Text Marketing Ideas and Regulations to Grow Your Business

All right, welcome back to The Daily Mastermind. George Wright III here with your daily dose of inspiration, motivation, and education. Today we're going to be talking business. I know we've been doing a lot of that lately, but I really want to get tactical and strategic with you. I want to give you real practical things you can do in your business. Now, a couple of weeks ago, or at least over the last couple of weeks, I've talked to you about text marketing and text messaging. It's such a huge way to be able to grow your business in a very inexpensive way with huge open rates. And I talked to you about the benefits of text marketing. I've talked to you about quick tips on getting started. Today, what I want to do is I want to talk to you about a couple of key things, best practices. And I also want to even give you some ideas of what you can do with text messaging. Now, you have to understand the basics of text marketing, but in order to do that, ultimately you have to make sure you stay on top of regulations and related to these you know things for text messaging and strategies you've got to know what you can do and what you can't do so let's talk about sms or text marketing in general i want to remind you that 98 of all texts are opened you know 90 of those texts are read within you know the first three minutes so if you have a business or you have clients or you're building a brand this is an amazing way for you to be able to communicate with your clients or your prospective leads and things like that. But what do you need to be concerned with when it comes to compliance? Well, the TCPA regulations, which is the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, is a set of regulations that were implemented by the FTC or the FCCs rather in order to protect consumer privacy and sort of reduce that spam and telemarketing type stuff. And so it is the body that really governs certain types of automated calls and texts and faxes. So by remaining compliant, you'll need to make sure that you know what you can do and how you can do things. And that's what those TCPA regulations are. So keep in mind with text messaging, you've got super high open rates. You've also got really good conversion rates because if you send customers a text message, as long as it doesn't feel too spammy, you're going to offer them this personalized touch. And that makes customers more inclined to read your message and to take advantage of your services. And in addition to that, you're going to get a wide instant delivery process because 71% of marketers really have believed and shown that mobile marketing is a key for their business And so you want to follow those trends And you know that partly because smartphone usage has skyrocketed And if the text messages that your organization is sending out don't comply with TCPA regulations, then you could be getting some fines. So make sure you check into those and you really, you do the right thing. So I want to talk to you just about a couple of best practices and things that will help you to follow those regulations. And then also give you a couple of ideas of what to do so you can have some practical tips to go with. The first is get permission before sending messages. The first and most important rule of text marketing is you've got to be able to get permission. This means ensuring that your customers have opted into your list for messages. If you don't have permission, your customers are likely going to put you to spam and you could receive some big fines. So always get an opt-in. Second, be clear about your program. when you opt people in make sure they know exactly what they're subscribing to is it product offers is it your you know updated communication the intent of your program or your messages should be clear and you should set the expectations just write a quick sentence or two about what they're signing up for and then you'll cover your bases also don't send too often no one wants to get spammed with text messages so be selective in what you're doing and always include disclaimers now the CTIA is an international non-profit trade association that represents the wireless communications industry and they're the source for many of the SMS marketing best practices and it's also there to govern kind of short code texting if you've ever texted those you know short code numbers rather than an 800 number and they require you to include message and data rates may apply quote unquote so always include that message and data rates may apply in your initial opt-in language. This disclaimer just tells subscribers that they're joining your list and receiving future messages would count towards whatever they're doing. It's really important that you include that in any kind of a text opt-in that you have. Also, just like with email, you've got to provide an exit. People have got to be able to opt out of your program at any time. You can use words like text stop or unsubscribe or end or cancel in order to get out. And then that gives them the opt-out option. Also, it's real important, text during regular business hours. Don't get yourself in trouble by texting all night long or in the middle of the night. Put your regular business hours in there that you'll be sending these messages and then provide value. That the most important thing I could tell you Make sure that every text is sent with packed in value Don be wordy Don send stuff that people don want to read Be intentional with what you doing because text marketing can be an extremely powerful tool but only when it done right, right? So let me give you a couple of options and ideas and ways that you can use text and SMS marketing because when it comes to marketing, there's a million different options, but among the most productive ones, I'll kind of give you a short list, are going to be things like, for example, coupons and discounts. One of the most popular ways to use text or SMS marketing is to offer coupons and discounts. It's going to increase your sales or you could do campaigns. Also, what about product announcements? You can announce new products or services. This is a quick and easy way to reach out to your customers and let them know that there's something new to take advantage of. You can also do text to win competitions. This allows customers to enter a contest by simply responding to your text or entering a keyword. And you can use random generators to choose winners when you do stuff like that. And it's a great way to increase engagement, loyalty, and all kinds of other things. And that brings me to another one, loyalty programs. Did you know that 75% of customers would actively engage with a loyalty program if it were accessible through their mobile device? That's stats given to us by some really reputable sources. And they work by basically encouraging customers to make purchases or referrals or rewarding them with free products. But loyalty programs will also build long-term relationships with your customers. Another thing you can do with text messaging is you can use it for customer service purposes. This is a quick and easy way to kind of resolve any concerns. And customers will know that you're serious and you really want to get with them quickly. Another thing you can do with businesses is alerts or notifications. I love to do this when I publish new blog posts or new podcast episodes. When you do these alerts and notifications, people love to get those because you can click a link and go right to where you want to be. But be concise and be specific. The other thing that just works the best is personalized text messages. If you can do this once in a while where it's personalized, then people are going to feel that extra touch. It's definitely better than mail or email and so I highly recommend it. But this was just sort of a crash course quick data dump that I wanted to give you so that you could be compliant and also get a bunch of ideas to use for messaging. But here's really the objective of this episode. I want you to think out of the box What you got to remember and realize is that there are trends in the marketplace Most of you are familiar with social media trends but what works today may not work tomorrow and vice versa So what you've got to realize is that mobile consumption is on the rise. People are going to be accessing and actually prefer to access through mobile. In fact, a lot of the stats show that most people would rather purchase through their mobile interface than to even go to a store. Second, text messaging. Text messaging is definitely on the rise. You're going to get better penetration of your list. You're going to get better response and open rates. And then if you also add into that video, video, which we'll talk about in future episodes, is a highly effective way to convert. So when your text message is linked to core videos of your products or services or values or personalized messages, that's going to make it even more powerful. But these are things that if you'll adopt those strategies, you'll adopt these channels, I think you're going to find that whether it's communication, acquiring leads, converting leads, capturing, increasing lifetime value, or even converting your product sales, text messaging can be a huge value for you and a huge asset to your organization. So that's my message for today. I hope it's something that benefits you and helps you. I look forward to talking with you. If you have any questions related to that, I might not be able to answer all your questions but I can certainly direct you to the right people. I surround myself with great teams of individuals. We've got some great tech tools. In fact, if you go to epipe.io, it's E-P-Y-P-E dot I-O, epipe.io, there's a great new tech tool which allows you to do digital NFC business cards and tech messaging and product conversions. Now, as a listener of the podcast, I can actually get you a free digital business card. so don't sign up on the website but I'm connected and I'm doing some marketing for these guys and so if you want to get a free digital NFC card just hit me up in my DM or email me obviously you guys can email me always at george at g3worldwide.com or hit me up on thedailymastermind.com and I'll definitely hook you up I know I've just opened the floodgates my episode producer is probably going to give me a hard time for that but I don't mind it I love helping if there's anything I could do for you please share this message. Please like and subscribe the podcast. I look forward to doing more for you in the future. And once again, this was a tactical episode, but I hope it's something that gave you value. My name is George Wright III. This has been The Daily Mastermind. Have a great day.