With B2B SMS messaging, you can create a highly personalized customer experience while easily balancing multiple accounts. SMS text message open rates are as high as 98%, compared to 20% for email. Therefore, it's essential for businesses to include instant messaging such as SMS in their B2B marketing.
SMS text message marketing reaches people directly without interrupting them, prioritizing the customer’s convenience. This makes consumers more open to receiving and engaging with your marketing messages and more likely to convert into paying customers.
B2B SMS Marketing Examples That You Need to Know
1. Lead Generation
While nurturing your existing client relationships is essential for sustainable growth, so is finding new customers. However, you need to be strategic about looking for new leads to avoid wasting time and resources.
Many experts have said the “golden window” for responding to a lead is just five minutes. If a client has to wait longer than that to hear back from your business, they will likely look for another option.
A great way to connect with leads is to create a sign-up form on your website so visitors can opt-in to your SMS marketing list. Once you have an audience, you can schedule text messages or configure auto-reply messages, so your leads don’t need to wait for a response.
2. Order Management
Staying on top of your orders is an integral part of your everyday operations. Using SMS text messages to update your customers about their orders enables them to reach out with any questions about your products and services.
With two-way SMS, you can receive and reply to text messages on one platform. This enables you to interact with your audience in real-time, improving the customer experience and driving conversions.
In addition, once you establish a personal relationship with a client via SMS, you will seem more like a friend than an anonymous brand, resulting in better upselling opportunities.
3. Appointment Scheduling
Automating your appointment schedule means that your team can focus on other high-level tasks like collaborating with your clients. Instead of manually scheduling appointments, SMS marketing uses peer-to-peer campaigns that enable your business to have conversations with prospective leads and schedule private appointments, improving the business communication.
Although appointment scheduling via SMS is an automated process, we recommend crafting your messages like you’re having a conversation with the recipient. Consumers prefer talking to human operators over automated systems, so using a friendly tone will keep them engaged with your messages.
4. Reminders
Most B2B sales leads have busy calendars that don’t leave much room for error. With B2B text messaging, you can schedule reminder text messages before a meeting, webinar, or payment deadline to ensure your recipients won’t miss any time-sensitive messages.
5. Follow-Ups
Similar to reminders, you can automate follow-up messages whenever you’d like. By following up with leads and existing customers, you’re refreshing their memory so your brand stays on their minds.
Drip campaigns are a common way to follow up with subscribers. A drip campaign consists of multiple time-based texts scheduled over a specified period. For example, you could create a series of three texts sent out over a month, or you could schedule a daily text that goes out every day for two weeks.
6. Auto-Responders
Auto-reply messages are a powerful tool for B2B businesses working with multiple clients at a time. For example, remember the five-minute “golden window” to respond to a message from a sales lead? That’s where auto-responders come into play.
You can easily set up automatic replies according to keywords or phone numbers with an SMS marketing platform. For example, a real estate office can configure automated responses based on the address in the message and connect the lead with the real estate agent overseeing that particular listing.
7. Content Sharing
Getting subscribers for your SMS marketing list is easy, but they’ll only stick around if you give them a reason. So instead of waiting for your subscribers to reach out, send them valuable content exclusive to SMS subscribers, like a guide to using multi-factor authentication, to drive traffic to your website.
Pro tip: Segment your SMS subscriber list based on interest, which you can add to your sign-up form. With this method, you’ll ensure that your messages offer value to an interested audience instead of ending up in their unreads.
8. Customer Surveys and Feedback
Providing a great experience one time isn’t enough to build a loyal customer base that will sustain your business long term. To learn what your clients want, conduct surveys or polls to collect customer feedback.
Many SMS marketing platforms have built-in polling and survey features that allow customers to share their feedback in just one short text message. A user-friendly SMS marketing software will also help your business find a better, faster ROI for your marketing strategies.
9. Announcements
You can use B2B text messaging to send text blasts announcing upcoming product releases or messages targeted to a specific audience segment. In addition, SMS marketing platforms can send out high message volumes daily, so you can rest easy knowing your subscribers will receive your intended marketing messages.
Getting Started with SMS Marketing for B2B
CM.com’s communication platform is for businesses that want to start conversations with their clients. Many B2B companies use SMS as part of their overall marketing strategy to reach out to their customers. With our fast and reliable SMS Gateway API or our omnichannel marketing software Mobile Marketing Cloud, you can create superior customer experiences that drive engagement and convert leads. Don't hesitate, start sending out SMS to your customers now!
