Text Messaging Is The New Email

Both email and text messaging are the most frequently used and common mass communication methods. That, we can agree on. However, despite emails being the conventional tried and tested method in the lead follow up world (and of course, many other worlds as well) times have changed, and so have people.

With that in mind, we started playing around with text messages three years ago as a business. And while we’ve made every mistake under the sun (apologies to that poor woman in Nebraska who got 10,000 texts from us) there are a few notable benefits that have caused us to deem it more important than email.

So allow us to share with you some of the most important things we’ve learned that have caused us to continue to focus on SMS. And where we can, we’ll do our best to put it side by side with email. Welcome to the age of Millennials.

You may think that the internet is more ubiquitous than texting. Wrong! 60% of people in the world now own mobile phones while only 40% of people actually have internet access.

What about visibility? It has been proven in multiple studies that the open rate of text messaging is extremely high (basically 100%) and the convenience of it creates a stronger call to action. With text messaging, messages are kept simple and sweet, allowing the recipient to easily digest the message you are trying to send across. What are your business’ email open rates?

Even Obama used text messaging to announce his pick for VP in 2008.

What about actual engagement? From what we can tell an average click-through rate for an email is somewhere between 6–7%. Not too shabby. However, when companies decide to include links in their text messages they see CTRs of 36% and above.

Finally with text messaging, you are opening up a channel of active communication with your lead. Generally, with text, people feel more inclined to reply immediately instead of the curated nature and time consuming replies of email. It gives you the opportunity to reach out to your lead with less of a lag time as well as receive responses faster.

We’ve even tried putting it to test here. We tried setting up 56 appointments simply using text messages. The results were pretty shocking.

To dial it back a little bit, texting isn’t the be all and end all of communication methods. We aren’t telling you to abandon ship from the ways of emailing. In fact, we see email along with texts and calls as the cornerstones of a well-balanced approach to lead nurturing. Between these three communication methods, you’re almost certain to reach people how they want to be reached.

Don’t rely on one medium alone! Reap the benefits of all methods of communication and watch your results improve.

That’s why we created FranFunnel, where we help you get the job done for both.