In this blog we focus on SMS use in the Subscription environment and how you can get the most out of your products and services by having a good subscription plan in place.

January is the biggest month of the calendar year for customer subscriptions relating to diet plans, gym and health clubs.  Its also the time of year that most people will renew a gym or diet subscription as they set their resolutions for the rest of the year.

Of course i am using the Health examples because they are so relevant to that particular time of year but actually this applies to any business that aims to make money through customer subscriptions.

Simply put, SMS Reminder messaging works because it’s one of the simplest, cheapest and most cost effective ways to increase your membership / subscription revenues as it helps to:

• raise your membership retention rates
• Bring back lost customers
• increase user engagement
• up-sells higher subscription plans, products or services you might offer
• boosts signup rate
• builds better connections with your members

Subscription reminders via SMS achieve 27% increases in re-sign up within 3 hours of sending the reminder text as opposed to 1 to 4 days for email reminders where the subject is a renewal.

Lets look at the British Gas example here; they use their CRM to trigger a text message to the customers mobile phone when there HomeCare agreement is coming to an end. They add advanced options into their message offering the customer different times to choose for a discussion on renewing and add in a number to speak to someone in person if the customer would rather do that instead.

This type of SMS message is easy to automate, pulls data directly from your CRM and massively increases renewals for your business whilst also filtering calls into their call centers across times that they can adequately maintain staff levels to cope.

When you stop and think about it for a minute, in the digital age we live in, reminders should be fully automated sending an SMS or Email at a prescribed time as and when the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system deems it should.

Most CRM software has built in SMS functionality, so why wouldn’t you just use that?

Most CRM packages ask you to buy SMS credits over an initial monthly rate and charge you a lot more per message. They also have a number of requirements around how the message is delivered from the CRM to the handset usually via a simple API code.

Whilst this basic functionality is fine for sending timely reminders, it is no good when it comes to creating 2 way engagement using coupons and loyalty campaigns with your customers. For this advanced mobile strategy you need to choose a mobile partner who has the technology in their platform to allow your business to both use API for speed and simple messaging needs  but that also has its own online platform to build more advanced campaigns.

So whichever department in your business that needs a messaging solution, IT, Marketing, Customer Services or Sales they can all use it.

Combine this multi-functional platform with an economical pricing structure and you have your mobile partner.

Good Luck

themobileexpert