Boosting SMS Marketing Effectiveness Through Human-Centered Texting

People crave human connections, even when talking with a business. Since texting is already a more personal way to communicate, it’s even more important to create a human-centered texting experience. That leads to stronger relationships and customer loyalty.

Use these 4 tips when texting leads and customers to keep it human-centered.

1. Personalize messages 

If your SMS marketing has low engagement, it’s likely because you aren’t being personal enough. Impersonal texts often sound like a bot and don’t capture customers’ attention.

The most basic thing you can do? Include the recipient's first name. But that’s the bare minimum.

Tailor messages to each customer, considering their preferences, interests, and needs.

Reference this sort of customer information to clearly show the message was intended just for them:

• Favorite product/product repeatedly purchased
• Most recent purchase/purchase history
• Interests and preferences
• Context of feedback and reviews
• Demographics (age, gender, location, job)
• Loyalty status
• Previous text message responses

2. Have conversations

Have actual conversations by using conversational language to text your leads and customers. Blasting out generic messages doesn't create a connection and doesn’t show that you understand their problems and needs.

Basically, text them as you would a friend and show your personality in your messages. You want to get a response, keep the interaction going, and build a genuine relationship. Follow these general rules for starting and continuing a two-way conversation:

• Avoid writing long messages (it’s not email) 
• Don’t use corporate or marketing jargon 
• Keep messages short and to the point
• Ask questions to encourage them to reply 

Short, focused messages that include a question give leads and customers something to care about and focus on. Make it worth their time and effort to respond by asking specific questions you wouldn’t clearly already know the answer to. That gets people invested in the conversation. 

When you do these things, customers will respond and engage with your messages rather than ignore them because you actually sound like a person trying to talk with them, not at them. 

3. Build customer relationships 

A huge component of texting like a human is having a genuine relationship with the people you text. One way to do this is to directly ask for feedback to understand how customers feel about your business, what you sell, and additionally, their overall texting experience. 

Ask customers for their thoughts and ideas on your newest product release, customer service, product features, etc. and use their feedback to make changes.

Stay in touch and routinely start genuine conversations. Doing so makes it easier to talk about future purchases or potential upgrade options without sounding too salesy. 

By building authentic relationships, you take advantage of opportunities to wow customers, boost sales, and build loyalty because people buy from people, not businesses. 

4. Be responsive with your follow-up

Respond quickly to any incoming texts or inquiries from both leads and customers. No one wants to be or feel like they’re being ghosted. Reply in real-time as often as possible to make sure you sound like an actual person. 

As much as we’d like it to be, this responsive follow-up isn't sustainable on your own. You can't manually follow up with every single new subscriber or customer as they come in.

Automating your outreach is the best way to effectively scale your communication efforts. Use automation to keep conversations going and to create real-time conversations for times when you can't be there to manually hit send.

A lot of text messaging outreach can be automated, like when you want to…

• Connect with leads who visited your website
• Send appointment reminders
• Share relevant educational content
• Offer coupons/discounts

Be a human brand

At its core, a human-centered texting experience puts the customer first. It's about understanding your customers, sending them meaningful and relevant messages, and creating an overall experience that’s enjoyable. 

Businesses use Skipio’s automated messaging tools to engage customers sooner and more consistently. By starting two-way text conversations and building personal relationships, teams see lasting, repeatable success with sales and retention.

Texting is a proven method for reaching out and following up with customers — Skipio makes it easy for you to do just that.

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