Go Deeper - Customer List Growth Tools to Continue the Conversation

What Is Customer List Growth?

Customer list growth is the process of attracting new contacts and growing your target audience. While this can be done through a variety of methods, such as email and social media marketing, we’ll be focusing on text marketing here.

Growing your SMS list is super important because text marketing strategies are only possible with it. Imagine spending time creating stellar marketing campaign ideas with powerful content, sales-driving CTAs, and an incentive that no consumer would want to pass up. And then imagine that your SMS marketing list needs to be more robust or include contacts that meet your target audience. That stellar campaign might not reach enough — or even the right — people.

That’s why it’s crucial to continue to grow your contact list and motivate people to sign up who meet your customer persona.

What Are Some Future Trends in Customer List Growth?

Text marketing will continue to be an effective way to reach people, but there are some future trends in customer list growth to be aware of:

• The use of AI to create personalized interactions. More and more businesses are incorporating AI to create more personalized text messages based on their customers’ interests and needs. SMS address list sign-ups can lead to AI-boosted conversational marketing, and AI-generated content can be used to enhance and differentiate messages more quickly.
• The use of chatbots to provide customer service. Chatbots are useful in providing effortless customer service, but there is an opportunity to use them for boosting contact lists, too. Chatbots could provide an automated reply with an SMS keyword to text to a business's dedicated phone number depending on a customer inquiry.
• The use of AI for data analytics. While businesses still need to conduct A/B testing for their campaigns and SMS marketing list strategies, AI data analytics tools are the wave of the future regarding tracking campaign results. Check out how small businesses can adopt AI tools.

You know what else is part of the future? EZ Texting.

Choose a text marketing solution that makes growing your SMS list and managing your contacts easy. EZ Texting provides simple setup for SMS keywords, QR codes, and sign-up forms so that businesses can capture, convert, and boost ROI.

How Can Text Marketing Help With Customer List Growth?

Text marketing can help with customer growth through the use of keywords, QR codes, and sign-up forms.

To understand these tools, let’s first review how text marketing works.

How Text Marketing Works

Text marketing, also known as SMS marketing or mobile marketing, involves sending short message service (SMS) messages to contacts' mobile phones (those who opt-in, of course) about promotions, notifications, announcements, and more. These messages can involve two-way texting to boost engagement and enhance customer service, bulk texts for promoting a sale or fundraiser, and automated texts about abandoned carts, reminders, etc.

And you can do all this while keeping the bottom line in mind — because business owners need to be more aware of rising costs than ever before.

Benefits of Using Text Marketing for Customer List Growth

You should use text marketing to grow your SMS mailing list because it's a powerful tool that can reach a lot of people — billions, in fact. Plus, text messages have a 98% open rate, which means you cannot only broaden the pool of people you reach, but you can also almost guarantee that they'll read your message.

You might think, "What if I reach many people, but they're not my target audience?" Good question! Text marketing platforms allow you to segment customers according to specific characteristics and manage contacts to ensure that messages are personalized and unique to their stage in the customer life cycle.

Text Marketing Tools for Customer Growth

When you use text marketing to grow your SMS list, you’ll have several key tools at your fingertips.

SMS Keywords

SMS keywords are the small-but-mighty superheroes of SMS address list growth. They're specific words or short phrases, including numbers, that people can text to a business's designated phone number to request information or receive an incentive (like a discount code). Once someone sends the message with the SMS keyword, the business's text marketing automation tool triggers an automatic reply with more information and an opt-out message. Voila! This person is now on your SMS mailing list.

Businesses can also use different keywords for different contact groups. For example, you can use multiple keywords to categorize opt-ins so that when each keyword is used, those contacts are automatically organized into different customer groups. This way, businesses can nurture customers based on location, preferences, demographics, and more.

Have questions about opt-in/opt-out messages? Learn more about SMS compliance that all marketers should follow.

QR codes

You’re probably aware of the power of QR codes to pull up your favorite restaurant’s menu. But did you know that they’re crucial in boosting your SMS marketing list?

QR codes are an easy, convenient way to drive people to sign up for your text list. All they have to do is scan the code on your website, print or TV ad, billboard, or in-store collateral. One thing that the world learned from marketing during COVID-19 was to prioritize mobile first, and incorporating QR codes in your contact list strategy is a way to stay relevant while gaining more contacts.

Sign-Up Forms

It’s important to leverage all customer touchpoints when boosting your SMS list. Encourage email subscribers, website visitors, and social media followers to sign up for your text list with a simple sign-up form. Embed a form on your website or emails, or use a shareable form in your social posts.

Click-to-Text Generator

Use EZ Texting's Click-to-Text Generator to create a one-click mobile solution to driving contact list growth via your mobile and tablet sites. Create different buttons for different pages to track and drive targeted marketing endeavors.

What Are Some Best Practices for Using Text Marketing for Customer List Growth?

Here are some best practices for using text marketing for customer list growth:

• Start with a clear goal in mind. Do you want to attract new customers, grow your target audience, or both? Craft the text marketing strategy around the goal so that you can more easily measure the success of your chosen methods.
• Ask for action. Whether you use QR codes, sign-up forms, or SMS keywords — or all three — tell your customers what you want them to do.
• Communicate the value. People probably won’t opt in to your contact list if they’re unsure of why they should. Clearly state the value of signing up, whether it involves sending weekly promotions or offers, enrolling them in a customer loyalty program, and so on.
• Nurture leads. Every contact needs to be nurtured so that they become loyal customers. Meet current and potential customers where they are in their individual journeys by using proven lead generation tactics.

What Are Some Other Tools That Can Help with Customer List Growth?

While it’s true that text marketing tools are some of the best when it comes to making your SMS mailing list more robust, it’s also important to ensure that you’re reaching and tracking contacts across all channels. That’s where customer relationship management (CRM) software can help.

CRM software gives businesses a holistic view of their customers’ interactions, information, and purchase histories, as well as helps to manage marketing campaigns — with everything all in one place.

EZ Texting has robust analytics and reporting tools, but if your business already uses a CRM system, you can easily integrate it in your EZ Texting platform. This way, you can track customers’ stages in the sales funnel and how your text marketing messages are performing in each stage. Similarly, see which SMS keywords are working or how many people have interacted with your QR codes.

Learn more about CRM marketing and how it can help boost your SMS list.