What’s Your Text Message Strategy?

You hear the vibration and look down; it's a text message. It's not from a friend, but a brand. It used to be sacrosanct for a brand to invade your phone. Now it's a growing trend. People are checking their phones more than ever before. It only makes sense for brands to fight over the next attention platform: text messaging

Last week I had the opportunity to speak with Michael Ioffe, CEO of Arist. Arist is the first text messaging learning platform. Customers range from Fortune 500 companies to leading universities. I share my takeaways below from the conversation.

Texting is a platform to connect the world. More than 5 billion people in the world own a mobile phone. Not every phone has access to the internet, but every phone does have the ability to send and receive text messages. Texting might be the only way to reach some of your customers.

Texting has a higher open rate than other channels. Michael told me that their pilot course had a 90+% completion rate. An email course typically has a 5% completion rate. Twilio, the cloud communications platform, conducted a study. It found that texting had an 82% open rate. If your text includes a URL, the click-through rate is 36%. Texting outperforms email.

Texting is a new way to engage employees. One of the exciting use cases for Arist is engaging existing employees. Use cases such as onboarding, compliance, or training can now occur over text. The content will be in an easy to read format and deployable in a matter of minutes. If an employee doesn't understand the material, they can simply reply with a question. This method creates a fast feedback loop for the employer. It also creates another way for managers to build relationships with their colleagues. 

Channel saturation is creating an opportunity for texting. The reason why text messaging has taken off over the past few years is channel saturation. Think about how many notifications and emails you receive a day. If your notification count is close to mine, it's in the hundreds to sometimes thousands. Texting is different. I only text my close friends and family. I can count on one hand the number of people I text every day. Brands realize that texting is personal and a new way to engage consumers.

Texting technology is becoming more powerful every day. It used to be that texting was only used for communication. Text messaging capabilities are now expanding to features such as payment. The stats on mobile payment adoption is mind blowing. 29% of consumers in the US would like to pay with their smartphone for all transactions. 38% of online shoppers in the US found that mobile payments are more efficient than other payment methods. APIs like Twilio are also pushing the technology further. Think Uber. Remember when you got a text that your driver arrived? Twilio powers that text message. It won't be long until texting becomes the central place to do business between brands and consumers.

Texting is a reinforcement tool, but not a tool for in-depth content. The benefit of texting is the restraint it puts on the amount of content you can write. A text message restricts the content to 1,600 characters. Messages must be short and straight to the point. According to Michael, the most engaging messages are around 1,200 characters. Emojis and images help increase the engagement rate as well for readers.

If you are looking to reinforce or remind, use text.

Having a texting strategy is critical. It's a great way to engage employees and customers. It's simple, easy to iterate, and has high open rates. There is a reason why brands are using texting more than ever. What's your plan to grab attention via text messaging?