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How To Manage Your SMS List Contacts
As a small business owner, keeping all of your customer information organized can be time-consuming, especially if you aren’t using a customer relationship management system. However, list management doesn’t have to be complicated. In this guide, we’ll discuss how to manage your SMS list contacts, best practices for organizing your lists, and ways to
Why Managing Your SMS List is Crucial
SMS marketing is an opt-in channel, meaning that your customers have agreed to receive text messages from your business. However, not all subscribers have the same expectations. This is one of the main reasons SMS list management is crucial: it can help you create specific audience profiles. These distinct audiences can lead to increased customer engagement, as they will receive the types of messages they prefer. This approach can enhance engagement and decrease the number of customers opting out of your messages.
SMS lists also enable you to personalize messages at scale. For instance, you might have an SMS list for customers who have previously purchased a specific product from your company. Personalization allows you to reach out to customers using personalization tokens that can fill in their name, previous order, and order date. Rather than spending time searching for this information, automated texting software can dynamically fill in these details.
In addition to creating segmented audiences, well-organized SMS lists can mean less time for you or your sales team members. Instead of manual data entry, you can quickly select contact records for a specific group and send a message to just that group. In contrast, poor SMS list management can lead to headaches, bombarding customers with messages they don’t want without any personalization. This can lead to poor customer interactions, low engagement rates and, eventually, higher opt-out rates (and a decrease in your sales pipeline). As you can see, SMS list management is a crucial aspect of your marketing strategy. Here’s how to ensure you’re managing your SMS lists well.
Best Practices for Managing Your SMS List Contacts
Whether you’re building your subscriber list from scratch or ready to take a more hands-on approach to SMS list management, these tips will help you create a robust contact list.
Segment Your List for Better Targeting
Segmenting your subscribers is vital for delivering relevant messages to each subscriber group. As mentioned, without segmentation, messages from your company may feel impersonal or irrelevant to the recipient. There are various ways to segment your SMS lists, and it might require some trial and error to determine which strategies make the most sense for your business. Your company can categorize your audience by factors such as age, location, purchase history, or behavior.
After analyzing your customer data, you might discover that a small group of loyal customers would form an excellent VIP customer segmentation list. To these customers, you can offer exclusive discounts or perks. In another example, if you offer services to businesses and consumers, you may want to segment your lists into B2B and B2C.
Keep Your List Clean and Updated
It is crucial to keep an eye on your list to ensure it's frequently updated. Inactive phone numbers or invalid contacts can mean you’re losing money by sending texts to these numbers. Therefore, periodically check your lists against deactivated numbers reports to ensure everyone subscribing to your list is active. You may also want to occasionally send a confirmation text to your subscribers to confirm that they’d still like to be subscribed to the list.
Use Tags and Categories for Easier Organization
Staying on top of all of your subscribers can take a lot of energy and effort, but you can make it easier to manage by implementing tags and categories for your contacts. These tags help you quickly see what lists each subscriber may be a part of. These tags can make sending specific messages easier and can aid in automating your campaigns.
Automate Contact Management
One of the prohibiting factors to maintaining an excellent SMS subscriber list is the manual updating of subscriber contact information. Manually updating subscriber information takes a long time, and entry errors can affect these lists. Therefore, it makes sense to use an SMS marketing tool like Sakari to help you manage all aspects of your contact lists. Sakari provides a powerful API that enables you to seamlessly integrate your SMS marketing plan with popular CRMs, streamlining the entire contact management process.
Leverage Customer Data for Personalization
Speaking of CRM integration, you can put your CRM system data to work to inform your SMS campaigns. For example, if you know a customer’s product preferences from previous interactions, you can add them to an SMS that sends them special offers or updates when these products are available or on sale. Or, if you know that some customers typically place an order once per month, you can set up personalized messages to this group of repeat customers, asking them if they need to stock up on these products.
Putting these strategies into action for your business can increase your response rates and, hopefully, your conversion rates. If you’re working to build an SMS subscriber list, here are some of the best strategies to grow your list:
How to Grow and Maintain a Healthy SMS List
It may seem daunting when your business is building its subscriber list from scratch. However, implementing these strategies can help:
Offer Incentives for Sign-Ups
Offering incentives for customers to subscribe to your SMS text list is a great way to encourage signups. Customers may see your incentive on your website or social media with an exclusive offer or discount. Therefore, consider a double opt-in: the first text you send should confirm that they’d like to subscribe, and the second text contains the discount. For more ideas, see our guide on How to Grow Your SMS Marketing List with Opt-In Incentives.
