Text Request Talks

3 Franchise Sales Events Tips with Just Between Friend’s Tracy Panase

Business texting can streamline how your franchise locations market their sales events, you just need the right tactics in place.

Here’s how to build a community around your franchise’s events with text messaging, so you can increase turnout and sales.

This article takes insights from our Text Request Talks podcast with Tracy Panase and further distills it into advice specific to texting. Panase is the CEO of Just Between Friends and worked as a franchisee for 15 years before she bought the company.

The following tips expand on how to generate hype around events like Panase does with text messaging.

Watch the full interview on YouTube.

1. Bring awareness to your brand on a local level.

Want to build a large community around your franchise’s sales events? Panase says you have to build a local presence first.

Online reviews are key to ranking first in local Google searches. The more reviews, especially positive reviews, your franchise locations have, the more likely you are to beat out competitors with little or no reviews.

Text Request’s Reviews feature can help your franchise locations:

Connect their individual Google Business pages to Text Request
Insert custom reviews links into your texts asking customers for feedback
Monitor and respond to oncoming reviews from inside Text Request

You’re more likely to increase turnout when previous attendees are sharing their great experience with others.

Use the positive reviews your franchisees gather by text to market your events to an even larger audience. You can quote the best reviews on your website and social media to further encourage people to join you.

2. Send mass texts to event attendees with clarity and a general cadence.

Consistent communication drives turnout. That’s why Panase has her locations use mass texts to share information and updates about the events.

Mass texts work like BCC email, so any responses become one-on-one conversations that potential attendees can use to ask additional questions about the event.

Start by promoting the previous attendees, since they’re the people who are most likely to jump on your event marketing. Send them mass texts:

Ahead of the event
Directly before the event
During the event
Last chance

Attendees want to know what to do and expect, so these texts should ideally include things, like photos of what the event space will look like, a map of where to park, an itinerary of events, reminders about event policies, and more.

Our Link Sharing feature lets you track click rates, so you can get an idea of engagement across your event-related mass texts.

For more detailed advice on timing text messages around your event, view 3 SMS Marketing Tips for Events with Dawn Pfannenstiel.

3. Share success stories with the rest of your franchisees.

Panase believes that franchisors benefit the most from knowing what’s working for locations that are hosting the most successful events. As a franchisor, you want to know what high-performing franchisees are doing differently that's working so well, and you want to make sure those ideas and processes are shared with your other franchisees, too.

Texting helps you bridge that gap, and create more profitable franchises. Panase regularly sets up community calls with all franchisees. You can do them same, and you can get people to show up by texting them the meeting link:

“This Friday we’ll have our monthly franchise recap meeting. Join the call here zoom.us/j/613 to learn strategies for your next sales event.”

You want your franchisees to run the most successful, profitable businesses they can. Text messaging makes it easy for them to get the resources to make their sales events the best they can be.

How Else Can Text Messaging Increase Event Turnout?

The above are just a few quick tips—but we also have 26 text templates for increasing event attendance that are ready to go for those who want to get started.

You spend a lot of time and money creating your event, and business texting is the #1 channel to drive engagement and participants to it.