5 Businesses Uses of Texting That Move Beyond the Conventional

TL;DR:

Five "outside-the-box" ways that you can use texting include (1) for interactive games, (2) for polls and surveys, (3) for customer or employee onboarding, (4) for storytelling, and (5) as a "character text line." These are examples of ways that texting can help you creatively engage with your audience - so that you can connect better.

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Text messages are now a norm for many businesses.

And there are a few conventional ways many businesses use them, such as:

• Marketing promotions
• Abandoned cart follow ups
• Appointment reminders/confirmations
• Event reminders
• Verification and 2-factor authentication

But your use cases are not limited to the conventional.

There are almost unlimited ways you could use texting to improve reach and communication in your business.

Here are a few ideas to help get you started…

Interactive Games

You could use SMS to reach your audience with interactive games that get them to really engage with your business.

These could be scavenger hunts, trivia questions, or any other interactive activity you can think of.

This type of messaging strategy could help your audience connect with your brand, and you could tie it in to some kind of promotion that helps you get more sales.

Polls and Surveys

It’s not always easy to get people to participate in surveys and polls.

Why not try sending out survey questions via SMS?

Since people are much more likely to read their text messages than emails or other forms of communication, the odds are high that you’ll get a decent number of responses—and you can provide some kind of incentive to make it worth their time.

Customer or Employee Onboarding

Odds are most of your business’s customer or employee onboarding happens via email, right?

Instead of relying solely on email or more traditional avenues of onboarding, you could try incorporating SMS into your onboarding flow.

You could even make SMS the primary communication tool for your onboarding.

Your customers or employees may actually appreciate being onboarded via a more convenient communication avenue.

Storytelling

Everyone loves stories.

And you could use SMS to tell actual stories—serialized across a sequence of text messages.

This could be a really creative way to hold people’s attention and get them to pay attention to what you say.

For example, let’s say you run an escape room and someone books the room for a week out..

You could build anticipation by sending out snippets of a story that coincides with the storyline and theme of the escape room.

Character Text Line

You could use texting to engage with your audience by setting up a “character text line.”

This would be a line people could text in order to interact with a certain character—such as Santa Claus or Scooby-Doo.

When people send a message to your text line, you could text back under the persona of the character in order to provide a fun experience for your recipient.

The purpose of doing something like this would be to drive more traffic to your website or simply to have a fun way to engage with your audience.

What Creative Ways Could You Use Texting for Your Business?

There’s an unlimited number of creative ways that you could use texting for your business.

Can you think of any others? How could you creatively engage with your prospects, customers, and employees?

Get a free test account today to try out your ideas.