Playbook
Retail Text Messaging
Text messaging is your retail business’s golden ticket for building your brand and increasing customer loyalty through SMS marketing. We’re going to show you how.
While most retailers think of one-way SMS marketing promotions when they think SMS—two-way conversations are also common and highly effective. We'll cover each.
The advice in this playbook can also apply to both e-commerce and brick-and-mortar retail stores. Ready to build subscriber lists, increase sales, and drive traffic through the #1 channel for customer engagement?
5 Essentials Before Your Retail Business Starts Text Messaging
1. A list of customer phone numbers to contact.
Collecting customer phone numbers ongoing is probably already one of your retail store’s priorities. If not, all it takes is adding a step to request customer numbers at your digital or brick-and-mortar checkout.
Put your existing contacts into a spreadsheet to upload to Text Request. Organize this spreadsheet by:
Cell phone numbers in column A
Client names in column B
Any desired merge fields in the following columns (last purchase, birthday, number of VIP points, etc.)
If you don't know which of your customer phone numbers are cell vs. landline numbers, you can reach out to our Text Request support team to clean landline numbers from your list. That way you know who you still need to contact for mobile numbers.
This is the first step to setting your retail business up for SMS success.
2. A plan for multi-channel communication.
Text messaging is going to help you increase your customer base and boost your ability to share promotions. You need software in place to help you organize all of your new contacts and promotion scheduling.
We rarely recommend replacing all your channels with just text messaging. The following tools can also be useful for your retail business:
HubSpot: Everything you need for marketing, sales, content management, and customer service in one place
Constant Contact and Mailchimp: Email marketing tools to keep customers in the loop for new products and promotions
Quickbooks: Auto-tracks income and expenses
Square: Handy point of sales system
Zapier: Creates automations based on a customer’s behavior, like when they make a new purchase
We have integrations with each of these software and more, so your new text messaging capabilities can mix right in.
3. Established communication roles.
Business texting can strengthen many aspects of your retail business, but you need to know who will manage it and for what purpose.
Consider the people who are already in charge of:
Later we'll show you how to create processes for each of these.
4. Ongoing deals and content to share.
You want customers to come back again and again and again. To make that happen, you have to give them a reason. Once you have a reason—or multiple—we'll help you get that message in front of the right people so they can act on it, and so you can make more money.
Here are some examples of reasons to reach out to customers:
Promotions and discounts
Educational content about the value of your products
Seasonal events and updates
All of these things remind customers why they love shopping with you and give them a reason to come back.
5. Online review platforms to gather feedback.
Online reviews are how customers decide which store they’re going to shop with—whether it’s online or brick-and-mortar. The more positive online reviews you have, the higher you rank in search results and increase your chances of beating out competitors.
Get your store listed on Google Business and Facebook to start, so you can connect your page to Text Request later and earn more online reviews through text. After that, you’ll be ready to boost your number of online reviews using the strategies we cover below.
8 Ways Your Retail Store Can Implement SMS Into Your Processes
1. Encourage folks to opt-in to your SMS subscriber list.
An SMS subscriber list is a group of contacts who’ve opted in for text message updates about your promotions and store updates. Getting more people to opt in helps you expand your sales and marketing so you can make more money.
So how do you get SMS opt-ins?
An SMS opt-in is someone who:
Texts you first
Establishes a business relationship with you (making a purchase or requesting a service)
Gives you their phone number via web or physical form
Expresses verbal or written consent for you to text them
If customers tell you that you can text them, you can text them. But expressed written consent—or simply displaying “Text us!” somewhere on your website—is always the best way to make sure you have your compliance bases covered.
This is where advertising your SMS subscriber list on your website can be huge—not just for proving you’re compliant, but also for passively building your contact list.
SMS subscriber growth happens by itself if you’re doing the right things. We’ll show you what that looks like below.
2. Draw in new contacts and leads with SMS Chat.
One of the fastest ways to let people know they can text your retail store’s business number is to place an SMS Chat widget on your store’s website. SMS Chat allows customers to text you directly from your website, and can be customized with a call-to-action (CTA), like:
“Text us to place your next order!”
Any numbers that use the SMS Chat will automatically be saved, so you can text them again for your future SMS marketing campaigns. It’s the perfect way to grow your list of numbers through two-way conversations. It’s also great for general customer service and helping people find the right product.
The more you advertise that your business can text like this, the more you’ll build your SMS subscriber list and increase overall sales.
