Tag: Business Texting

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Do I Need a Separate Business Number?

Gnymble business texting
Separate Business and Personal Texts

At Gnymble we like to emphasize the importance of creating a wonderful work-life balance by separating your personal and business phone numbers– because Mom and Customer Joe shouldn’t be next to each other in your texting app. There are many reasons to make the switch, but we will be discussing the top four: time management, privacy, useability, and a few other concerns. 

  1. Time Management

Many people dread the idea of having two different phone numbers. I’m here to tell you– don’t knock it until you try it. For example, after a long workday, you might go meet a friend for dinner when you receive several work texts. Your mind starts running through all you need to get done for work and the whole relaxed mood is ruined for you as well as your friend. If you opt for separate phone numbers for personal and business matters, you can turn off business notifications after hours. This offers you the ability to manage your time however you would like while also keeping a great work-life balance.

  1. Privacy

A separate business phone number also enhances the privacy of your business. While it may be unlikely, your company might need to check some business-related text-message exchanges. If you have a separate business and personal number, there’s no chance of personal material being accessed. In the event of business material needing to be deleted, you won’t lose any personal information. Lastly, keeping your personal number private also creates boundaries that are necessary for privacy.

  1. Useability

In many cases, certain cell phone carriers have better service in different areas. This can be an issue when traveling for business. Gnymble provides a web-based texting platform. This means you can access your Gnymble texting account from any device that has access to either data or the internet. Nowadays most airports, hotels, and convention centers offer free wifi. Gnymble gives you multiple options to help you stay connected to your business conversations.

  1. Ridding Other Concerns

Unfortunately, if you share a phone number for business and personal uses this limits the amount of your cell phone expenses you can deduct from your income taxes. This can be a concern for small business owners. Another concern with sharing a personal and business number is taking a lot of time to create records of minutes used and text messages sent to give to your employer. 

Take back control of your personal cell phone number. Feel the power of being able to transition from work to home life without work distractions. If you want to learn more about how Gnymble can help you separate personal and business numbers please text 757-818-8010 or contact us here.

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Using Business Texting to Improve Conversions to Your Website

Most small businesses have websites, but aren’t realizing the full value from them. In today’s modern world of internet searches and e-commerce, you need to be “found” online. You need to be discovered through organic searches made by potential customers looking for you. Understanding the value your website can bring to your business, and how to turn it into a marketing and sales machine, is key to driving new business.

In this article, we give a short overview of how to design a marketing-driven website and some tips on generating traffic. As you’ll discover, there are many channels and avenues that you can use to engage potential customers. And one of the new exciting ways that businesses are seeing success is through an unlikely source: Business texting. 

Website Marketing 101

20 years ago, most businesses set up websites because they believed, “that’s just what everyone does.” It was seen as simply a brochure that lists basic information. They may not have realized the value in building an effective website, nor understood anything about SEO (search engine optimization) or SEM (search engine marketing.) The world has undergone a digital transformation and businesses are now dependent upon search engines to drum up new business. They’re advertising on social sites to catch potential customers where they hang out. A website is now a critical piece of your business marketing strategy. Your website is a tool to convert potential customers who have found you via social media, word-of-mouth, advertisements, internet searches, and more.

Your goal should be to drive as much traffic as possible to your website, keep visitors there as long as possible, and collect contact information. Why? Because digital marketing requires intense engagement with visitors to understand what they’re looking for and when they most likely want to make a purchase.

Your website needs to be a hub for content, resources, information, and community. By supporting your visitors with valuable content, you’re demonstrating your credibility and authority in your particular industry, which makes selling products or services that much easier to sell. The added bonus of building a strong web presence is that search engines will favor your site over others, raising your score to eventually appear on the first page of results (the gold standard of SEM.)

Are you sold on the value of your website yet?

If so, then you understand why it’s so important to drive traffic to your site. Once you’ve captured your audience’s attention, you have ample opportunity to market to them, to nurture their interests, and to keep them coming back time and again until they’re ready to convert to being your customer.

Business Texting Versus Other Ad Channels

Traditional digital marketing uses various channels to advertise and/or create “click worthy” content to drive traffic to a website. Depending on your industry, you may want to advertise or promote content such as blog posts, guides, infographics, etc. on social media sites such as Instagram or LinkedIn. On your website, you need to build landing pages where you can promote specific products or services with the goal to gather contact information using a form.

Is Social Media Advertising Worth It?

