How Text Messaging Can Give Your E-commerce Business a Boost
The e-commerce industry has continually grown over the past two decades. In fact, 2014 saw a 15.4 percent rise in sales, and sales reached $300 billion for the first time, according to data from Commerce Department. As more and more people choose to shop online, there has also been an increase in companies offering their goods and services in that space. This has created a competitive market that has the potential to become oversaturated with businesses vying for customers.
To be successful in the vast space of the Internet, you have to market your company and create an excellent customer experience to stand out from the crowd. Text message marketing is an effective way to give your business a boost.
Stand out from Competition
To achieve success in e-commerce, you need to differentiate yourself from the competition.
With so much competition in the e-commerce field, it is up to you to find ways to attract customers and differentiate yourself from your competition. Typically, the prices and product offerings are similar, unless you offer a truly unique product or service. That means that you have to do much more than just beat your competition in price wars. For many customers, the entire customer experience is now much more important than other features of a store, and creating a mobile program can help improve your customer interaction, according to Matt Ambrose at Business 2 Community.
Enhance Customer Service
Customer service is an essential component to running a successful e-commerce business. According to data from Defaqto Research, over half of consumers (55 percent) would be willing to pay more for an item if it meant that there was a better customer experience.
Customer service is important, even for stores that trade exclusively online.
Text messages can easily be folded into your existing customer service system. Customers can choose to receive delivery updates, notifications about stock availability, and other transactional messages about their order through text message rather than email. If you sign up for a text messaging service that allows for incoming texts, you can also have people contact you via text with any problems or issues.
Send Offers for Up-selling or Encouraging Purchase of Related Product
You can take advantage of customers opting into your texting service by sending offers soon after they make a purchase that suggest related products or other up-selling options. Although this can be an effective way to attract more sales, you want to be careful how many messages you send. You do not want to frustrate your customers with too many sales pitches. A simple text that says, “Thank you for your purchase, click here to see related products” or something similar will help you to capitalize on purchases without alienating customers.
Special Promotions and Offers
Text messaging is also the perfect way to send special promotions and offers. With a nearly 100 percent open rate and redemption rates much higher than other mediums, you will see better conversions by sharing offers through text message rather than email or social media.
Send unique deals and special offers to your mobile subscribers.
When you do send out offers, you want to be sure they are unique to your mobile marketing campaign. Your message will lose value if you distribute the same offer across all channels, or if you continually send the same offer.
Text message marketing is an effective way to reach more customers, no matter how big or small your business budget. You can integrate your mobile program with your other marketing efforts, or it can work as its own marketing tool. Most importantly, text messages can improve the overall customer experience and help you stand out from the competition, which in turn improves your bottom line. If you are ready to see how text messaging can help your e-commerce business, try Group Texting for free.
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