SMS Marketing with Twilio and Agile CRM

Email is a great and inexpensive vehicle for marketing, and social media ads also do the trick. But nothing comes close to the open rates of SMS marketing, also known as text message marketing.

While it is easy enough for customers and prospects to ignore your marketing messages in their inbox, avoiding text messages is a lot harder. That’s why more than 90 percent of SMS-based messages are read within three minutes of receipt, according to a white paper by UK-based MOBILEsquared.

The open rate and urgency of SMS has made it a critical mobile marketing tool, particularly when used carefully and after seeking permission (remember, the law in many countries requires that customers opt in to receiving text messages from businesses). SMS is more one-on-one than email or direct mail, so personalizing your texts to subscribers will get their attention, as will using SMS for the most exclusive invitations or offers.

To do this effectively, however, your campaign should be built on your CRM database as a foundation, even if you use a popular cloud communications and SMS marketing tool like Twilio.

Our Agile CRM Twilio integration provides you with the critical infrastructure you need to craft the best possible personalized, timely SMS marketing campaigns, ensure deliverability, and track the effectiveness of your campaign by marrying your CRM data with Twilio.

Twilio functionality enables you to send and receive SMS, MMS picture messages and chat messages to and from your customers anywhere in the world through any carrier and in the programming language of your choice. With the Twilio add-on, the infrastructure is taken care of and you can start easily building SMS campaigns as a complement to your existing sales and marketing efforts.

Getting Started with an SMS Marketing Campaign

An effective SMS marketing campaign begins with permission-based outreach to a contact with an exclusive offer. Here’s an example we’ve used in the past at Agile CRM.

Hello, {first name}. Would you be interested in sharing your positive experiences with Agile CRM? As a token of appreciation, we’re offering a $25 gift card from Amazon or similar credit towards your Agile CRM subscription. We look forward to hearing from you!

If a customer responds positively to your outreach, you might send an automated confirmation message with links, as follows:

We’re glad you’re interested in sharing a review of Agile CRM, {name}. We have review portals on G2Crowd, Capterra and Getapp. Once you’ve submitted in all three portals, confirm your reward preference and we’ll send it to your email. Keep in mind the reviews need to be different or they’ll be marked as duplicate content. Thanks!

If a customer responds positively to your first message but doesn’t follow through with the reviews, you might send a reminder like this:

Hi, {name}. