For this week’s CityGro live broadcast, Jon and Channing discussed their automated texting campaign tips. The key to success in any text marketing campaign is getting the right message to the right person at the right time. Watch above to learn how to boost your sales.

Automated Texting Campaign Tips Transcript

Welcome to the CityGro and we are live. My name is John. I’m here with Channing, one of the gurus from our account pro team. I brought chanting on board to really give us some text marketing tips right there. That’s what we’re talking about today. This is one of the reoccurring questions that we get a lot is how can I get better results from text marketing? That’s so, so that’s Kinda the purpose of this question today. And we talked about it a lot. We talked about consent before, so we’ll skip that a little bit. We’ve talked about, we’ve talked about a whole lot of stuff, incentives. What is, what is your goal today to talk about as far as marketing tips go? Just a couple of kinds of things we’re going to talk about today is I’m really evaluating the relevancy of your text messages.

 

00:44

I’m mainly based on time, making sure that text messages are relevant to people at whatever time they are visited or you know, just kind of like where they are in their lives. So, we’re going to kind of mention about, you know, the relevancy of, of text messages, kind of like how, how you go about making sure text messages are relevant to people and kind of the tips and tricks to actually make sure that customers see it and, and it actually react to it. So, so one of the common pieces of feedback we get when we’re mostly maybe the sales or people that are really new to text marketing is I don’t want to be spamming my customers. Would you say that that’s the difference between an unwanted message and it probably goes the same with email and any other message that we create, but wouldn’t relevancy be the difference between a spam message and the non-spam message?

 

01:36

Absolutely. I mean really a spam message is just an unwanted message. And so if, if it’s something that interests you or something that you, you would like, it’s no longer spam. And, and, and the funny thing is, is in your spam folder sometimes some of those things you want ends up there, because, you know, we’re so quick to just say that’s spam. And so I think a lot of our customers kind of struggle with that. They feel like, oh, I don’t want to overload people, but when people give you consent to, like to, like message them, they’re interested in hearing from you, they truly, genuinely want to know what you have to offer them. And so that’s what these messages are all about, is reaching out and utilizing that relationship that they’re willing to have with you. So relevancy. The other thing I see relevancy really big on is that these.

 

02:19

So let me step back. Another question we get a lot is how often can I contact my customers? Yeah. Relevancy ties into that too, doesn’t it? Absolutely. Yeah. I mean I know a lot of people are afraid to overload people because they’re like, oh, even though this event is happening at an event just happened, I don’t want to, you know, to like reach out to them and make them feel like they’re just receiving a whole bunch of stuff from me. I have one customer that I worked with closely and they send out messages twice a week without fail. They saw a message just twice a week and honestly they have so many people that just love getting their messages because it, because it’s relevant, it’s things they want and so it’s, it’s really, it’s how you go about doing it that makes it successful or not will.

 

03:04

So let’s dive in there and let’s break down relevancy and let’s see if we can give some really a kind of hands-on information on what makes your messages relevant. So I wrote down a couple notes from our previous discussion. I’m one of the things we talked about dates where people are likely to act certain ways on certain dates, like birthdays or. We’ve actually had some luck with half birthdays. Talk about dates a little bit on sending relevant. See based on dates. Yeah, absolutely, you know, having dates is one of the easiest ways of, of sending out messages at a relevant time to customers. I mean, if you asked for a birthday and they give it to you automatically, you have a relevant day in their life. That means something to them. And so, you know, being able to gather that information and having ways to be able to send messages out to them at times where it’s relevant to them, they, they’re excited about it.

 

03:57

it really helps bring in that relevancy and really make people excited and happy that they heard from you. So like birthday messages are a great way of making people, oh, you know, glad they, they’ve reached out to me. And not only that, but it builds that relationship between you and them because just because they know that it’s probably, it’s probably an automated message that they received. You know, probably someone wasn’t there just typing in happy birthday to them. They still like, you know, watching every day who’s birthday they personally sending text messages. They feel like, oh, you know, they care enough about me that they’ll offer, you know, they, they want me to have something in return for our relationships. So it makes sense. Anniversaries, other things, you know, there’s a lot of different dates and people’s lives that means something. And every industry has different dates that their customers find that are important to them.

