is easily one of the lowest costs to reach your subscriber list.

 

[socaldude]

what is the compliance / regulation on this? can you just send out texts? do you have to add a “stop” function?

 

[Ecom man]

what is the compliance / regulation on this? can you just send out texts? do you have to add a “stop” function?

Sms Bump has all the appropriate stuff on their app that you need to add to your site and then adds the stop info onto the text messages.

 

[Bradley R]

SMS can work great as almost everyone reads it, but there are lots of areas with SMS where you have to be careful about getting permission to message the person. Like email but a little bit more rigid with the regulations.

 

[Duane]

Service Industry guy here..


I've found customer acquisition is best done by phone call, but some people don't like phone calls, so we have it setup to where you can text our company right from our google listing.

Most services we can quote with just a picture, so customers text us pictures and we provide a quote over the phone. Much easier than us driving out there just for a quote or them trying to describe their issue over the phone.

For customer service, text is the best by far. Sending pictures on completion of the service, sending reminders, checking in, answering complaints, selling additional services, etc can all be done through text and we can copy paste scripts we setup on the clipboard of our phone to significantly reduce time spent on each task and have happy customers that get lightning fast attention and response times.

A lot of people much prefer to text than talk and rarely check their emails now a days. It's a win-win.

 

[Andy Black]

Service Industry guy here..


I've found customer acquisition is best done by phone call, but some people don't like phone calls, so we have it setup to where you can text our company right from our google listing.

Most services we can quote with just a picture, so customers text us pictures and we provide a quote over the phone. Much easier than us driving out there just for a quote or them trying to describe their issue over the phone.

For customer service, text is the best by far. Sending pictures on completion of the service, sending reminders, checking in, answering complaints, selling additional services, etc can all be done through text and we can copy paste scripts we setup on the clipboard of our phone to significantly reduce time spent on each task and have happy customers that get lightning fast attention and response times.

A lot of people much prefer to text than talk and rarely check their emails now a days. It's a win-win.

Yes. My appliance repair friend gets a few texts straight from the ad on Google (there’s a “Message Extension” in Google Ads).

When people ring he gets them to text him their address so he doesn’t have to write it down.

He also seems to do a lot of communicating with clients via WhatsApp ... where they send him photos of the appliance.

Hence us looking at putting a tap-to-text button on the mobile landing page.

 

[amp0193]

We auto-text all abandoned carts (that leave the "subscribed" box checked) with a personal sounding message from one of our real phone numbers.

Many times customers just had a quick question that got in the way, and they have been more open to asking that question via text, than via email.

We haven't used outbound marketing via smsbump or the like, yet.


We've also found that text is a very effective way to reach customers about different things. We can call them on the phone, but people just don't answer the phone these days. We always follow up with a text.

 

[Andy Black]

people just don't answer the phone these days.

Yeah, if my phone rings you’re interrupting me. If you text I can check it when I’m free.

 

[minivanman]

My phone message says.... Text Me Please.

I've been trying to get the dirt tracks to do this type of marketing. I tell them to give people $3 off in exchange for their cell number and explain that the only texts they will receive is about updates.... specials/rain outs/change of start times/reminders/etc. But.... none will do it. I was talking about this 5 hours ago to a 'promoter' but they just won't do it. There is a service that does 5000 a month for $49. I explain that they charge $12+ (minimum) to get in so it only takes 4 extra people a month to come out even. That's just 1 extra person a week!

 

[Roli]

Wow, really eye-opening answers. I personally would be very angry if a company I'd never heard of before, or never bought anything from texted me. However there is a company that texts me now and again because I once bought something for my girlfriend. I've never purchased again, but haven't cancelled the texts because I might.

Great thread.

 

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[Andy Black]

My phone message says.... Text Me Please.

I think my voicemail says to send me an email at <email address>. I don’t want people to have permission to text me.

 

[Andy Black]

Check out the videos here:

www.gohighlevel.com

 

[minivanman]

I think my voicemail says to send me an email at <email address>. I don’t want people to have permission to text me.

Land line?

 

[Andy Black]

Land line?

Ha. Haven’t had a landline in years.

 

[minivanman]

lol Then why does one need permission to text you? Do you mean you try to lead them away from texting you?

 

[Andy Black]

lol Then why does one need permission to text you? Do you mean you try to lead them away from texting you?

My bad. I shouldn’t have used the word “permission”.

I don’t ask or invite people to text me. Like @Roli, I’d be livid if someone texts me who I don’t know. It’s too personal a channel.

 

[Andy Black]

Just spoke to my appliance repair friend. He gets a few messages from the Google Ads each week. They’re so simple for people to complete. They don’t need to add their phone number, their name, or their email address. We can prepopulate the message with “I have a problem with my appliance. Please call me back”, so all people have to do is click Send.

Like I mentioned before, we want to roll out a Tap-To-Text button on the landing page (for mobile visitors). It’s a slight pain finding a service that does it here in Ireland, but I’ll update this thread of progress there.

We’ll also roll it out for other clients in the UK and the US. Again, I’ll update this thread with progress.

 

[minivanman]

My bad. I shouldn’t have used the word “permission”.

I don’t ask or invite people to text me. Like @Roli, I’d be livid if someone texts me who I don’t know. It’s too personal a channel.

Heck, I have 2 iphones with more than 1 number hooked up to each for the sole purpose of texting. lol

 

[AllenCrawley]

We're really just starting to scratch the surface of SMS marketing. We use the SMS Bump app for abandoned checkouts, shipping notifications, and campaigns.

We do require a phone number when checking out. The placeholder text helps alleviate customer concerns.


To date, we've only done one campaign which you see reflected in the right column below. Our abandoned checkout texts seem to work incredibly well (left column). The following are analytics for the last 30 days.