Implement a Clear Opt-In & Opt-Out Process
With any SMS marketing, clear opt-in and opt-out processes are crucial to maintaining compliance with regulatory standards like the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Your business can use a keyword (such as JOIN) to help streamline the opt-in process for customers. A texting software like Sakari can help your business seamlessly manage your opt-in and opt-out processes.
Regularly Engage Subscribers
Once you’ve built a subscriber base, engage them consistently. There’s a fine line between engaging customers at a regular cadence and sending too many messages. Therefore, utilizing analytics to find the sweet spot is crucial. Be sure to send value-driven messages containing something for your subscribers, such as business updates, limited-time offers, or customer feedback surveys.
Use SMS Drip Campaigns to Nurture Subscribers
One way to maintain constant contact with subscribers is through drip campaigns. Drip campaigns consist of a series of automated text messages sent to subscribers in response to specific actions, such as subscribing to receive messages, abandoning their cart, or a lapse in interaction with your business. These targeted follow-up messages are customized for each audience using relevant information and can help your company build customer relationships while saving time through automation.
How to Measure and Optimize SMS List Management
Once you’ve built and maintained your subscriber lists in your contact management platform, the next step is to optimize them to be as effective as possible. Text automation software like Sakari has the functionality to track interactions and key metrics such as delivery rates, opt-out rates, engagement rates, and more. These contact data metrics can help paint a clearer picture of what’s working well for your business and what you may need to adjust for better results.
Common Mistakes to Avoid in SMS List Management
There are several mistakes we frequently encounter regarding SMS list management. Here are some of the most common pitfalls:
Ignoring List Cleaning: Keeping your contact database up to date is crucial, and companies that avoid list cleaning could be wasting time and money by sending additional text messages to inactive or invalid numbers.
Sending Too Many Texts: Sending too many messages is another mistake that could ruin the customer experience, causing subscribers to opt out. Remember, start slow and build up your sending cadence. It’s easier to add messages than it is to cut down on the amount of messages you send.
Neglecting Compliance: Sending messages to those who are not subscribed to your company’s texts is a big no-no and can lead to more significant consequences for your company. Be sure to follow all relevant consent and data protection regulations in your location.
How Sakari Can Help with SMS List Management
Sakari is a dependable SMS list management partner. Our robust contact management solution offers many advantages, including:
Powerful CRM Integrations: Sakari’s robust API allows you to effortlessly sync customer data by integrating with top CRM software and marketing tools such as HubSpot, Pipedrive, ActiveCampaign, Zapier, and Slack.
Easy List Creation: Sakari makes creating lists and segmenting customers easy for more effective marketing.
Affordable & Transparent Pricing: Sakari offers cost-effective bulk messaging pricing with no hidden fees so that you can reach your customers at the right time and price.
Comprehensive Analytics & Reporting: Sakari’s real-time monitoring dashboard centralizes all your data, allowing you to view your campaigns easily.
Managing Your SMS List Contacts FAQs
How often should I clean my SMS list?
The size of your SMS address book can dictate how often you clean it for inactive or invalid numbers. The more business contacts you have, the more frequently you’d want to ensure your list is up to date. A good rule of thumb is to clean the list every 3-6 months.
What’s the best way to segment my SMS list?
There’s no one way to segment your list. The best answer for your business depends on factors such as your sales process, your audience, your business needs, and your products or services. A text marketing automation software like Sakari can help you segment your marketing campaign audiences and automate your workflows.
How can I automate my SMS list management?
Working with a contact management system like Sakari is one way to help your business automate its SMS list management. Sakari can even sync across your current CRM tools for an even more seamless contact management solution.
What are the legal requirements for SMS opt-ins and opt-outs?
The primary compliance regulation pertains to customer data, ensuring that consumers who receive SMS text messages have opted in to receive them. A contact management software like Sakari can assist you in managing the opt-in and opt-out processes.