 

04:44

But one of the, definitely one of the easiest ones that most people can relate to, his upper thigh was OK, so, so some things that I’ve seen really work with birthdays, people tend to, to go in groups and birthdays, so group messages, group rates, group inserts, those tend to work really well and keep in mind where you might look at, think birthday birthdays only happening once a year. So it’s been a huge campaign for us. But let’s say I have 2000 people in my network, you’re likely to have what, four people, five people having a birthday every day. So if you do it by the month especially, I mean that can add up and if you’re using that and using maybe a group incentive to say, Hey, bring your party here for your birthday, depending on what kind of business you are, right, it can, the numbers can really add up.

 

05:30

Oh, absolutely. I mean if you think about it, how many people celebrate their birthday alone? Yeah, very few people. Hopefully you’re not just one in the world, but, but yeah, so I mean the great thing about some of these dates is usually these dates means something to people and they make it mean make it important for other people as well, so it can bring groups of people to you and it’s just an exciting way to, be able to reach and even bring in new customers. Cool. Cool. OK, so we’ve covered birth dates by the way. I just wanted to put a plugin for this half-birthday idea. It actually came from a university we work with. They were, they started realizing that on birthdays everyone gets a lot of messages, right? You tend to get mailers in the mail and everyone starts to let your birthday’s.

 

06:17

I’m happy. Birthday is. Most people don’t know it’s your half birthday, so it’s kind of a surprise. Oh man, let’s celebrate. It’s a reason to celebrate, right? So if you can use your whatever software you’re using to send text, text marketing messages, it’s as simple as taking your birthday plus or minus six months. Right? And then trigger that out and say, happy birthday this month are happy half birthday this month. Let’s celebrate. So, so it a good and like you said, the anniversary dates, that kind of thing. OK, so away from dates. Let’s continue on the path of relevancy. One of the things you mentioned is based on customer behavior, which I love and there’s a lot of stuff that we can do based on customer behavior, but will you break that down for us a little bit more? Sure. So first off, you know, tracking customer behavior really comes down to, for most of the companies that we work with is as tracking when they’re coming in, you know, how often they’re coming in, and, and being able to watch and see what they’re, you know, kind of the habits are they coming in often and they’re not.

 

But one of the beautiful things about tracking customer behavior is it allows you to understand the mind of your customer. And, so a couple of things that we want to, hopefully you’re able to do a, hopefully you’re able to track a through whatever software you’re using, when people come in and sometimes even you can gather when people come in, why they come in, some companies ask those kinds of information and you can be able to use that as marketing. I’m kind of ways to segregate people into different, like different kinds of things. And so it’s really important that we remember that our customer’s behavior makes the relevancy of our messages even more important. OK. So let me try to break down and just said maybe in some, some, practical solutions that our listeners can use. Right? So once again, that the purpose of this podcast is for everyone, not just to see what users.

 

08:10

So if I don’t find any new CityGro , I could use multiple keywords to say segment people. Sure. So, based on my business, if I have two core products for dining out, that might be lunch and dinner for retail, that might be different product line, men’s and women’s salon that might be hair or spa or something. So I can, I can segment them based on the behaviors they, either by or on keywords and things like that. So product specific stuff, is that kind of the things you’re talking about segmenting based on those behaviors and what I purchase. OK, great. Talk a little bit about, about segmenting based on tying. You talked about like triggers that we often set up on how long it’s been since you’ve come in with different triggers, do you set up. They’re absolutely one of the most common.

 

09:00

I mean, it really depends on your market is obviously kind of like how often do you feel like customers should be coming in, but the concept behind it is a, you know, a customer hasn’t been in a certain amount of time and you’re like, you know, what, if they haven’t been in this amount of time, I feel like they need some encouragement to come back. So let’s say that we think that’s four weeks or something that you can do is you can have four weeks in an automated message that is sent out to this person and those messages can either, you know, remind them that you’re there, remind them about products, do you have or services that you have and, or one of the most effective ways of reaching out to these automated is offering some type of incentive to come back. And, so you reach out what these things and it gives them a reason to remember you.

 

09:38

And only that will be like, hey, I’d like to come back and Oh, I have a reason to come back. So tracking behavior school, because you can tie the incentives based on how long it’s been, right? Absolutely. If I can get everyone in with a 10 percent off and we’ll talk a little bit about Ab testing too, because this fits in the realm there. If I get 10 percent off, I’m going to try it out before I give you a, you know, bilingual and a half off or build up the incentive. So by tracking behaviors and sending, based on how long it’s been, you might be able to trigger a different one in one week, then at three weeks, six weeks is incorrect on duck sitting. In fact, you want to honestly, the most effective kind of strategies is having multiple messages go out to reach out.

