How to Be a Text Marketing Super Hero

The quote “With great power comes great responsibility” has been attributed to everyone from Winston Churchill to Spiderman, and this relationship of power-to-responsibility is certainly true for text message marketing campaigns.

The “great power” of text marketing campaigns is made obvious when your customer grants you permission to contact them in the most direct and personal way possible. And the “great responsibility” starts with the FCC’s requirement to get prior consent before sending automated promotional texts.

The good news is that Mitchell 1 is here to help with some tips on text marketing best practices that will have you texting marketing like a super hero.

Texting Best Practices

Here are four steps to text marketing success.

1. Obtain Consent – Mitchell 1 has You Covered!

Before promotional texts can be sent, the law requires that you have “explicit” permission from the customer, and that this “consent” has been clearly documented. Mitchell 1 is committed to helping your shop obtain consent by sending customers an email requesting consent every 90 days.  When customers click the link in the email and agree to the promotional texting terms they become a part of your texting subscriber list.

Pro Tip: Talk with your customers about your texting program at the front counter. You can even manually send them a consent email on-the-spot from your SocialCRM auto repair shop marketing product.

2. Add an Element of Exclusivity

Consider what it means when one of your customers gives your permission to send them marketing texts. They’re giving you access to the most direct and personal way to reach them.

If your text campaigns are only providing the same promotions as your current email or website coupon then you’re not giving customers a reason to sign up and continue to subscribe to texting promotions.

Pro Tip: Successful texting campaigns offer exclusive value not offered elsewhere.

3. Be Consistent With the Number of Texts You Send

It’s probably obvious that sending too many texts is a bad thing, but what about sending too few texts? Since your customer has provided you with their consent to receive texts, they obviously expect to receive yours. Text them too infrequently and they may forget that they subscribed in the first place. Then months later when you send them a text they may respond to your text with “STOP,” removing them from your text subscriber list.

Pro Tip: Start by consistently sending one text campaign per month. This is likely within your customers’ expectations for receiving marketing texts from an aftermarket repair shop.

4. Make Sure You’re Responsive

Because 20% of customers read a text within one minute and roughly 90% read text messages within 30 minutes, you’ll want to send your campaigns during times when you’re prepared to respond. If you’re going to schedule a text campaign to be sent sometime in the future you’ll want to set yourself a reminder so that you remember to be available to respond at that future date and time.

Pro Tip: You can get notifications on your personal cell phone when a consumer responds to your text. The default is to receive an email notification with a link for responding, but you can also configure your SocialCRM auto repair shop marketing product so you receive a text on your personal cell phone while still keeping your cell phone number private.

For more details and to get started, talk to your SocialCRM support agent and read this blog post, Mitchell 1’s “Super-Secret” Texting Feature.

 

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About the Author

Brian Warfield

Brian Warfield is a Senior Product Manager for the Mitchell 1 SocialCRM product line. He has been in the automotive software business for over 20 years and has earned a degree in Marketing from the University of Cincinnati Business College.