The Benefits of Sending SMS Order Updates and How to Anchor Them to Your Digital Strategy
Automated SMS order and status updates have plenty of benefits. Learn what these benefits are and how to include SMS in your digital strategy.
Using an effective communication channel is important in today’s busy business environment. It is the way to stand out from the crowd and attract, engage, and keep customers loyal. But, when customers order from you, using the right communication channel becomes imperative.
This is where SMS shines.
Even in today’s digital world, SMS remains one of the best channels to reach customers. Why? One good reason for that is the fact that the average consumer checks their phone 160 times a day. Another good reason is the fact that 46% of consumers agree to check their smartphones before they even got out of bed. So, since everybody has a smartphone in their pockets these days, 4.88 billion active smartphone users (61,85% of the world’s population), it simply makes sense to reach your customers through text messages.
Now, SMS is a great tool to use for many marketing goals, from promotion to increasing website traffic, and attract more buyers to your business location. Another purpose SMS can help you achieve is keeping in touch with your customers after they’ve bought from you to have them come again and again.
SMS Order Updates Explained
First things first, before we dig deeper into the benefits of SMS order updates, let’s make sure we’re on the same page with what they are.
SMS order updates are nothing more than texts a business sends to customers to inform them about the status of a purchase they’ve just made. SMS order updates can inform a customer:
- That their order has been received
- The order has been confirmed
- The order has been shipped
- The order has new route updates
- The order has been delivered
- The order has been returned
In other words, SMS order updates tell your customers everything that is new about an order they’ve placed online.
Benefits of Sending SMS Order Updates to Customers
Now you know exactly what SMS order updates can tell your customers. But, you may be wondering, “Why SMS?”. Well, there are many reasons why your company should use SMS for order status and updates rather than other communication channels.
Most order notifications today are sent by brands though email. Yet, email is not the most efficient or effective channel to provide instant notifications. SMS order updates are a different story. Using SMS as communication channel to inform your customers about their orders has plenty of benefits, including:
SMS gets seen by customers
Just like mentioned above, today’s smartphone users are very attached to their devices, checking it hundreds of times every day, even before they start their day properly.
In contrast, people check their emails daily, but only about 20 times a day. Significantly fewer times when compared to 160 times, the amount of times people check their phones. Besides being a channel that gets checked very frequently by consumers, data shows that SMS order notifications have a staggering open rate of about 98%.
That being said, your company has significantly more chances to have its SMS order updates seen compared to order notifications sent on email.
SMS is instant
Another good reason to use SMS to send order updates to your customers is the fact that SMS is instant. Any customer who has just handed over their money for a product or service is eagerly waiting to get news about what they’ve just purchases. In such cases, there’s no more time-efficient communication tool than SMS.
Data shows that 90% of SMS texts get read within three minutes after being sent. Your paying customers will surely be grateful for your instant updates on their order.
SMS feels more personal
SMS is one of the most personal communication channel for consumers because they use texts to stay in touch with their loved ones. Besides that, smartphones are very personal devices, compared to computers, for example. So, when you use SMS to offer order updates, you’re giving your company’s voice a more human touch with every order placed by a customer.
SMS is smartphone friendly
It may sound obvious, but SMS is a very smartphone-friendly communication channel. Websites, social media, apps, these aren’t always properly optimized for mobile devices, which leads to poor user experiences.
In contrast, SMS is an integral part of mobile devices. Texts have been with mobile devices since forever and that’s what consumers associate them best with. So, it simply makes sense to use one of the most smartphone-friendly communication channel to offer order status and updates.
SMS doesn’t need Internet connection
Email, social media messaging, and websites all require consumers to have an Internet connection to get the message. But, that’s not the case for SMS text.
Sometimes, smartphone users turn off their Internet data to save battery. Others simply travel outside of areas with 3G or 4G coverage. This is where SMS shines, overcoming these techy challenges.
Customers don’t need to have their smartphones connected to the Internet to receive your texts, as it is with email, for example. So, SMS is a great offline communication channel.
SMS order updates will be very much appreciated
Informed customers will be happy customers. Think about it: imagine you are a customer who just spend hard-earned money on a product or service but received no sorts of order confirmation notification. Wouldn’t that be annoying? We’re sure it would be.
Similarly, customers who buy from you will really appreciate that you made an effort to confirm to them that their order has been placed/ received/ confirmed/ delivered.