Social media conversion rates are pretty unremarkable and have an industry standard of between 2-5%. This means that marketers would need to pay for and publish an enormous amount of advertising pieces to gain any real traction with prospects. And while social sites allow for targeting of demographics based on job roles, industries, age ranges, location etc., it’s still taking a “spray and pray” approach to marketing where quantity is favored over quality. Considering the expense of advertising on social sites, it’s difficult for many small businesses to justify the ROI.

Email Marketing is Becoming Obsolete

Email open rates have held steady across various industries for the past decade with an average of around 20%. This isn’t bad, but remember that an email recipient can easily scan a subject line and either delete the email entirely or ignore it, without the email being opened. This means that your emails can easily get disregarded before they’ve had a chance to make an impression. And with the inundation of marketing emails that most people receive, yours are likely to end up in the trash. Again, this means you’re faced with producing quantity over quality to get your message across.

Business Texting is More Reliable

When considering the amount of time and resources many companies put towards their email and social marketing strategies, they aren’t getting the most bang for their buck. Now consider that nearly 100% of people are likely to open a text (and read it within the first 5 minutes of receiving it!)

This is why marketers are paying attention and are seeing business texting as the next big thing in digital advertising to drive website traffic. What’s even better is that once you’ve started engaging one-on-one with customers via text, they’re more likely to keep communicating that way. This allows you to open up conversations that can drive leads to your site and improve sales.

How You Can Use Business Texting to Drive Traffic

Traditional marketing can be expensive. Social media ad campaigns and pay-per-click campaigns on search engines can be cost prohibitive to many small businesses. Business texting is relatively inexpensive and it offers more bang for your buck. Whereas traditional marketing is broad and generic, business texting can be targeted and specific. You can choose to send highly personalized messages directly to prospects and existing customers and drive them to your site.

By embedding links and pictures in business texting communication, you can reach out directly with highly attractive and click-worthy messages. Perhaps you’ve launched a new product. Text a picture and a call to action with a link to a product page on your site. Or else text a prospect an exclusive offer for a limited time and include a link to a landing page with a form embedded. 

There are many opportunities to open conversations with your potential customers and improve customer service to existing ones. Contact or text us at 757-818-8010 today to learn more about how you can build business texting into your marketing strategy to improve sales conversion rates, drive website traffic, and super-charge your customer experience.

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How Business Texting can Boost Customer Experience

Even before the exponential rise of ecommerce due to the pandemic, Customer Experience (CX) has been a priority for small to medium-sized businesses. Statistics demonstrate that 75% of customers are more inclined to buy from companies that provide a good customer experience. And 80% of customers are likely to switch to a competitor after only a single bad experience.

What we learn from these stats is how important it is to make your customers feel acknowledged and appreciated. Your margin for error is slim. It’s not enough to have a quality product, you also need to support and nurture your customer relationships. Communicate too little and they may feel neglected. Communicate too much and they may feel suffocated. The balance comes from understanding what each of your customers require to feel confident in their relationship to your business.

What Does Exceptional Customer Service Look Like?

Interactions with a business need to be smooth and painless. Friction in doing business with you is likely your number one hurdle to conversion. Good customer service begins with empathizing with the specific needs of your customers and addressing their questions and concerns with speed and reliability. Imagine a restaurant having menus but no serving staff to guide patrons through the many options. A server’s main job is to provide personalized and professional consultation to ensure the guest gets exactly what they want. 

The same principles apply to all businesses in the digital era. Websites need to be user-friendly by following user experience (UX) best practices. They need to be easy to navigate, with accessible information.

Emails and social media posts need to have a clear message with a clear call to action to ensure they’re meeting customer needs and expectations. But where these digital experiences end, one-on-one service needs to begin. This is where direct contact either through phone calls or business texting is essential to providing that last piece of quality service. Your team needs to respond to customer interactions with messaging that is personalized, professional, reliable, meaningful, fast, and convenient to your customers.

Business Texting For Superior Customer Experience

While phone calls may provide a channel for personalized service, they’re not convenient. Many people don’t have the time to wait on the phone and many find the experience of voice communication to be a bit nerve wracking. This is one of the top reasons why business texting has become a preferred method of communication. Customers can reach out in the same way they are used to communicating in their day-to-day lives. 

