A look at replacing Email with Text Messaging for targeted announcements and reminders.
I love to mention 1800-flowers when I talk about positive customer contacts. After sending his mother flowers for her birthday, they sent Mark a reminder email next year saying "Mark, don't forget Greta's birthday next month. Order some flowers today and we'll make sure they arrive on time".
This was a great timely reminder, and had it not gotten lost in Mark's junk mail folder he'd have surely bought his mom some flowers instead of that Ipod shuffle that she never learned how to use.
With so many junk emails floating around today, it's no surprise that companies like AOL are looking for other ways to reduce spam. Reducing spam isn't the only problem though, it's also becoming much harder to filter out the legit email from the unsolicited email.
Email reminders will never really go away, especially when opt-in emails (in the case of 1-800 flowers) get decently high conversion rates.
Lately though, I've been wondering why more and more companies don't take customer contacts to the next level. With the email problem spiraling out of control it's time to look toward another solution. I'm talking about using text messages for targeted reminders.
Imagine if instead of his email, Mark got a text message to his phone saying "Don't forget your mom's birthday. Call us at 1800 Flowers or visit us online to view our birthday bouquets." If your customers are anything like me, they'll appreciate you for taking time to remember their mother's birthday. (If they're really anything like me, they'll have forgotten completely about it before getting your message)
Hospitals and doctors are starting to wise up, and it's working! They're using text messages to remind patients of their appointments. Patients sign up for the service, and a text message is sent a couple hours before the appointment reminding the. Since they've started using it, missed appointments have decreased by an average of over 30 percent.
Another great use of text messages is for alerts. Imagine getting a text message from ebay when your auction ends instead of an email, or even getting an alert on your phone when somebody posts a new comment on your ShoutWire story.
It's rare nowadays to see a teenager who's not text-messaging; what better way to get through to them than to send your message right to their phone?
If it's done right, the personality and targetability of text messages can really set you apart from the competition.
Sure there's a potential for abuse, but that potential has always existed and it doesn't seem to be as severe as the email spam.
If you want to try a text message reminder for yourself, you can use a websites like
TextMemos.com or
tothecell.com to send a timed reminder to your cell phone.