How Text Blast Services Simplify Your SMS Marketing Strategy

With the increasing use of mobile phones, SMS marketing has become a powerful tool for businesses to reach their audience directly and personally. One of the main aspects of this revolution is the text blast service, a strategy that is changing the way businesses communicate with customers. 

Text blast services offer a unique opportunity to connect with customers using the device they use the most—their mobile phones. From promotions to appointment and event reminders, text blasts are used in numerous business sectors to reach their audience.

In this article, we will discuss how to use text blast services and ensure messages don’t just go out but actually get noticed.

Key Features of a Text Blast Service

Text message blasts tap into mobile phones’ SMS (Short Message Service) capability to ensure that messages reach recipients’ inboxes directly.

With text blasts, you can send promotions, alerts, and updates. Here are the features that make it effective for business communication:

Mass Sending

The main feature of any text blast service is its ability to send a single message to hundreds or even thousands of recipients at once. This mass-sending capability makes it a powerful tool for reaching a wide audience efficiently.

Text blasts can reach recipients even when phone calls, emails, and MMS messages do not.

Automation

Many text blast services offer automation features that allow businesses to schedule messages in advance or trigger them based on certain actions or dates. This can save time and ensure that communications are timely and relevant.

Personalization

Despite the nature of text blasts, personalization features make each recipient feel that text message marketing is customized for them. This could be as simple as including the recipient’s name in the message or more complex segmentation.

Why Use Text Blast Service?

Well, it all boils down to effectiveness and reach. Text messages have an impressive open rate and response rate compared to other forms of digital communication.

Let’s break it down:

Text messages have a 98% open rate and up to a 45% response rate, outperforming emails and social media. This makes them highly effective for immediate communication, like offers or updates.

While email has been the classic go-to for digital marketing and communication, its open rate hovers around 20-30% at best, and the average response rate is only about 6% or less. Emails can easily get lost in crowded inboxes or filtered into spam folders.

Although social media allows for broad reach, businesses’ engagement rate (likes, comments, shares) often sits below 1%. Plus, algorithms can make it hit or miss whether your audience sees your content.

Difference Between Group Texts and Text Blasts

Text blasts and group texts might get confused, so let’s see what the main differences between these two types of texts are.

Group Texts

This type of texts are more personal and ad hoc. They allow for quick messaging to a team, making this format ideal when quick feedback is desired.

They are usually sent to a smaller group of people, and the number of recipients is often restricted by the messaging platform or carrier limits.

This type of text often deals with internal communication within a team, customer service scenarios, or engaging a small group of clients in a more personal manner.

Text Blasts (Bulk SMS)

Text blasts are designed for sending a single message to a large number of recipients simultaneously. This communication channel is best suited for broadcasting information.

Unlike group texts, text blasts can reach thousands, or even millions, of recipients, so they’re highly scalable for large-scale communication needs.

As for privacy and control, each recipient receives the message individually. Replies, if enabled, are seen only by the sender.

SMS blast service is perfect for marketing campaigns, promotional announcements, alerts, and general information dissemination where individual feedback is not necessary.

How Can Businesses Benefit from Text Blast Services?

Retail

Retail businesses can use text blasts to inform customers about upcoming sales, exclusive deals, or new product arrivals. This encourages immediate action and drives foot traffic to their stores. 

Accounting and Tax

For accounting and tax services, text blasts are ideal for reminding clients about important filing deadlines or document submission dates. They can also be used to quickly inform clients about changes in tax laws or financial regulations that could affect their finances.

Health and Wellness

Health and wellness businesses can share health tips and vaccination reminders or alert clients about health crises or changes in operating hours.

Food and Restaurant Service

Restaurants can inform customers about special menus for holidays, events, or new dish introductions. Text blasts are also effective for promoting happy hours, discounts, or special dining events to drive more customers during slow periods.

Home Services

Home services can remind customers about regularly scheduled services or maintenance and allow them to respond easily via text. They can also inform customers about seasonal services or special discounts on home maintenance and repairs.

How to Send Text Blasts Using Textellent

Step 1: Sign Up with Textellent

You’ll need to sign up with Textellent. This will give you access to all the features you need to send text blasts.

