What is a Text Blast?

A text blast is a text message sent to a larger number of cell phone users utilizing an automated messaging system. Text blasts are often an affordable way for businesses to connect with their customers. Text blasts use a web-based SMS texting service to send out a text message to cell phone users. They are an effective way to increase engagement, raise company and brand awareness, and connect to customers.

Due to the rise of text blast services, most businesses now have a mobile marketing strategy in place. Most people are never without their mobile devices, which is why mobile marketing has had such great success for businesses. As mobile phone technology grows and advances, so do a phone's capabilities and functions. The list of the things you can do with your phone is endless, like listening to music, playing games, or starting your car. Because of this use in daily life, it makes mobile phones powerful marketing tools. If you want your business to thrive in today's society you need to incorporate mobile marketing.

How to Send a Text Blast

The easiest way to send a text blast is to use an SMS texting service or provider. Most services or providers will offer a free trial for your business to test it out and see if it is a good fit for your business. Most providers have different packages and options for SMS marketing services.

After you have chosen a provider and services, using SMS blasts is relatively easy. First, you upload a list of your opted-in individuals. Next, you write out messages customized for your business. Last, you send a text blast with your message to your contact list.

Why Use Text Blast?

The majority of customers are already on their mobile devices, so sending SMS text blasts is a great way to effectively reach your customers. There is no easier way to reach customers and grow your brand's reach. A lot of online traffic is through mobile phones, and customers have an easy, convenient way to access the internet from the palm of their hand. Even when customers are shopping in person, they often use their phones to make purchase decisions. The majority of people check their phones when they first wake up in the morning, and a text from your business regarding an exciting flash sale might be the first thing they see. These are all great reasons to use a text blast for your business.

Ways to Use a Text Blast

As a business or company, it is vital to create a conversation between your customers and potential customers. SMS marketing is the perfect way to continue a dialogue. When businesses send text messages, it leads to stronger brand loyalty, more orders, and connection to customers. Some ways to use text blasts to enhance your business are through appointment reminders, alerts, coupons, contests, and feedback.

If an important part of running your business includes scheduling appointments, you can benefit from incorporating SMS texting. Using texts for appointment reminders instead of an auto-dialer is more effective and can save a lot of time compared to making reminder calls manually. Several types of businesses can benefit from SMS messages for appointment reminders, such as: medical offices and spas, auto body shops, hair salons, and pet groomers. Sending appointment reminders benefits both the business and customer, because it is a simple and great way to improve your business.

Sending SMS blasts for alerts creates instant communication for a business and its customers. Alerts can be emergency alerts or non-emergency alerts. An emergency alert can be something that an individual needs to know or be aware of immediately. A non-emergency-related alert can communicate a change in business hours, scheduling changes, cancellations, or new products. Alert SMS text blasts are a way to communicate anything that a customer should be aware of.

A good way to grow your contact list is by sending SMS blasts for coupons and incentives. This is often done with a special discount. This can be a great way to bring in customers during a slower week or to make the customer feel like they are getting a personalized deal. Along with new customers, this is a good way to bring people back as repeat customers. Customers might not be thinking about your business or making a purchase when they receive a text blast with a discount code for a limited time. Suddenly, they decide to take advantage of the sale and make a purchase they otherwise wouldn't have.

Text blast software can be used to gather information about your business and target audience. Along with gathering the information you are also able to see the results easily. Asking customers what their favorite product is can give your business great insight into what your customers are buying, but also create a better connection between customers and your business.

While SMS text blast software is great for outbound messages, it is also able to receive inbound messages. Receiving inbound messages is a great way to get feedback from customers, or suggestions for ways to improve your business. It allows you to ask a question and actually receive feedback.

Examples of How Businesses are Using Text Blasts

Businesses use text blasts in several ways. Retail businesses can send out coupons, announce new products, and ask for feedback. Restaurants can advertise promotional offers, announce new menu items, and send out alerts for holiday hours. Schools can send out alerts to faculty and parents for weather delays or event details. Medical offices can send appointment reminders, ask for feedback, or alerts about patient test results. These are just some examples of ways different businesses can utilize text blast marketing, but with some creativity, the possibilities are endless.

