Texting may be the best marketing technique for the digital age: It’s quick, direct, cost-effective, and can be easily personalized.
“It’s really the fastest way from Point A to B,” said Marc Hansen, senior director of field marketing at Podium, a software company focused on customer relationship management (CRM) and electronic payments technology.
“There’re not many marketing tactics that you can pull the trigger today and it’ll pay off tomorrow,” said Crystal Williams, the founder of Lemon Seed Marketing, a marketing consulting firm with a focus on home services businesses.
Texting campaigns, said Williams, can cost less than a dime per message and the payoff in higher sales is typically on the order of five times the marketing investment.
“Everyone should have texting on their radar,” she said.
Hansen, who was joined by Isaiah Rendorio, a Podium product marketing manager, during an ACHR NEWS webinar on text-message marketing, said text messages have an open rate of 98%, compared to 42.2% for direct-mail marketing fliers and just 18% for emails. Some 95% of text messages are opened within three minutes of being received, Hansen said.
Text campaigns, Hansen added, have a higher response rate than phone, email, or Facebook campaigns.
A typical click-through rate for a text-message campaign to established customers who haven’t patronized the business for a while, Williams said, would be between 15% and 20%. “Twenty-five percent, that would be a win,” she added.
To compare, email campaigns average a click-through rate of just 2.6%, said Hansen, and direct-mail campaigns have response rate averaging less than 2%.
“SMS (short message service) or text-message marketing is an incredible channel to leverage in your marketing mix to really drive sales,” Hansen said.
However, said Rendorio, texting remains a largely untapped resource: Only 12% of local businesses use texting as part of their marketing. But changing consumer expectations favor texting, he said, pointing to the popularity of tech-driven services like Uber, DoorDash, and Nexflix, which, he said, offer speed, personalization, and convenience.
“Convenience is king and, ultimately, that means texting,” he said.
Williams, in a phone interview, and Hansen and Rendorio, in their webinar, offered some do’s and don’ts for HVACR contractors who are planning to market via text messaging.
 
 
Matt Jachman is the legislation editor at the ACHR NEWS. He has 30-plus years of experience in community journalism and a bachelor’s degree in English from Wayne State University in Detroit.

You must have JavaScript enabled to enjoy a limited number of articles over the next 30 days.
Sponsored Content is a special paid section where industry companies provide high quality, objective, non-commercial content around topics of interest to the ACHR News audience. All Sponsored Content is supplied by the advertising company. Interested in participating in our Sponsored Content section? Contact your local rep.
On Demand In this webinar, we go through the recent updates on R-290 natural refrigerant, and the impact it will have on the HVACR industry.
Learn about Trane’s newest light commercial rooftop unit and split system features, capabilities, and DOE requirements. 
Copyright ©2023. All Rights Reserved BNP Media.
Design, CMS, Hosting & Web Development :: ePublishing

source