Step 2: Integration (Optional)

Integrating Textellent with your existing systems can enhance your workflow. Textellent makes it easy to integrate, with options like a Chrome extension, Zapier actions, and APIs for a deeper connection with your in-house systems.

Gather your customer contacts. If you have a list of phone numbers from customers who’ve opted in to receive your texts, especially if you plan to send marketing text blasts, you’re ready to go.

Step 3: Create and Grow Your Text List

Next, you’ll organize your contacts into a list. Come up with a keyword—this is a special keyword that can be advertised to encourage people to text in to join your list. While a recipient can text a keyword into the business number, Textellent offers the ability to use a shortcode, which is a 5-6 digit number, which can simplify the whole process further. 

A shortcode is easy to remember and easy to promote in social media and advertising, which will help grow your list.

Step 4: Create Your Messages

Next, start crafting your text message blast. Keep it short and to the point. If you’re promoting something, make sure the offer is clear. Ensure the essential details are front and center if it’s an update or reminder.

Step 5: Audience Selection

Textellent allows you to segment your audience based on various criteria, such as past interactions or their expressed interest in SMS alerts.

Textellent’s Flexible and Multiple Tags for Contact Targeting guarantee that your messages are as relevant as possible. These tags can be based on the recipient’s interests, events they’ve attended, or how they opted into your messaging.

Step 6: Send Your Blast Messages

With your messages ready and your audience segmented, it’s time to send them out. You can choose to send messages immediately or schedule them for a later date. Messages can be triggered by specific actions your customers or prospects take.

Textellent also supports Automated Campaigns and Ready-made Templates to save you time composing the same message.

Step 7: Track Delivery and Engagement

Finally, monitor your messages’ performance. Textellent provides detailed reporting tools that track delivery status and measure engagement, such as response rates and conversions.

Best Practices for Text Blast Campaigns

Legal Considerations

Laws like the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) in the U.S. set strict rules for commercial texting, especially when businesses want to use texting for marketing. 

Key points include getting explicit consent from recipients before sending marketing texts and providing an easy way for them to opt-out.

Timing and Frequency of Messages

The timing of your messages can greatly influence their effectiveness. 

Avoid early mornings or late evenings. Mid-morning or early evening might be the sweet spot, depending on your audience.

How often you send messages is as important as when you send them. Too many messages can annoy your audience, leading to higher opt-out rates. 

A good practice is to keep it to what’s necessary and expected, whether once a week or once a month, based on the nature of your messages and audience preferences.

A/B Testing for Message Effectiveness

Try out different versions of your message to see what works best. This could be experimenting with different calls to action, message lengths, or even the tone of your messages.

Use metrics like open rates, click-through rates (if your message includes a link), and conversion rates to gauge which version of your message performs better.

Use the insights from your A/B tests to refine your future messages. Continuous improvement based on testing can significantly increase the effectiveness of your text blast marketing campaigns.

Simplify Your Text Blast Campaign with Textellent

Are you thinking about adding mass texting to your marketing toolkit? Explore Textellent’s features by signing up for a Free Trial or requesting a Demo consultation.

Discover how effortlessly Textellent’s Text Blasts can manage your appointments, roll out promotions, and personalize customer interactions. Start enhancing your customer connections with Textellent today!

Conclusion

Introducing text blasts into your communication with customers can make a big difference. It’s a simple way to share everything from special deals to important news, keeping you connected with your audience.

SMS messages stand out thanks to their simplicity and the fact that people tend to read them right away. If you’re looking to engage more with customers, a text blast service can be worth your while. 

They help you find simple, effective ways to communicate while maintaining a strong connection with your audience.

FAQs About Text Blast Services

What happens if a recipient changes their phone number?

If recipients change their phone number, messages sent to the old number will not reach them. Text blast software has mechanisms to detect undelivered messages and can update a phone number’s status as inactive.

How can I grow my text blast subscriber list?

You can grow your subscriber list by promoting your text word across your marketing channels, including social media, email newsletters, and website. Additionally, offering an incentive for signing up, like a discount or special offer, can encourage more sign-ups.

How much do text message blasts cost?

Text message blasts typically cost between $0.01 and $0.05 per message sent, depending on your chosen provider and plan. Different text messaging platforms offer various plans, so it’s wise to look around and find one that matches your budget and needs.