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All businesses without exception, strive to achieve high levels of customer loyalty. And it’s not a surprising fact. Industry data reveals that the cost of retaining existing customers is a mere 20% of acquiring new ones. Businesses recognize that even a 5% improvement in customer retention rates has a significant impact on the top line. With so many options available to customers, going the extra mile to earn their loyalty is a no-brainer in today's fiercely competitive business ecosystem.
SMS marketing is perhaps the most underrated yet key driver of customer loyalty. Many businesses today are leveraging SMS marketing to retain customers. The popularity of SMS marketing is increasing at breakneck speed. It provides that elusive silver lining to improve customer engagement and build trust and loyalty.
What is Customer Loyalty?
The word loyalty is typically associated with an allegiance or bond between two entities. In the business context, customer loyalty characterizes a consistent emotional bond between the business and the customer. Customer loyalty indicates the willingness of customers to engage with the business for its products or services. Achieving customer loyalty can be complex and relies on the synergy of several factors:
- Emotional connection
- Quality and consistency of brand engagement
- Exceptional customer service
- Customer satisfaction levels
- Product or service customization
- Personalized interaction
Customer loyalty is a direct result of consistent efforts undertaken by a brand and is usually measured across multiple market metrics such as customer lifetime value, repeat purchases, customer satisfaction score, upsell rates, engagement levels, and more.
Loyal customers hold the key to a business's longevity and growth. Industry data indicates that loyal customers are willing to spend 65% more on a brand’s products and services compared to new customers. As the saying goes – 20% of your customers contribute to 80% of your sales. So, the message to marketers is loud and clear: drive customer loyalty to increase profitability.
The Role of SMS in Improving Customer Loyalty and Enhancing Retention
SMS marketing is a discreet way of engaging customers and establishes an invisible yet strong connect between them and your brand. Industry reports indicate that bulk SMS messaging has a read rate of 98%, as compared to email marketing which hovers around 20% at best. In fact, what’s even more interesting is that SMS messages have a read rate of 97% within the first 15 minutes of receipt, and that's primarily because people check their phones at least a hundred times a day. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that there is solid ground to consider bulk SMS messaging as a powerful driver of customer loyalty.
How To Build Customer Loyalty with Bulk SMS Messaging
The question still remains how bulk SMS messaging drives customer loyalty? With the right bulk SMS marketing strategy with personalized and relevant messaging content, you can facilitate faster response times. We recommend these 5 simple steps to improve customer loyalty via bulk SMS messaging.
Understand your target audience. Segment your subscribers based on age, gender, demographics, interests, and preferences to set up the foundation to send consistent, relevant, and concise content.
Align goals. Establish a clear vision of your SMS marketing goals such as conversion rates, app, website, or social media page traffic, feedback scores, and more.
Create strategy-based content. SMS messages have a limitation of 160 characters. So, every word is worth its weight in gold. Keep your messaging concise and precise.
Avoid spamming. Don’t overwhelm your customers with unnecessary or repeat messages. And depending on the time zone you operate in for your SMS messaging, ensure your messages are delivered at a time when customers are most likely to see it.
Analyze and improve. Marketing is all about indicators, so make sure you are always on top of key metrics like open rate, click-throughs, conversions, sign-ups, unsubscribes, and ROI.
Innovate: Last but not least, bulk SMS marketing allows you to experiment and improve your SMS marketing strategy and adjust it as you go. So be sure to collect feedback from your customers at regular intervals. This not only helps you to improve but also tells your customers you value how they feel about you.
Strategies to Increase Customer Retention with SMS
While we have talked about some key aspects of improving customer loyalty via bulk SMS messaging, it is equally important to understand some tried and tested implementation strategies that drive customer loyalty:
New Customer and Post-Purchase Offers. Offering deals and discounts to new customers is an effective strategy for acquiring them. And once they are on board, new deals and offers based on their initial purchase can be a powerful incentive for them to return to your brand. When offering deals, make sure they are time-bound and send them reminder texts with clickable links to your e-store to nudge them to make a purchase.
New Product Announcement. Concise, attention-grabbing SMS texts have proven to be very effective. And if your products or services are hyper-personalized for a particular customer segment, SMS marketing could be very effective in igniting interest. GirikSMS comes with seamless integration with Salesforce, which means you can leverage your CRM data for deep insights into customer behavior and target your SMS marketing perfectly with precise and relevant messaging.
Trigger Messaging. This is a very effective way to capture your audience’s attention. Automated SMS messages can be triggered for a range of scenarios such as abandoned cart reminders, the latest personalized discounts, and offers, new product launches or back-in-stock items.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that SMS texting is a powerful tool for driving customer loyalty and retention. With a market-leading automated SMS platform in place and a sound use-case-based marketing strategy, brands can unlock the power of SMS marketing to improve customer loyalty enhance retention, and pave the way for the long-term success of their business.
Try GirikSMS for Improved Customer Loyalty and Retention
With GirikSMS, you can implement automated, intelligent marketing strategies at scale with personalized engagement across every interaction. With GirikSMS’s automation capabilities and its intelligent Chatbots, you can be up and running in no time. With GirikSMS you can:
- Send tailored product alerts
- Cross-sell and upsell
- Send reminders
- Send order updates
- Resolve customer issues
- Engage in 2-way conversational messaging
- Collect customer feedback
Start your Free 3 Month Trial today.
Still have questions? Connect with one of our SMS experts.
About Author
Indranil is a technology enthusiast with over 25 years of experience in project management, operations, technology and business development. Indranil has led project teams in egovernance, business process re-engineering, product development and worked with Government and Corporate customers. Indranil truly believes in the power of technology to drive productivity and growth for teams and businesses.
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