Here’s a fun fact. Did you know that the open rate for SMS is 98%? Sending personalised, targeted SMS messages helps you stay connected and engaged with your customers in a way that email can’t. Furthermore, with GDPR, changes to email software and the sheer volume of email being sent, the plateau of email open rates is unlikely to change anytime soon. If you aren’t already, you could be using mobile engagement to achieve targets for customer acquisition and retention as well as revenue growth and return on marketing spend, writes Ian Hales from Engage Interactive.
An effective channel for personalised, targeted offers and promotions, notifications and reminders, payments, surveys, NPS feedback, loyalty, and membership renewals; integrating mobile SMS to your customer journey alongside other channels such as email, social and in-app will help you achieve a cohesive cross-channel engagement solution. Mobile engagement can be used across most industry sectors including Finance, Retail, Hospitality, Charities/NFP, Education, Travel, and Entertainment.
Mobile statistics at a glance
• Internet usage is still dominated by millennials with over 90% spending time online daily.
• 75% of millennials use their smartphones to go online as often as their computers.
• Meanwhile, smartphone ownership is reaching its peak, and has peaked in the millennials sector with ownership at 95%, as reported by Deloitte Mobile Consumer Survey 2017.
• The current smartphone ownership by Australians is 88%, up 4% from the previous year, with the older generations being the key drivers to growth.
Customers are never more than a click or call away
The key to success for many brands is an emphasis on quality customer service, personalised play, innovative products, and thrilling promotions. With mobile messaging customers are never more than a click or call away to request information and support. Engage Interactive customers are using mobile engagement at key customer touchpoints including SMS confirmation of sign up, app download, PIN changes, and regular personalised, relevant, timely offers and promotions.
When it comes to achieving customer goals and targets, mobile engagement within the customer journey can be fully automated. The customer can personalise and target specific customer groups to deliver tailored content to their customers.
To ensure success with your mobile messaging, follow these tips:
1. Know your customer
2. Timing is everything
3. Personalise your message
4. Offer value
5. Be consistent with language, content and context
Mobile Engagement Customer Success Story
As one of the country’s leading health care providers, this customer provides a broad range of essential radiology services and is committed to providing the best service, care and clinical outcome for their patients. Their organisational values include service excellence, responsibility and accountability. Patient customer experience is central to everything and patient feedback is both valued and acted upon.
With hundreds of practices and thousands of patient appointments, the paper-based feedback process needed a digital transformation. SMS became the preferred channel for engaging with patients. A recent SMS survey to 30,000 patients resulted in 3,500 responses and valuable feedback and suggestions across all locations. The SMS survey campaign took only a few hours to send and within 24 hours results and feedback were already being collated.
The mobile channel has transformed customer feedback, in particular, the timeliness and accuracy of the information captured.
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility
There is a delicate balance that you should achieve to make the marketing effective and not intrusive. As they say, with great power comes great responsibility:
- Respect your customers right to privacy
- Message those who have given you permission to contact
- Send SMS between hours of 8am-8pm
- Only send messages that are relevant and offer value
- Always include clear opt-out instructions for all marketing campaigns
- Be upfront about who you are and never hide your identity
About Engage Interactive
Engage Interactive brings together the combined strengths of 2 teams with experience delivering effective Customer Engagement and Interactive Promotions. We reimagine engagement to allow customers to provide better personalised, targeted and relevant interactions with their customers any time, any place on any device via any channel.
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