3. Encourage opt-ins and promote sales with keywords.
Keywords are words customers can text to join your SMS subscriber list, or opt-in for information and discounts. They’re simple to advertise and intuitive for customers to use. All it takes advertising a CTA on your ads, website, or social media like:
“Text SALES to get updates on our newest discounts!”
Customers who text keywords will receive an autoresponse—which you can customize to reflect your subscriber list’s specific goals. For example:
“Thanks for texting DEALS to Our Store. Every Tuesday we’ll text you a list of our newest discounts and items.”
Autoresponses like these let the subscriber know their opt-in was successful, plus they reaffirm what content the subscriber can expect to start receiving.
Online form submissions—like for your online checkout, event registrations, or email subscriber list—can also be automated to send a welcome text to customers who join your SMS subscriber list.
The more options you give customers to opt-in, the more you’ll see come your way.
4. Reach all your customers at once with SMS promotions.
As you're building your subscriber list with compliant opt-ins, you can start texting promotions and discounts.
Mass texts give you the power to reach all your contacts at once for things like:
New stock or seasonal promotions
Content marketing - articles, guides, brochures, etc. to share info and start conversations
Important updates that may affect them
Include any links to showcase your new offers or content, and you'll be able to track who engages with them.
Replies become one-on-one messages, so you can handle individual questions or feedback. You can also attach images and GIFs to these messages to further capture attention.
Send mass texts when you have something valuable, like the examples above, to share. Once a week, plus holiday pushes, is what we’ve seen work for most retail brands.
These one-on-one conversations are key to making people feel like individuals within your customer base and bullying loyalty. More on why that matters next.
5. Increase engagement with personalized messages.
Any kind of personalized marketing will capture a customer’s attention. Combine that with the speed of texting, and you’ll hook customers as soon as you put the line in.
Start by categorizing your contacts into Groups, or segmented lists, based on their interests, including:
The type of product they typically purchase the most
Seasonal events or offers they participate in
Their birthday or customer anniversary
Geography and location (so you can identify the best time to send text messages)
Create SMS campaigns that are relevant for each of these Groups, so they know you’re paying attention to them as individuals.
Once your contacts are in Groups, you can personalize your campaigns one step further by sending them Mass Texts with Custom Merge. Custom Merge uses a spreadsheet to send Mass Texts with customizable fields that allow you to personalize each message to the individual receiving it.
These customizable fields could include:
The customer’s name
Last purchase or service
Number of existing points for a reward system
Seeing details like these pop up on their phone screen will encourage customers to interact with your message way more than a generic notification. That builds brand loyalty and increases sales in both the long and short term.
6. Create an SMS VIP program to boost sales.
Advertising discounts and flash sales creates a sense of urgency, especially when they’re exclusive for your store’s SMS subscribers. It’s just one more way to get customers to join your SMS subscriber list.
Here are some examples of offers:
A one-time discount code upon joining
Behind-the-scenes info and updates that your business doesn’t share anywhere else
Points toward purchases every time they participate in your text campaigns
Opportunities to have input on your store, like which new products you add next
Your goal is to create an exclusive community that’s excited to hear from you. Share behind the scenes, major milestones, and other details that make them feel like they’re part of your store’s growth.
If you can turn SMS into an exclusive content distribution machine, that also includes sales, your retail store will build a loyal audience that keeps coming back.
7. Provide quality customer service via SMS.
Clients expect your business to text, just like all the other businesses they work with. SMS has become a standard, and without it you risk losing out to other retailers that provide better customer service.
Use text messaging for:
Back-and-forth conversations about products and stock
Share photos of things to replace or match
Support-related questions
Product ordering and payments
Any common customer service communications can be turned into text templates—so your team can keep things like order notifications or stock updates consistent and simple.
8. Boost your reach with online reviews.
Your store won’t show up in search results without Google reviews. It’s that simple. Gathering Google reviews ongoing is an absolute must if you’re going to compete with other stores both in your local area or online.
Here’s how:
Connect your Google Business or Facebook page to Text Request
Insert custom reviews links into your texts asking customers for feedback
Monitor and respond to oncoming reviews from inside Text Request
There's a direct line between earning online reviews, improving your Google search results, and increasing your overall foot traffic and customer base. Text messaging is the fastest way to reach the loyal customers you’ve cultivated for reviews, and Text Request gives you one place to manage them.
Start Sending Text Messages to Your Retail Customers Today
You already advertise your retail business’s phone number everywhere. Making it textable saves you the hassle of updating all your current marketing collateral with a new number.
Text Request not only makes your current phone number textable, we also provide ongoing training and support to help you get the most out of business text messaging.
Add our text messaging platform to the number you and your customers already use, without affecting your voice services.