Business texting addresses the most important elements of quality customer service:

  • Personalized. Customers can ask specific questions to get detailed answers regarding the information they need to make an informed buying decision. Messages can be tailored to each individual and be addressed personally. 
  • Professional. Your customers can connect to your entire team so responses can be generated from every level of your organization. This ensures that answers can carry the full weight of your team’s expertise.
  • Reliable. Rather than a call center employee, your team has a deeper understanding around your products and your customer needs. By providing accurate responses to customer queries, your customers can be assured that all information is reliable and valuable.
  • Meaningful. By providing customized business texting communications, you can reach out directly to your customers with messaging specific to their interests. Sales and promotions can be more meaningfully targeted across your database and analytics can supply critical details about the effectiveness of every communication and campaign.
  • Fast. Websites can take time to navigate. Phone calls may not get answered in a comfortable time frame. Business texting occurs in real time and is ideal for getting messages out quickly. This means your customers can get answers to timely questions and help them make faster buying decisions. 
  • Convenient. Since your customers have their mobile devices with them most of the time, it’s an easy way for them to reach out to you, or vice versa. However, they can also take the time they need to respond or read your messages. When you allow customers the freedom to communicate on their own timeline, they are more likely to follow through with both the communication and the sale.

How Business Texting Can Drive Engagement

The more that your customers feel connected to you, the more they will come to trust and depend upon your messages to keep them informed and supported. This allows you to reach out to customers with personalized messages and direct marketing content. The key here is to remain relevant by providing messaging that actually matters to your customers and prospects. The benefit of business texting is that it can create an immediate conversation that requires a response. This gives you an opportunity to build a relationship with your customers and open up avenues of communication where you can not only demonstrate exceptional service, but you’ll have more opportunity to communicate marketing messaging as well.

Here are a few business texting examples that can drive engagement and sales. 

  • Follow up with a customer after a purchase to get any feedback or to ask for a review
  • Promote similar products based on purchase history
  • Alert customers to upcoming events or promotions
  • Share exciting news or helpful resources and provide a link to your site
  • Get the word out and advertise new product offerings, services, or features 
  • Offer limited time deals that require immediate action
  • Build interest in joining your social sites for a multichannel customer experience

Quality customer experience requires strong communication. And it’s a two-way street. Your customers want to be listened to as much as you do. The more you can get involved in ongoing conversations within your industry and your customers’ communities, the more likely you’ll be seen as a trusted source of information.

Interested in building a business texting strategy to drive engagement with your customers? Contact or text us at 757-818-8010  to learn more about how to apply the tools, technology, and marketing strategy to get the most from this effective channel of business communication.

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Business Texting in 2022

The first text message was sent in 1992 by a man named Neil Papworth. He sent the words “Merry Christmas” from his computer to his colleague who received the message on a cordless phone. Fast forward a few years– most of us remember the time of the dreaded flip phone or at least when “QWERTY” keyboards were added to cell phones in early 2000. Soon enough mobile phones evolved to modern touch screen keyboards. Now we can even text by speaking into our phones. 

What Does Business Texting Look Like in 2022?

In 2020, COVID-19 affected every business in some way, shape, or form. Businesses were changing safety measures, their business hours, and more. Throughout the pandemic businesses needed to stay connected to customers as well as employees. Texting became an important piece of business communication for direct interactions. Business texting was a preferred method of communication before the pandemic, but it has maintained its traction among businesses as the preferred communication method.

There are many key takeaways from business texting during COVID-19. As this continues to grow as a medium of communication, here are some recommended tips:

  • Keep Texts Between 20-30 Words: Clear and concise text messages have a higher engagement rate.
  • Text Early in the Morning or Late at Night: Insights have shown that engagement is 50% higher before 9 AM or after 9 PM.
  • Include a Call to Action: Text messages that have a positive tone and include a CTA have a much higher engagement rate.

There are 23 billion text messages sent every day across the world. 2.52 billion people text using apps on their mobile phones. That means 270,000 messages are sent every second. Consumer expectations are shifting as text-based communication continues to rise. Trust between businesses and consumers is growing. People are starting to expect businesses to text them sharing updates and information. Truth is, your competitors are most likely already using business texting.

Why Should My Business Text?

Besides getting ahead of competitors, there are plenty of reasons for your business to text. Statistics show that:

  • Text messages have a 99% open rate. 
  • 45% of text messages receive a reply.
  • Texting is 10x quicker than a phone call.
  • 78% of consumers wish they could text a business.
  • 33% of American adults prefer texting over other forms of communication.

What Are Common Texts From Businesses?

Business texting can be used in a variety of ways. One-to-one communication happens when someone may text you asking questions about location, hours, or inventory. People are typically looking for a quick response to a simple question. In other cases, employees may be texting about potential vacation days, if they’re running late, and more. There’s blast texting where you can promote an upcoming event, product, or special offering. People most likely will not reply to these, however, 99% of them will be opened and read. 

As business texting continues to become more popular, more and more businesses will start looking into this method of communication. Is your business up to date? Want to see it in action? Text us at 757-810-8010 or email [email protected] and visit www.gnymble.com to learn more.