 

10:22

You know, I mean, how often do you just give you attempt to just talk to someone one time, you know, you’re just getting to know you wanna, you wanna reach out, especially to someone that’s been in before. They’re more way more likely to come in and someone randomly on the street, you know, and trying to physically come in. So one of the great ways is when you send these messages I’m sending, you know, send, send messages and send incentives that, that increase in kind of, you know, in aggressiveness I guess you could say, you know, because you could start with something like, oh, you know, customer and be like, Oh yeah, I’d like that. You know, that that’s, that’s, that’s something I’m interested in. And if that doesn’t get them in, you know, someone else will be like, wow, that’s a great deal and if you want to go so far as someone’s like, wow, that’s something I can’t pass up a third one or second one, wherever you want it.

 

11:05

That’s just the power. You can have to bring them back and it can be worth it to you to make these, to make these incentives one of those things. That’s like a last ditch offer. Yeah. Like the last time I tried my 10 percent, I tried my 25 percent pay. If you’re not going to buy it on this one, you probably moved to Bermuda or. Right, right. Exactly. So, so can you. So here’s a couple of different ways you can do that. One of them is if you put in a link tracker, even like a bitly or something like that, I’m assuming you’re not using our software. You could send out a message to everyone, whoever doesn’t click the bitly, you categorized into a group that you try again and then you send that one and maybe you change the offer a little bit.

 

11:46

If they don’t click it, then you try again. So, so you’re getting a smaller segment every time you do it. If they do click that, you might put it in, in a category that hey, these guys are interested based on this type of offer. So, that’s one, one way that came to mind. So we had a question that came in. I think it’s relevant to this, but the question from mark says, could you explain the time difference between texts and emails? Basically, are our text more beneficial than emails? I hate to say that they’re always more beneficial. So I’d like to pose it in the, in the way of, when is it texts, timing on text, which I think ties into relevancy, beneficial. I mean I don’t know how most people have their phones set up, but for me, typically I might have a vibrate if I received a text, an email or something.

 

12:32

But often I have my phone, you know, make a noise vibration, trying to get my attention as much as possible when I get a text message. I mean open rates for text messages are over 90 percent and then you’ll have the open rates for emails are so significantly less. And so, you know how often you check your emails. I mean it depends on what you do, but it’s not as often as you check your phone for text messages. So if you want something in relevancy time, you know, like especially in a timely manner, people get text messages so much faster and are more likely to actually view them and recognize what they read through a text message than through an email. Because often, you know, the thing with the texts that you might see that. But to clear out the texts, you clear it, you click on it, you know, so you actually see the message with an email.

 

13:17

You can just see the one tagline and then it goes to your, OK with that said, relevant to get more relevant, you’ve got to think of the timing of your text. If I want people to come in for lunch, I might send that at 11:00 AM knowing that they’re going to read it within 10 minutes and come in. If I’m sending an email, I probably want to send it and maybe the night before to ensure that they read it by the lunch special or whatever. So I have to say. But I also say one of the great things is if you, if you use text messages, you can use that timing to keep you on the forefront of people’s minds. Because if you said if you send an email or someone use something the night before, some, you know, an event or you know, the next day there’s all that time or something may come up in a. another one of their co-workers is like, let’s go eat this.

 

14:04

At this place, and they’re like, oh yeah, let’s do that one of the night before they’d kind of like, oh, use their thing. But if you send a text message in that time where people are making decisions and also you have now come to the forefront and you’re no longer that last thought you. I mean, the first thought, you’re the last thought and all of a sudden like, oh, you know what? I just got this. I got it. Let’s go do this, you know, let’s go eat here. And so that’s when the nice thing about text messages is often you can stay top of mind more than like with emails or in other situations do we have technology to read minds because that would be really good to send it right when they think that I’m hungry. Bam. OK. So, so I want to tidy things up because we’ve got another question and I know we’re running a little bit longer than we normally do.

 

14:43

So, let me summarize. I think when a lot of people ask for text marketing tips, they want, they want the text that’s going to work for them perfectly. But for us, I think it’s always more about relevancy, timing, what message you’re sending. We didn’t even get into tying them together with community events or thinking on the couch, looking at the calendar and thinking, OK, people spend more during the holidays, let’s up our marketing budget during the holiday or even just looking at local events of like, hey, there’s a high school game right next door to us were going to say send a message out for Friday night. I mean, we didn’t even get into that, but but relevancy then is the key over context or I mean you still have the incentive and all that kind of stuff that you can play around with.