Be Wary of Spamming

Due to the simplicity of implementing SMS marketing messages, you might be tempted to send an excess of text messages to your customers. It's exciting being able to easily contact them! But be wary, there are a lot of negative repercussions to spamming your subscribers. Sending spam text messages can ruin your business's reputation and customer loyalty. Text message spam can include texts that are designed to sell customers unwanted products, sending too many messages in a short period of time, sending the same information to the customer through multiple means of communication, or even texting a customer without their consent.

Spam messages are also used by hackers in an attempt to gather a customer's personal information by pretending to be a business, friend, or family member. If the customer engages with these messages, they risk the security of their information. Can you imagine if your customer thought they were engaging with your business only to discover that their personal information was compromised?

Another thing to watch out for when sending text blasts is to read over your messages for typos and grammatical errors. Messages that can be interpreted as spam are messages that are impersonal, come off as urgent, or offer something too good to be true. Here are some examples of messages that can be seen as spam from customers:

• sending a message about free money such as winning a contest that is not related to your business
• refunding notifications
• credit card offers
• a package delivery that is not related to your business
• asking for personal account numbers such as asking for a bank account number or login usernames and passwords
• sending financial help requisitions or help with student loans

The best practices when texting your customers are discussed in the next section and are a way to practice business texting etiquette. Following proper etiquette can help build a stronger relationship between a business and its customers along with preventing legal issues.

Text Blast Marketing Best Practices

While using text blast software for marketing for your business, you want to make sure to use best practices to fully benefit from it.

You want to communicate clearly what your customers can expect from subscribing to your SMS messages. Let your audience know what type of messages they will receive from your business. You don't want them to opt out of your services because they had different expectations when signing up for your SMS text message blasts.

It is important to pay attention to the frequency of messages you are sending out. You don't want to send a text blast all of the time. You want to aim to send messages at around 3-5 texts per month. Sending too many messages might make your customers develop a negative perception of your business.

One thing that you might not think about with text blasts is including disclaimers. The wireless communication industry requires any associations affiliated with them to include a disclaimer such as "msg & data rates may apply". If you are using text blast software you are able to create a disclaimer and add it to your automatic reply.

You also need to provide a way for customers to opt-out. Subscribers need to be aware that if the messages and context they are being sent are not what they were expecting they have the option to opt out. Customers might also no longer be interested, or have other reasons for wanting to opt-out. Doing this will help your business maintain a good brand identity.

Only send SMS blasts during normal business hours. It is courteous to your subscribers to only send messages during normal business hours. Sending messages at the right time can promote action from customers. This is usually the goal with sending messages--you want your efforts to have a response.

You want to make sure you are providing your subscribers with something of good value. Your customers are giving you permission to send them messages, and you want to make sure they are benefitting from them as well as your business. You want to make sure that you don't duplicate your campaigns, make each message you send different from previous messages, and switch up the type of text blasts you send.

What is the Difference Between a Group Text and a Text Blast?

Some customers might be confused by the differences between group texts and an SMS text blast. Both group texts and text blasts involve sending text messages to a large group of people at once; however, they are very different. There are about three big differences between sending a group text and using a text blast service.

The first difference is that group texts usually have a limit on the number of recipients you can send a message to. This would make sending massive text blasts very time-consuming. When you use text blast software, there is no limit to the number of people you can send a message to, which makes it an easier marketing strategy for businesses than group texting does.

The second difference is when someone responds to a group message the response goes to everyone in the group. When you use a text blast app or service, you won't have that happen. When people respond to a message sent with text blast services their responses are private, and you are able to respond to people individually without your response going to everyone in the group.

The third difference is the ability to opt-out of SMS blasts. You aren't able to leave a group text easily, and that can be really frustrating. With SMS blast service, businesses are required to have a way for people to opt out of their messages. Customers are able to simply reply to a text blast with single words such as stop, end, or cancel.

Final Thoughts on Text Blasts

A text blast is a business strategy that uses a text message to send information to a business's customers. Almost every business would benefit from a mobile marketing strategy. Along with businesses benefiting from text blasts, customers can also benefit. Customers are constantly on their mobile phone or have access to a mobile device, so it makes sense that marketing using a text message blast would be an effective way to grow an audience. Sending a text message blast is as easy as signing up with text blast services, creating a contact list, and sending your message.

Because using a text blast service and sending a text message blast is so easy, it is important to follow best practices and be courteous to customers. If you aren't using SMS blasts in your marketing strategy, get started today with Salesmsg.

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