One of the most important aspects of any successful business is customer relations. Especially in the case of small businesses, maintaining a positive relationship with clients and customers can be the difference between success and failure. But maintaining and building these relationships is much easier said than done. Mass texting, maintaining your contact list, sending special offers, repeated follow-ups, and providing a positive customer experience can be extremely time-consuming and resource-draining. With so much at stake, businesses must take advantage of every opportunity. One way in which you can simplify the customer relations process is by making use of automated text messages. Automated sms can be a beneficial option for building, improving, and maintaining good customer relationships.

Here is a complete guide for understanding automated text messages.

Consider automated text messages as scheduled sms messages sent at a predetermined time and date. The content and recipients of automated messages are determined before sending the messages. Automated sms messages often follow a specific template or format that the sender predetermines. The scheduled text messages can be sent to one individual person, a selected number of recipients, or even an entire contact list. Some examples of automated text messages you may have seen already include opt-in services, cart reminders, subscription & unsubscribe notifications, and appointment reminders.

Marketing Campaigns
During a marketing campaign, sms marketing can be a highly effective strategy for promoting and selling products and services. Automated text messaging makes utilizing sms marketing significantly easier as you can schedule automatic text messages to go out to any number of prospective customers or clients.

Bulk Texts
An automated texting service makes sending bulk texts much more manageable. Rather than sending out large numbers of individual texts and typing each by hand, automated messaging allows you to send out a scheduled text to your entire contact list at once. This mainly benefits companies and small businesses with an extensive client pool.

Recurring Messages and Notifications
Particularly useful for businesses providing a subscription service, text message automation allows for quickly sending frequent reminders to a large pool of phone numbers or email addresses. These recurring messages can give customers valuable reminders and information on pricing, faqs, and more. They also allow the subscription provider to monitor the open rate for emails and texts.

Auto-Reply Services
Users of automated sms messaging services also can set up auto-replies and autoresponders. One example of a computerized reply service is the out-of-office notification you sometimes receive when people are not working. These services are tied to specific triggers such as emails or sms messages. These automated reply services can be a huge timesaver.

Customer Experience
The biggest beneficiary of sms automation is customer support and customer experience. Automated messages allow businesses to easily keep frequent contact with large numbers of customers without requiring many resources. These messages include follow-ups, sms campaigns, pricing/special offer notifications, and more. Automated messaging services are a phenomenal way to frequently check in with customers without disrupting company workflow.

As mentioned, an automated text service can save costly time and resources for businesses with large customer bases. Rather than having to message and follow up with each customer individually, companies can schedule mass automated sms messages instead. It may seem like a less personalized form of contact, but it enables businesses to meet the needs of their customers. Rather than going through the entire contact list one at a time, companies can reach out to all their customers at once and find out who needs further assistance. From there, businesses can reach out individually and assist those in need. This saves resources for the company and stops customers from spending unnecessary time dealing with customer support calls they don’t need.

The best option for setting up your own automated text messaging system is through slyText. slyText offers several great pricing plans allowing users to select the option that best suits their needs. Users can pay as they go, with pricing starting at $10 for 500 messages. slyText also offers a monthly service plan in which users can purchase a bulk number of sms messages before the month begins for a slightly cheaper rate.

Users can purchase 250 messages for $5, 2000 for $25, 5000 for $50, or 12,000 for just $100 monthly. For customers needing a larger service, you can also contact customer support at slyText for a custom quote. Although it doesn’t offer drip campaign capabilities, slyText is an outstanding option for an automated messaging system.