SMS marketing has gone beyond the usual SMS advertising messages, offering discounts or bonuses on products. We’ve already written about the different types of SMS messages that you can send to your customers. This time we want to talk more about SMS-polls.
An SMS-poll is a simple and convenient way to find out what your customers think about you and what they want. Let’s say you are the owner of a spa, and, of course, you are thinking about improving your business. One of the steps in this direction could be the introduction of new services.
Here it is important to avoid tying yourself in knots with guesses and assumptions about whether your customers will like your innovations or not. Still, you want to be sure that there will be demand for your new spa procedures. An SMS-poll is an ideal solution in this situation.
You can place a banner in your spa or send messages to customers with the following text:
“What services are missing in our salon: a chocolate wrap or a hot stone massage? Send CHOCOLATE or MASSAGE to number 12345”
After the SMS-poll, you can send a message with the result and even give bonuses such as a 5% discount on the new spa procedure.
Of course, SMS-polls can be used in various business areas. You can also use this tactic for events.
Here’s a good example:
South Side Soup is held annually in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Soup lovers are invited to stroll down Carson Street and taste the best dishes of the restaurant-participants of the event. Afterwards, the audience is asked to vote for their favorite soups in different categories.
Until 2012, paper ballots were used for this. Votes were counted manually. The process was time consuming. Some ballots usually got lost, and no one could guarantee 100% reliability of the results.
Everything has changed with SMS-polling. Each dish was assigned a digital code, which had to be sent to a special short number. Volunteers, who had previously counted votes with a calculator in their hands, now watched the results in real time. The whole process worked much more efficiently. The number of visitors who participated in the poll increased from 12% to 70%.
The beauty of SMS voting and polls is that it is a universal tool; all phones support text messages. Don’t be afraid to experiment and use SMS messages for different purposes to improve your business and attract customers. Of course, Intis Telecom’s solutions can help you with this.
