Your Guide to Incorporating Native SMS Integrations with Your CRM

SMS business texting offers several key benefits.

Customers are more likely to open texts than emails.

Email marketing has a high success rate and a significant return on investment. Customers, however, may prove more likely to open and read a text message than they are to open and read an email. While email open rates remain around 20-30%, about 98% of text messages are read. As a result, many businesses will find an increased degree of marketing success when adding text communications to their marketing strategy.

Text messages can provide vital additional contacts with a customer. 

Depending on the nature of your business, your marketing strategy may rely on multiple interactions before you convert a lead to a customer. By integrating SMS into your marketing strategy, you can create more interactions with the customer, often on a more direct, personalized level than other marketing efforts. 

Texting allows for a high degree of customization.

Text messages are highly customizable and personal to the customer. You can send out specific communications based on a customer’s buying behavior or what lists they may belong to. Still, you can also customize each message with the customer’s name, last purchase, and more. You can also conduct one-on-one interactions with your customers directly through your text messaging platform, which allows you to answer customer questions or deal with potential problems in one accessible location.

Text message communications may feel more personal to the customer.

A customer interacting with you via text message may feel more connected to your business. When you store your text message interactions as part of your platform, you can refer to past communications to ensure that the customer has a consistent experience with your brand. 

You can connect with customers immediately.

Through a text messaging platform, you’re often able to connect directly with customers in the moment, when it matters. Customers can respond to text messages on the spot or put off responding until they have a chance to concentrate on the conversation. Text conversations may also take less customer energy than emails since customers will know immediately when a new message comes through and where it came from. Around 97% of Americans now have cell phones, and they likely have them with them pretty consistently. As a result, text marketing or communication makes connecting with a customer very easy.

Customers can easily opt-in or out of text-based marketing.

Customers can quickly and easily opt in or out when you use a text messaging platform for your business marketing efforts. That means they will remain part of your list, in general, for just as long as they want to. You’re much less likely to send out text messages to a customer who has no interest in connecting with your brand since text messages can’t go to a spam folder or get sorted into a place where customers can ignore them.

Integrating your SMS texting platform with your existing CRM platform can offer more overall efficiency and make it easier for all of your reps to access vital information about customer interactions.

Prevent Reps from Having to Toggle

If you don’t have effective integration between your CRM and your SMS business texting system, your reps may have to toggle between one platform and another to interact with customers. That means several potential challenges could ultimately interfere heavily with the customer experience. Toggling between platforms or pop-ups may mean:

• Slower representative response time
• Greater likelihood of missing vital information
• Lack of access to all the facts of a particular customer’s interactions

With native CRM integration, on the other hand, reps can efficiently and effectively access all the information they need directly from the same customer relationship management platform they use for their other interactions. 

Keep Text Threads Synced to the Customer Record

Many of your customer interactions may end up spread across multiple platforms. Consider, for example, a customer who responds to a mass text message with an issue or complaint. The representative who interacts with a customer needs to have all the information and backstory to support them fully. Integration ensures seamless and straightforward workflow when a case or conversation is transferred.

With CRM integration, on the other hand, it’s often easier to keep track of all those customer interactions in one place. Any representative that interacts with the customer can easily see those past interactions, from what the customer may have had to say about them to the promises made by past representatives. 

This simple strategy can go a long way toward improving the customer experience and overall satisfaction with your brand. Customer service is one of the most critical elements of interacting with a brand for many customers. By making all of a customer’s interactions with your brand visible to those who may need to see it, you can ensure customer satisfaction. 

Users Can Text Natively, Inside the CRM

Your salespeople and customer service representatives have a lot on their plates, including several tasks to take care of every day. Their interactions with your customers are critical of those responsibilities, but that doesn’t mean that they should take an excessive amount of time! With native SMS integration into your CRM, your employees can text directly from the CRM platform. That means the employee will have a faster, more effortless experience, and in most cases, customers will, too. 

Employees will Have More Accurate Information

When your SMS platform is integrated with your CRM, your customers’ information will be updated automatically. When you’re ready to text a customer, you will be able to text them directly at the number within your CRM. That means the contact information you have for the customer is the most accurate and up-to-date, ensuring your messages are received as intended.

You need a texting platform that integrates seamlessly with many of the CRMs on the market, often including the one you’re already using to connect with your customers and track those essential interactions. 

Microsoft Dynamics

With effective integration directly with Microsoft Dynamics, sending out a text message from within the platform is as simple as sending out an email. It doesn’t come with pop-ups or additional windows. Instead, it offers a simple texting option from directly inside Microsoft Dynamics. In addition, the texting plugin will allow for either personalized two-way texting sent directly to customers who need to communicate with your brand or mass SMS marketing.

Eloqua

If you’re using Eloqua to keep track of customer interactions, a text messaging platform that integrates natively is the ideal time-saving application. You don’t have to worry about bouncing between Eloqua and a second platform. Instead, you can send out text messages directly from Eloqua. This provides a cleaner overall user experience and helps keep essential customer interactions in one location. Simply choose the action you want to take and send out your messages. Later, if you need to look at past text messages sent and received from a specific customer, you can find them on the customer contact page.

Marketo

With native integration,  text messaging straight from the Marketo platform is simple. It’s as easy to send a text to a customer from within the Marketo system as sending an email. Simply choose the SMS text trigger, then enter the message you want to send to your customer. Depending on the customer’s specific needs, you can choose to send out a direct SMS text message or a voice broadcast. Quickly and easily customize your content with the customer’s first name, last name, email, phone number, or other essential information.

Salesforce

Salesforce is a top-rated platform for many companies due to its convenience and accessibility. With a texting platform that integrates natively with Salesforce, you can add to that convenience and overall functionality with integrated texting, straight from the Salesforce dashboard. Look for a platform designed with large enterprise-grade customers in mind, which means that you can easily handle mass texts or one-on-one interactions with customers directly from the Salesforce app. Within Salesforce, you can send and receive SMS text messages to individual contacts and leads or tailor your messages to a specific list. In addition, you can quickly create SMS texting templates that fit various needs, from notifying customers about new sales to managing new signups.

Five9

When your texting platform integrates with Five9, you can make the connection in just a few easy steps. You can send and receive SMS text messages to individual contacts or an entire list with a few quick clicks. In addition, you can quickly create texting templates that make it easy to answer common customer queries or to handle any issues as they come up. You’ll also be able to promptly review any SMS communications within the Five9 contacts section, which means you can keep up with any communication you may have had with a customer through text messages in the same environment as your other messages. 

Hubspot

Hubspot integration can use state-of-the-art team-based technology to make it easy for all of your team members to access others’ communications with a customer directly from the Hubspot platform. It doesn’t have any pop-ups or additional windows, just simple texting capability from the Hubspot dashboard. Hubspot integration with a texting platform makes it easy to keep up with all customer communications in one easy-to-access platform.

When choosing a texting platform for your business, it’s essential to consider how that platform will work with your existing CRM software. Many texting platforms will require pop-ups or separate windows, making it more challenging to keep your interactions connected or ensure an effortless experience for both users and customers.

Key Takeaways:

• Text-based marketing can help you create a deeper connection with your customers and improve overall open rates.
• Working with a texting platform that integrates natively with your CRM can make it easier to connect those interactions to your other connections to a customer. 
• SMS native integration with your CRM can make it much easier to utilize your texting platform directly from your CRM.

Are you looking for a CRM that will allow you to effortlessly integrate with the CRM platform you’re already using for many of your customer interactions? TrueDialog integrates natively with many of the platforms you regularly use, including Hubspot, Salesforce, and Microsoft Dynamics. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help improve your marketing and customer interactions.