These 10 Advantages and Benefits of Text Messaging Are Why SMS Beats Email and Voice

Email and phone calls have long been at the center of every business messaging strategy. They’re not new tools, but they’re reliable and some of the most widely adopted forms of communication in the world.

They still work well for lead nurturing, follow up campaigns, and everyday, back-and-forth, conversational messaging.

But fewer people are answering the phone and email response rates aren’t exactly great.

Why? You’ve really got to compete for attention once you get in someone’s inbox. Phone calls just don’t get answered and emails get marked as spam.

This is why more businesses and organizations are turning to SMS text messaging to keep connected to their contacts, customers, and clients.

But what are the advantages of texting?

Read on for more.

Before we dive into the advantages of texting, it’s important to note how text messaging fits into a current communications strategy.

There’s debate about which is best: email vs. text? Texting vs. calling? But the most important thing to remember is this:

Text messaging does not always replace email or voice - it complements it.

Text messaging fills in the gaps left in your customer engagement strategy.

Everyone has different communication preferences. So some conversational messaging tools just do a better job of reaching different people, at the right time, in the right way.

This is why we advocate for text messaging as a complementary way to reach your contacts and customers.

It works especially well for:

• Sending appointment or meeting reminders
• Linking customers to an appointment scheduling software
• Broadcasting hours of operation and up-to-date business information
• Automatically sending out-of-office messages based on business hours
• Sending invoice and payment reminders
• Collecting payments through links to payment portals using text-to-pay
• Earning more referrals and reviews by texting links to online review websites
• Asking for information by texting links to website contact forms
• Crafting SMS marketing campaigns that drive recipients to a landing page with more info

As far as engagement goes, emails get about a 20% open rate and about a 6% response rate.

Compare those rates to text messaging. Texts have a near 98% open rate and a 45% response rate.

And what about voice?

Phone calls used to be the only way to get an instant response and build an emotional connection with customers.

But telephone calls aren’t a scalable way to engage customers.

And 76% of consumers aren’t answering the phone due to a massive rise in spam robocalls.

Customers today aren’t trusting phone calls, especially from unknown numbers. Which speaks to a truth:

People want honest business conversations to occur quietly, in their own time, and at their convenience.

This is why more people are starting to prefer texting to talking. Texting is less obtrusive, more discrete, and just as instant as a phone call or email.

• Instant Delivery: contacts receive messages instantly 100% of the time
• Less Competition: the average consumer has over 500 unread emails
• Higher Open Rates: texting has up to a 98% open rate vs. 20% for email
• Better Engagement: texts get up to a 45% reply rate vs. 6% for email
• More Personal: texting allows you to craft personalized messages
• Automated Messaging: business text messaging tools come with automation features
• Scheduled Messages: you can schedule texts in advanced
• Texting can get you paid: text-to-pay makes it easy to collect payments over text and send payment reminders to reduce accounts receivable
• Scalability: business text messaging services get your marketing, sales, customer service, and payment collection all in one place
• Cost effective: text messaging services are one of the cheapest forms of automated and scalable business communication

The average consumer spends over 3 hours on their phone each day and about 37 minutes on email. This leaves a small window of opportunity for emails to get read.

By comparison, text messages almost always get read immediately. 98% of texts are read in under 1 minute. Plus, average response times are much quicker than email too.

This is a big advantage. Especially when it comes to customer service and sending appointment reminders or meeting notices. In fact, texting is a proven way to reduce no-shows and missed appointments.

How about reminding customers or clients about upcoming bills or payments? Text messages are great to send quick payment links.

Everyone has a smartphone or cell phone capable of receiving texts. Texting’s reliable delivery also helps you avoid the “sorry, must’ve been in my spam folder” or “I didn’t have an internet connection” excuse.

What about employee updates or emergency messages? Well, texting works great for broadcasts.

Your message gets delivered and each employee sees the notification immediately.

The average consumer receives over 120 emails per day.

But when you send a text message, your message goes straight to your contact’s mobile phone.

This is an advantage over email. With texting you’re no longer competing with other businesses and advertisements for attention.

Text messaging allows you to be one of only 10 text conversations your contacts receive each day. And not only is there less competition with texting, but your messages are almost 10x more likely to get a response.

Why does this really matter? Business communication revolves around reply rates. The more replies you get - the more conversations you can have. The more conversations - the more sales.

Texts have up to a 98% open rate. With texting, you spend less time chasing down contacts and following up.

