Top 12 Uses for SMS or MMS Messaging

Both SMS (text messages up to 160 characters) and MMS (messages that can contain much longer text along with images) can help you better grow and run your business. Here is a list of the top 12 uses for SMS/MMS messaging through First Choice SMS:

  • New Product Launches
  • Registration or Sign-up Confirmations
  • Order Status and Delivery Updates
  • Personalized Greetings
  • Time-Sensitive Promotions
  • Weekly Food or Drink Specials
  • Invitation-Only Specials
  • Customer Service
  • Employee / Team Communications
  • Event Updates
  • Appointment Reminders
  • Loyalty Rewards Club

Continue reading to learn more about how you may be able to apply one or more of these use cases to your business.

New Product Launches

SMS is a great way to inform your subscribers about what’s new at your business. This can include new products or services, a new location, welcoming a new staff member, or any other key milestone at your business. You can get even more leverage out of this type of promotion by inviting your subscribers to post your message on social media. What a way to create excitement about your business! I’ve seen brew pubs announce new specialty beers that are soon to be available, and wineries announcing a new wine tasting offering. This can also be a great way to get input from your customers nd subscribers regarding offering a new product, service or food menu item. Simply use the message to ask for feedback about what you are planning to do.

Registration or Sign-up Confirmations

Assuming that you have included the appropriate opt-in language on a sign-up form, you can use an autoresponder to send out a confirmation message, and perhaps include an initial special offer. The offer can even be in the form of a mobile coupon that you can create right from your admin panel on our platform. Sending a personalized message is a great way to cement a relationship with a new potential customer.

Order Status and Delivery Updates

If you are in an ecommerce business, you can use SMS to send out an order status, including when their item is shipping, along with a tracking code. If there are any delays in shipping out a customer order, you can communicate this with them via text. The same is true for providing any delivery updates, including letting them know when a package has been delivered.  The same can be done for local deliveries of products. If you run a service business where you are sending out people to a customer’s home or business, you can let your customer know when to expect someone to be arriving.

Personalized Greetings

First Choice SMS lets you personalize your messages by using your subscribers names. You can also capture their birthday and have that stored in your control panel. On birthdays, how special would it be to send out a personalized birthday greeting to your customers, and offer them a special birthday gift? Even simply by using the name personalization feature, you will get a lot more engagement with your personalized messages instead of simply sending out the same generic message to everyone.

Time-Sensitive Promotions

Time sensitive is often a factor with business promotions. Consider shipping times around a holiday. If you want to guarantee that your customers will receive their gifts delivered by a certain date, you can send out a timely reminder. If you are anticipating increases in shipping costs, you can let customers know how much time they have to still get the lower shipping fee, or free shipping if that is what you offer. You can also offer special discounts that are good for a limited time only. This also works if you have a limited supply of an item and want to let your customer know. Another great use for a time-sensitive promotion is to announce a clearance sale or closeout merchandise. 

Weekly Food or Drink Specials

If you run a bar or restaurant, using MMS (multimedia with a picture) messages is a great way to replicate your social media posts where you are announcing any upcoming food or drink specials, including limited time happy hour deals on drinks or appetizers. You can also announce special holiday-themed promotions, like special drinks for Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Memorial Day, Halloween, Christmas, and such. You can have a promotion that says “Text HAPPYHOUR to XXX-XXX-XXXX to stay on top of our weekly happy hour specials”. When you send out your text message, you can get more free promotion simply by asking your customers to share your text on social media.

Invitation-Only Specials

You can create an exclusive “insiders” group where only they know about specials that are no advertised anywhere else. This is a great way to build your list and create loyal customers. By taking advantage our the unlimited keywords offered by Firs Choice SMS, you can post a flyer or label at your place of business that says “Text INSIDER to XXX-XXX-XXXX to be notified of specials that are not available to non-subscribers.” This is another way to build up some excitement about your business, where your insiders will be waiting to hear what specials that only they are getting. All they need to do is to show your staff the text message.

Customer Service

One way to reduce the time and expense of handling customer service phone calls is to include the sentence “Text SERVICE to XXX-XXX-XXXX to initiate a customer service request” on your receipts or invoices. You can then set up a notification with our platform that notifies you or your staff that you have a customer service need. You can also set up an autoresponder that acknowledges the request. You or your staff can then respond by asking for details of the issue. Your customers can include pictures of their broken or defective product, along with copies of anything you need from them.

Employee / Team Communications

Our SMS platform can also be used for internal communications with your employees and/or individual teams.  If you have field workers or delivery people, and need to reach someone to make a pickup, you can send a message to the group. You can also send announcements to all of your employees of individual groups regarding weather-related issues, stay at home notices, shelter-in-place notices in the event of a hostile situation at your facility, and other immediate need announcements where you don’t have the time to send out individual texts or expect that people will read emails in time. There are many use cases for this application, and with our low monthly fees, it is a very worthwhile reason to sign up with First Choice SMS.

Event Announcements or Updates

If you run a venue where you offer live entertainment, you could use an MMS message to create a promotional message complete with a picture, similar to what you would post on social media. If you have scheduled any sort of event, you can recommend to all of your attendees that they should sign up for event notifications by texting a keyword like “EVENTUPDATES” to your number. Give them a reason to do so, like to notify them if the event is to be cancelled or delayed due to inclement weather, or if there are any changes to the agenda or lineup. 

Appointment Reminders

First Choice SMS provides you with an appointment list and appointment calendar that lets you send out a reminder to help ensure that they show up. This is a great service for any type of spa, salon or professional business where you see people by appointment. It is also a great way for restaurants to let diners know when their table is ready. A guest would simply provide their cell number to the hostess, who would then enter it into the console from a tablet. When their table is ready, the hostess (or host) can then send out the “table ready” notification. Appointment reminders are also a great way to remind people if they have any scheduled services at their home or business the next day.

Loyalty Rewards

First Choice SMS lets you create your own loyalty rewards program, where your customers can check in using a tablet-based kiosk at your place of business. Customers can check in to earn points toward an offer that you can configure from your admin panel, including the number of digital “punches” that are needed to redeem your loyalty reward. They can text a keyword to join your program, and also check on the current number of points they have toward getting their reward. If you have questions about our loyalty rewards program, contact us.