Leveraging CRM With Native Text Messaging: 9 Sales Strategies

Written on July 6, 2022. Posted in CRM Integration, SMS Integrations.

In the era of email messaging and messenger apps, the importance of text messaging is often overlooked. Meanwhile, text messages are a highly personalized and direct way to drive potential customers down the sales funnel.

To take full advantage of the impressive 98% open rate of text messages without juggling numerous sales tools, business owners turn to CRM with native text messaging. The ability to interact with customers directly opens numerous possibilities for companies of all sizes.

Let’s look at the sales strategies you can improve by taking advantage of this comprehensive communication tool.

1. Explore Upsell Opportunities

Upselling can increase revenue by 10% to 30%. Companies that leverage upsell opportunities see between 75% and 90% of their revenue come directly from them. Upselling doesn’t just require a top-notch approach to personalization. It needs a direct channel to the customer.

The first step is to analyze customers’ needs by leveraging the data in your CRM system. Once you know what the customer is likely to accept, you can design an offer that is most accessible and likely to convert.

That’s where text messaging comes in. By taking advantage of the integrated text messaging opportunity, you don’t just speed up the upselling process. You give your sales reps extra time to focus on other revenue-generating tasks.

2. Improve Personalization

Personalization is key to increasing sales. Today, 72% of consumers say they only engage with businesses that send personalized messages crafted with their needs. When you are designing a sales pitch based on CRM data, you have an opportunity to maximize personalization.

Native text messaging within your CRM system allows you to get the offer through in the most personalized manner possible. It can also help you create dynamic mass messages that don’t sound generic.

When customers are closer to the bottom of the sales funnel, they expect top-notch personalization. Sales reps can stop relying entirely on emails or phone calls and focus on text messaging.

3. Streamline Retargeting

With the vast amount of information bombarding consumers at any given moment, many drop out of the sales funnel. This happens simply because the sales efforts of one company upstage the tactics of another one. That’s why the ability to make timely reminders can improve your sales strategy.

While abandoned cart emails do an excellent job bringing a customer back to your website, they may not be as effective as text messages. By making a list of customers who don’t convert after visiting an e-commerce website and sending them text reminders, you have an opportunity to bring them back.

Native messaging tools in your CRM system can also be great for payment reminders. SaaS companies can leverage it to remind subscribers about upcoming renewals.

Related: Salesforce SMS Text Messaging Integration

4. Enhance Sales Analytics

Text messaging analytics gives you extra insight into your customers’ behavior, needs, and buying power. You collect valuable data for other sales and marketing efforts by interacting with each consumer personally.

Information you can gather through the integrated native text messaging tool includes:

Click-through rates for links
Response rate
Messages sent/messages received
Number of inbound customer service conversations

A high response rate to text messaging shows that your sales team achieves excellent results in moving the audience down the sales funnel. Meanwhile, the information collected during these conversations can contribute to the personalization strategy.

When the consumer comes closer to the bottom of the funnel, your sales reps will have sufficient information to make the final move.

5. Boost Customer Service

A great way to make sure an existing customer makes another purchase is to demonstrate the quality of your customer service. More than 80% of consumers say that a positive customer service experience increases the chance of buying from the company again.

Integrated text messaging tools allow you to reach the customer as soon as a problem occurs and solve it timely. In 2021, the volume of customer service requests over SMS increased by 28%. Catering to the customers’ needs over text messages increases satisfaction rates and helps with retention.

When your customers face a problem, they don’t want to wait. Email support is often time-consuming, and your audience knows it. It readily turns to text messages that seem quicker and more personalized.

By using a CRM system with native text messaging, you have an opportunity to meet your customers’ speed and personalization expectations.

Related: Benefits of Integrating Text Messaging into Salesforce

Complement CRM Data

According to research, a shocking 91% of data in CRM systems is incomplete. Meanwhile, 18% is duplicated, and 70% becomes outdated every year. Poor data quality affects the sales efforts and hurts the company’s reputation.

Native text messaging option in your CRM system allows you to improve data quality, build better customer relationships, and increase sales.

6. Adjust Lead Nurturing

When your leads are at the top of the sales funnel, they require a careful approach to nurturing. By building a relationship at this stage, you shorten the customer’s journey through the funnel.

Customers you managed to build an effective relationship with are more likely to have a higher lifetime value.

Text messaging is perfect for making a solid connection that streamlines the lead nurturing process. It contacts the potential customer through a personalized channel and initiates a conversation, eventually leading to a successful conversion.

7. Encourage Reviews

Online reviews are the backbone of your company’s sales and marketing strategy. Today, around 70% of shoppers read between one and six reviews before buying a product. The most challenging part about leveraging consumer reviews is obtaining them.

Text messaging allows you to source customer reviews by inserting a link into the message. If the consumer takes the time to read a follow-up message, they are likely to click the link and leave a review.

Customer reviews can help you encourage new customers to make a purchase. You can add them to your website, insert them into blogs, make them part of personalized email offers, etc.

8. Support Re-Engagement Campaigns

Since 80% of a company’s sales often come from 20% of existing customers, re-engagement is integral to successful business operations. If a customer makes one purchase and stops taking action, you can jump-start a re-engagement campaign with a new sales pitch.

Reengaging an old customer isn’t always easy. You need to find new information that can help craft an appealing offer. Analyzing the data from your CRM system and combining it with data from previous text communications makes it possible to initiate a successful re-engagement campaign.

Native text messaging in your CRM system can also help reengage an unsatisfied lead. Once you gain more data about the consumer, you can text them with an updated offer.

9. Create New Touch Points

When interacting with a business, customers want options. Some prefer phone calls or emails. Others use social media and social messaging apps. For example, according to studies, Millennials and Gen Z’ers dread making phone calls and prefer text messages.

If you are catering to a broad audience, you need to create as many touchpoints as possible. Text messaging can be one of them. Since this communication channel is usually quick and personal, many customers prefer it over other options.