Sales increased over 19% by simply sending a follow up thank you text message to customers.

Further to our article, Top 5 Tips for increasing sales using Bulk SMS, one of our customers RoughTrax (a mail order supplier of Toyota Hilux parts) decided to follow our Number 1 Tip …. follow-up text messages to customers after a sale.

We asked Barry Hemmings, Director at RoughTrax how it worked for him and these are the figures he gave us;

• We send out around 1,000 orders a week and followed up each an every sale 2 days after delivery with a text.
• At that volume, using Text Marketer’s Bulk SMS system, it cost £49+VAT per week
• About 10% of the customers we sent a text to called back up and made additional orders.
• RESULT: 19.23% increase in the total sales value of those customers we sent the text to – Fantastic!

There are other advantages to doing this too – positive word of mouth increases when you follow up a sale with a thank you message – resulting in more sales from brand new customers.

RoughTrax sent the following message, “Thank you for your recent order. If you need anything in addition within 7 days we will give you a 5% discount. Regards, RoughTrax. 0117 986 9065.”.

Why not test the same concept on a group of your customers for a few weeks and see if you can achieve the same fabulous results? You can get a free Bulk SMS account here and our minimum purchase is only £10+VAT (giving you 204 text message credits) – why not try it on 204 customers for example!? If you had a 19% sales value increase from 204 customers, would it be worth more than a tenner?

Text messages get straight to your customer, wherever they are.

Having been in the business for over a decade now, we have seen just about every type of Bulk SMS Marketing strategy, with varying levels of success. The one common denominator between all the strategies employed is that companies who embrace this relatively new (for businesses anyway) communication channel is that they are almost always successful.

Often the first thought when people hear, “business text messaging” is, OH NO, you’re not going to be one of those spammers are you!?
True, in the past Bulk SMS for businesses usually consisted of getting a big list of mobile numbers and sending them all a spam SMS message! Nowadays though, the law and the savvy UK customer has caught up with these rogue companies and they are virtually non-existent.

In fact, here are some recent “Business Texting Fast Facts”

• 65% of people send business text messages from their mobile phone on a daily basis
• 50% of people receive business text messages from a member of their team/ department/ office
• 47% of people receive business text messages from a colleague
• 36% receive business text messages from a customer or client
• 71% of people use business texts for setting ‘reminders of meetings and appointments’
• 18% of people used business texts for ‘notifying people about new meetings and appointments’
• 14% of people use business text for ‘chasing up suppliers or new orders’
• A third of respondents (36%) said that they receive text messages from a customer or client
• 11% of people receive text messages from suppliers.

So, what are the most effective ways to gain increased sales using Bulk SMS?

In reverse order of success rating;

Number 5
Start a text club. Allow people to text in to a keyword to receive special offers from you by text message.

Number 4
Keep a customer informed during the order process. Text them when you have received the order, when payment has been taken & when it has been despatched with a delivery time estimate. This has been proven to dramatically increase repeat orders and positive word of mouth.

Number 3
Text enable your adevrtising. Allow people to respond by texting you. On average around half of respondents will choose to do so if you include a text response on your advertising and often those people wouldn’t have responded so you increase response rates.

Number 2
Text lapsed customers. Try to get a list of customers from your database who haven’t bought for X months and text them out an offer to encourage them back to you. So long as they had a good experience last time, this is one of the fastest ways to gain new sales.

And, in at Number 1 …..
Follow up your sales. Customers like nothing more than to be assured they have made the right choice buying from you. Text them X days after the sale thanking them for their business and offering a number to call if they need any help or anything further. We have seen this increase recall rates, increase repeat purchase and hugely increase positive word of mouth amongst peer groups – essentially free advertising!

Take a look at a few SMS Marketing Case Studies for other ideas but if you do only the 5 above, you’ll notice immediate results and sales increases.