SMS - Drip Streams are Conversation Starters
Automated SMS drips can be a natural place to start or to continue conversations with your customers. Many SMS providers offer automation to create drip streams or drip campaigns of offers to your customers. They use this as a way to automate and simplify the management of campaigns that would otherwise be sent in a batch and blast method. This shows up as birthday greetings, coupons, seasonal offers and more. These are one way message, sent with the objective of staying in front of the customer on a repetitive basis, hoping the message will eventually resonate. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
Use-case examples to consider:
New product introductions. Customers love new products and companies that make and sell products love to have customer feedback.
Perishable products. Think about the restaurant industry and how nice it would be if your customer could pre-pay for the “fresh catch of the day” and reserve a table at the same time. Let them feel the love and know they are coming to eat with friends as favored guests and the Chef is making a special meal just for them – and a few other friends.
Contract renewals. Life insurance, auto insurance, health insurance, commercial liability insurance, newsletter publishers, ecommerce middleware providers and more. There are many industries with contracts and renewal processes. Open the door to contract renewal and make it easy for the customer to ask questions and have a conversation. It will become much easier to sign that contract when the renewal comes due.
Technical education. In a world where AI (artificial intelligence) seems primed to step in everywhere, customers will appreciate the ability to learn line upon line and precept upon precept and still know they can ask questions and connect to a live person at any moment – in real time.
Talk. Listen. Talk. Listen. Talk. Listen…
We think of drip stream automation as an open invitation to conversation. Every text message we send is tied into a two-way conversational hub. An SMS message is sent, and when the customer responds, that text response is routed to a live person and the text reply is recorded in the conversational history for that customer. A live person can then respond and engage in a real-time discussion with the customer. Every text sent by you and every response by the customer ads to the richness of the conversational history. A relationship is built, little by little, one text /and or one call at a time. SMS text messaging may be the technology of choice but it’s the customer relationship that has value.
