Text message marketing for small businesses

Most if not all of your potential customers are walking around with a mobile phone in their pocket.

Being able to connect with your leads via this device can have a big impact on your pipeline—but only if done efficiently, without frustrating your customers or overcomplicating things for your sales team.

CallRail simplifies text message marketing for small businesses by giving your leads an easy way to interact with your business simply by sending and responding to text messages.

This article will walk you through the best practices for running a text message marketing service to increase conversions and grow your revenue.

What is text message marketing?

Text message marketing allows businesses to connect with potential or existing customers via SMS.

Once the text message marketing software is in place, businesses can give customers the option to send a text message for more information. From there, your sales team can leverage the conversation to:

• Gather lead details
• Get valuable feedback from customers
• Increase awareness around products and promotions
• Provide quotes and easy answers to customers

With the right SMS marketing platform, your sales team can use all of this information to guide customers through your sales funnel and improve conversion rates overall.

Benefits of Text message marketing for small business

Make it easier for customers to get in touch

It's common practice to include a phone number in your marketing messages. But asking your customers to pick up the phone and make a call can be a barrier, especially for folks who are too busy or just don't like speaking on the phone.

Giving them the option to text for more information removes this barrier, making it easier than ever for interested leads to reach out for more information about your products and services.

Respond to leads and close deals faster

The main advantage of a text message marketing service is the agility it gives your sales team to respond to leads and convert them into customers.

With CallRail's text message marketing services, you can create custom templates that your sales team can use to send outbound text messages and quickly respond to those coming in. These templates can provide details to interested leads, gather more information about customers, or even give them discount codes and promotional materials to encourage sales.

Text message marketing can get this kind of information to your audience much faster than traditional phone calls can, streamlining the entire sales process.

Market to leads no matter where your sales team is

If you are solely reliant on phone calls to interact with leads, then you will only be able to respond to potential customers when your sales team is able to speak on the phone.

With CallRails' SMS marketing service, your sales team can respond quickly no matter where they are, thanks to the CallRail mobile app. They'll receive notifications on their device, allowing them to respond right away, no matter where they are.

Add a level of personalization to your marketing

When your sales team responds to a text message, it will appear on the lead or customer's phone number just like a normal text message. This will keep your marketing from feeling invasive and spammy, and instead will add an element of personalization to all your messages. This in turn can build trust and customer loyalty, increasing your number of conversions and improving your retention rate.

Track text messages and analyze the data

You'll get the best ROI on your marketing efforts if you're able to thoroughly analyze the different channels you're using to bring in new leads.

With CallRail, you can track the text messages you receive just as you would any other channel (such as phone calls or forms filled out). This will help you determine which channels are the most effective, so you can refine your marketing strategy over time.

CallRail also keeps track of all the messages you send to individual leads and customers, so anyone on your sales team can review and pick up conversations without missing a beat.

How to get started with text message marketing your small business

Step 1. Sign up for CallRail and receive your unique numbers

To start taking advantage of text message marketing for small business, you'll first need to sign up for a CallRail account if you haven't already. You can start out with a free trial right here.

Once you're signed up, you'll receive unique phone numbers to include in your marketing efforts. Any of these numbers can be used to send and receive messages with leads and customers.

Step 2. Set up your numbers to send and receive text messages

You can activate your text message marketing service by clicking on the Settings icon on the left navigation bar of your CallRail account.

From there, choose the company you'd like to set up the SMS marketing service for, and click the pencil icon next to the tracking number you want to use to send/receive messages.

Tick the box next to "Receive text messages (SMS) on my tracking number", then hit "Save Number."

Step 3. Create custom templates and start sending messages

When your text message marketing service is all set up, you can start sending messages to customers right away. It's easy to do this from the CallRail interaction panel, which you can access by toggling to the small chat icon in the top right:

From there, you or anyone on your sales team can easily send messages to customers from the mobile app or a web browser. You can also set up templates for easy messaging in this section.

Step 4. Roll out your text message marketing & start tracking leads

Finally, when everything is set up, it's time to get out the word about your new text messaging options. Update your advertising campaigns to include messaging like "Text us for More Information" with your custom CallRail numbers, and soon your sales team will start seeing new leads via SMS.

As time goes on, you can keep tabs on how successful your text message marketing is by monitoring your CallRail dashboard. Here you'll see how many of your inbound leads came via text messages versus other forms of lead generation, like phone calls and forms.

Bring in new business with text message marketing

The key to successfully marketing your business is to meet your customers where they are, and make it easy for them to learn more about you.

With a text message marketing service in place, you'll give your customers a fast and easy way to get in touch, and make it easier than ever for your sales team to respond quickly and maximize conversions.

Try CallRail free for 14 days.