SMS allows you to reach customers when they are still in buy mode
After placing an order on your online store, consumers are very likely still hanging around for a few couple of minutes on your website. They sometimes do so to wait for your confirmation. Other times, they are still scrolling through your products/ services. Either way, they sure are in their “buy mode”.
Using SMS, as an instant and very effective communication channel, allows you to reach your customers when they are still willing to spend some money on your products/ services.
SMS saves you money and time
You know what they say, “a penny saved is a penny earned”. In other words, the money you save add up to your profit numbers at the end of the month. Well, SMS order notifications can help you save a lot of pennies.
SMS is the cheapest and most accessible channel of communication. Bulk text messages cost brands significantly less than using other marketing channels. What’s more, thanks to SMS order updates plugins for Woocommerce, these texts can be automated and it takes only a couple of seconds to send SMS notifications to a customer.
SMS allows future marketing opportunities
Last but not least, a good reason to use SMS order updates is the fact that it allows future marketing opportunities. More precisely, consumers will not be so bothered to receive promotional texts from you if they already have an open communication with your contact on their smartphone since you’ve sent them SMS order updates in the past. They will know who your brand is and will be more engaged with your texts than they would normally be if they’ve never received a message from you before.
Tips to Anchor SMS Order Updates in Your Digital Strategy
Speaking of how SMS order updates open the door for future marketing opportunities, let’s see how you can properly use such texts in your digital strategy.
SMS is considered a traditional marketing channel. But, this doesn’t mean that there’s no connection between it and your digital strategy. It’s all about how you use it.
Think about it: as a general rule, it is considered wise to combine traditional and digital marketing strategies because this gives you access to a larger audience base, offer you better brand awareness, and helps you get your marketing to work in sync.
The good news is that offline and online can easily be merged for outstanding marketing results. Here’s how to anchor SMS order updates to your digital marketing efforts.
Don’t forget to mention your brand’s name
After just placing an order on your online store, it’s very likely that customers will know that the “order confirmation” message comes from your company. Yet, even so, you should not forget to mention your business’s name.
You want your customers to keep in mind that it was YOUR business who made an effort to keep them updated with the news on their order. You also want them to remember that it was YOUR business who provided them with great customer experience. Plus, they should know that it was YOUR business who provided them with an amazing product/ service. So, make sure to mention your business’s name in your SMS order updates
Mention your online store
Another thing you can do with your SMS order updates is to bring back customers in your store while they are still in their buy mode. Get your customers back on your online store by mentioning your platform in your SMS order updates.
You can include a link to your website, asking your customers to visit it again. Since they’ve already interacted with your business and you did the effort of keeping them informed about their order, they will be much more interested in your message, including your website copy.
Include links to your social media
SMS order updates can also be anchored to your social media strategy. All you have to do is to add links to your social media accounts and invite recipients to visit and interact with your business there.
If your marketing goals are to increase your social media following base, to attract more engagement to your posts, and to gain more credibility by building a social media community, this strategy will help.
After you notify your customers about the latest news about their orders, you can use this moment to invite them to further interact with your brand on other digital channels, such as your social media. If your business did its job of providing good customer experience so far, the chances to get more visits on your social media accounts are very high.
End your messages with a CTA
Last but not least, all messages you send to your customers, whether SMS or using other channels, need to end with some really engaging call-to-action phrases. When receiving your SMS order updates, customers will stick to reading what is going on with their orders. That’s unless you tell them to do something different.
More precisely, if you want your customers to revisit your website, engage with you on social media, subscribe to your newsletter, or any other action that will help you reach your business goals, tell them, loud and clear.
For example, if you want customers to follow you on social media, you CTAs will sound something like, “Follow us on *insert link to your social media account*”. If you want them to revisit your website, remind them the name and link to your online store with a CTA like “visit our website on *insert link to your website*”.
Be sure to include CTAs in your SMS order updates to ensure that customers will do what you want them to do next after reading your message.
Bottom line
SMS order updates have plenty of benefits, especially when compared to other channels some brands use to notify their clients about their orders. SMS is instant, requires no Internet connection, has very high engagement rates, and feel very personal to today’s customers. Although it is a traditional communication channel, SMS can easily and efficiently be anchored to your online strategy by simply redirecting your clients to those places where you are present in the digital.
CTA:
Keep Customers Updated On Order Status with Global Voice!