Imagine the increase in customer support response time, sales conversations, booked meetings, payments received, and online reviews. With texting, you can manage a lot more conversations.

Did someone cancel an appointment?

Send out a text to your unscheduled clients and see if anyone can fill the vacant spot.

Struggling to collect online reviews?

Text customers after you complete a service asking for more Google reviews.

Unpaid invoices?

Use text-to-pay to send out past due notices to clients and include a payment link so they can quickly pay from their phone.

How much time do you spend each week sending and receiving messages or responding to emails?

How many of your contacts actually engage with or respond to those emails?

Compared to texting, email marketing suffers from lower engagement rates.

In fact, the average person will send 25% more texts than emails. That’s an average of at least 15 texts vs 12 emails per day.

While the average person receives dozens of emails, only 17% of people have zero unread emails. Whereas 74% of people have zero unread text messages.

The truth is that many emails go unread and even get deleted without ever being opened.

Texts aren’t as formal as email messages. They feel more conversational and relaxed.

With texting you’ve got a chance to loosen a few buttons here. Feel free to get a little more casual with messages that are shorter, sweeter and more personal.

Texts also make it easy to get right to the point. All your contacts need is to quickly read your message, know what’s going on and reply.

With texting it’s also easier to address people in a more friendly manner. Think about adding emojis, images or other media. Each element adds interest to your message and makes it feel more human and face to face than the average email.

The best text messaging platforms will also have personalization features like Tags. These make it easy to personalize and send messages at scale.

Suggested Article: Text Messaging Etiquette for Business

Texting allows you to utilize automated features that save you and your customers a ton of time. You can have preset keywords that customers can text that prompt answers including:

• Office hours
• Appointment reminders and scheduling
• Answers to common questions about your service or product
• Payment reminders and invoicing
• Etc.

Automation eliminates manual phone calls, voicemails, and emails so you don’t have to answer the same questions over and over.

With automation, your customers don't have to wait for a response, and you don’t have to manually give one. It's a win-win.

You can also schedule text messages to ensure that you deliver information to your customers exactly when they need it. This significantly improves the effectiveness of appointment reminders and it works great for sending mass texts and small business text marketing.

Plus, 67% of people would rather text with a business than talk to them on the phone.

Texting keeps you from forgetting to follow up with a lead or failing to successfully inform customers about a promotion.

You can spend an hour or two at the beginning of the week and schedule all of your appointment reminders. This prevents you from having to spend countless hours throughout the week, struggling to reach customers through call and voicemail.

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Having a lot of accounts receivable creates cash flow problems.

And reducing it can be time-consuming, which takes away from the day-to-day operations.

Texting makes it easy to reduce your accounts receivable in three ways:

1. You can send reminder texts for an upcoming payment
2. You can send a text message for all payments that are overdue
3. Or, you can collect payments through a link to an invoice in the text message

Using all three of these options can reduce your accounts receivable instantaneously.

What’s the best part? You can automate the entire process so that you don’t spend any of your day trying to collect overdue payments.

Suggested Article: How ACE Sanitation Reduced Their Accounts Receivable by 80% with Text Reminders

Texting allows you and your team to talk to more people in less time. The long email campaigns you’ve been sending still have a place (email isn’t going away). But texting gives message recipients a more immediate and conversational experience.

You’re likely looking at texting to accomplish a problem that relates to one aspect of a business.

This can include:

• Marketing and sales
• Appointment reminders
• Customer support
• Invoicing and payments
• 1-on-1 communication
• & much more

The beauty of a text message is that it can be used to accomplish any of your needs.

It’s an extremely versatile communication channel that allows you to effectively reach who you need to.

Whatever your communication needs may be, text messaging can be adapted to suit them.

Text messaging is one of the most cost-effective ways to get your message across.

Sure, email (for the most part) is a free service. But a free service that only gets you a 20% open rate with a 6% response rate doesn’t help you.

Paying for a business text messaging service can provide you with significantly greater returns for an insignificant cost.

Suggested Article: How to Choose the Best Business Texting App

Ready to start texting your contacts and customers? MessageDesk is here to help with smarter, simpler business text messaging for keeping connected.

Most messaging services allow you to set up a free training session when you first get started. At MessageDesk, we offer unlimited training sessions. Our goal is to get you up to speed as quickly as possible.

You can also visit our learning center for information on how to get started with MessageDesk. You’ll find a quick start guide to texting, a features overview, and an explanation of what MessageDesk is.

Finally, feel free to start a free MessageDesk trial.