As the UK continues to ease lockdown restrictions and more businesses reopen, we’re finally starting to see what the post-Covid19 landscape looks like.
However, with a u-shaped recovery predicted for the UK, we’re told to expect a lingering effect over the coming months, before trade returns to normal.
During this time, it’s more important than ever before to ensure your business effectively communicates with both customers and employees. Ultimately, you’ll want to ensure your business stays top of mind to customers and that staff remain fully engaged.
With this in mind, we thought we’d outline a few back 2 work campaigns we’ve seen work really well over the past few weeks.
External campaign ideas
Reopening announcements
These messages are key to a business’ reopening success and they create a softer way to begin marketing to your customers again. As businesses are adapting to changing customer demand, even once open again, it can be difficult to keep track of what services are available, opening times, protocols for booking appointments and sessions etc.
A simple bulk SMS can update all of your customers within minutes and as you may already be aware, SMS benefits from an impressive open rate of 95%. What’s more, with Hubspot reporting an increase of 44% in email sends since lockdown began, utilising SMS is a great way to ensure your messages aren’t lost among the noise.
Market online and take-away services
During lockdown many businesses showed great creativity, reacting to the pandemic digitally. To name just a few examples, restaurants, cafes and bars introduced take-away options, beauticians ran online consultations and sent bespoke facial kits direct to customer homes and fitness businesses streamed sessions online.
As individuals may not feel 100% comfortable returning to a business’ premises, for example a store or gym, where online and take-away services have proved popular, it makes sense to continue offering them. For this, customers need to be aware of which services are available and any subsequent changes. For example, if your take-away service was launched with a limited menu, you might want to look at extending this.
To ensure customers know what is available and how they can book or place an order, we’d recommend using an SMS web page. After all, a picture says a thousand words and this allows you to go above 160 characters, which may be required to properly relay booking instructions.
Ask for customer feedback
As face-to-face interactions are limited at the moment, businesses will unfortunately be receiving far less feedback than usual. And this at a time, when businesses have had to implement far more changes than usual.
As feedback can be invaluable, it makes sense to simply ask your customers a few questions to gauge how these changes have been received and identify any areas for improvement. For example, you could ask customers whether there is anything more you could do to make them feel more comfortable about returning to your business premises, and if you are planning on extending or adjusting your opening hours, asking what would be most beneficial to customers, could enable you to make a more informed business decision. SMS surveys can be a great way to collate feedback from customers, as they are convenient, quick and boast an average click through rate of 19% vs just 4.2% of email.
Furthermore, we understand businesses may be very busy at the moment. So for those who think their business could benefit from customer feedback, but don’t have the time to organise this themselves, we are able to arrange managed surveys via our experienced team. For more details, simply email info@textmarketer.co.uk.
Internal campaign ideas
Make it fun
While we would always advise against over-communication with customers, with employees, especially at the moment, we’d advise the opposite.
Keep communicating.
The coronacoaster has impacted everyone differently. A recent survey found that 56% of adults in the UK, said that their mental health has deteriorated during lockdown. So campaigns aimed at boosting staff morale could really make all the difference. A bulk SMS asking staff members if they’d like to join the weekly ‘pub quiz’, could really help promote engagement and team interaction. What’s more, as the average response time to a text message is just 90 seconds, you can ensure the quiz master has plenty of time to prepare.
Provide transparent updates
In the aforementioned survey, the number one concern among recipients was redundancy. The economic impact of the pandemic is undeniable, and as such, businesses have a duty to make regular and transparent updates a priority. Often, there will not need to be a large amount of detail, so the humble SMS is an ideal choice. For instance, a quick:
Well done team, another fantastic week ending on a sales figure of x. Keep up the good work.
could work towards keeping staff motivated and reduce worrying. Moreover, as 90% of all text messages are read within just 3 minutes, utilising SMS, you can ensure these updates are sent, received and read, almost immediately.
Ask for staff feedback
This may seem obvious, but it is often overlooked in businesses. Have you asked your employees if they are happy with the changes implemented? Do they feel safe returning to the office? If not, is there anything you could implement to make them feel more comfortable? All of these questions are really important and could lead to invaluable feedback. With an SMS survey, you can quickly and easily gauge how employees are feeling and make sure your business remains proactive in supporting employee happiness and well being, through this difficult period.
As mentioned above, we appreciate businesses may be incredibly busy right now. So, if you are interested in implementing a campaign but would like some support on the creation or management, get in touch with one of our friendly team members at info@textmarketer.co.uk, they will be happy to help.