 

15:27

Which probably brings me to the final point is talk about Ab testing for me a little bit. What, what that means in the world is of a, in a world of text marketing and how easy it is to do ab testing comes down to the real. The real theory behind it is that, you know, you break up, we have groups that you test different kind of methods of trying to get the same result but using different methods to get there. And it’s really, it’s really nice because you can break in your car, you can bring your contacts out into groups by behavior time. I mean just all these different kinds of things. Split it 50 fiftieths split. I want to try this offer to this group of this offer to that group and the results there. This is, sorry to interrupt with my input on it.

 

16:10

The results there I think is going to answer that question of what’s my best text marketing strategy every time, but better than what we can give somebody we can give back. So this is the thing too is you know, I mean anyone can give you suggestions and give you ideas of, you know, like Oh, in the market people tend to do stuff like this. But really it’s kind of what’s your business model? Who are your customers? Where are you located, what are the activities around you? And you know that because you’re there, that’s your field and, and that’s, that’s how you’re most effective is again, making the customer feel relevant into the whole game plan is really what’s going to make your texts marketing effective. OK. The last question that came in from Jamie Lynn, can you guys talk about expiration dates on texts offers and what’s the best strategy for expiration dates?

 

16:57

Any off the top of your head? A tips on expiration date since I’m doing them all day every day. Yeah, sure. Expiration dates says that’s a great question. It really depends on what your offer is and what your, what your businesses for instance. I mean if you’re, if you’re a food, you know, food industry, I mean you want to probably keep it down to a week offer, you know, kind of thing because you wanted him to come in on a quick tour. There’s a scarcity nature, that nature, if you leave it open forever, they get this mindset of I can just deal with it for. The thing is you want to motivate them, but if they have other activities, you know, if it’s like a birthday party, you know, or something like that. Well you can’t really say just a week because you know, there’s planning involved and so maybe a month, you know, it really depends on what on what you’re doing, but it’s always important to have expiration to these kinds of events.

 

17:43

That way there is a sense of urgency but not only that, it helps you to be able to not have outstanding, outstanding events. So here’s a tip from one of our case studies with a, with an ice cream shop, you’re ready for it and it has to do with expiration dates. So what they were testing is we’re going to do a range from like a two to three day window. What they found is they have a substantially more people come in. If on the date it expires they sent out a hey last. They didn’t change the offer. They just said, hey, it’s your last day. And they only send to people who didn’t use it. They said, hey, just a reminder, it’s your last day to come in to use this, and they got like three or four times the results as they did the very first time because we’re a lot of people do as I’m driving in my car, wherever I get a text and maybe I glance at it, but I don’t have time to respond or act on it.

 

18:29

I put in my mind, oh, I’m going to go get that promotion and then I forget about it, and then that last day comes and it’s like, oh, I already made the decision to do this. I forgot about it. I better get in there and they act on it. So again, ab tested, but that’s a great ab test is set an expiration window and then the day or the day before, but I really liked that day of expiration, send reminders as, hey, this is the last day and see what you get out of it. Ultimately you’re looking, if you’re using an average text marketing program with average pricing, you’re probably two to three sentence protects, right? So you can test a thousand messages, 2000 people for 20, 20 bucks becomes really efficient way to Ab test get relevant. This is my summary by the way. Anything else for you that we need to summarize?

 

19:16

No, no. I mean just, just keep in mind that these are the text messages is a great way to build relationships with your customers. And one thing that I just wanted to mention kind of the very end of just everything is you can use text messages to let your customers talk about you. What’s the one thing I just want to mention is you can set up text messages. If someone like prisons on behavior, someone’s come in three times, you can set up a message to have a link that goes out to them and invite them to review you online or to, or to be able to say something about you somewhere about how great they think you are. So don’t  think of text marketing is just a one way street of you talking to your customer, yelling at them because that’s not how it’s supposed to be supposed to be. You talking to your customer and giving them opportunities to talk back to you. I love it. Well, thank you channing. Thank you for being here. I think that really helps. Just a couple of reminders out there. If you, if you have text marketing tips yourself throwing the comments, we’d love to see what you guys are doing that it’s effective and will try to find more case studies posts as well. We’re live here again from the CityGro . I think we’ll end on that and we’ll see you guys next time.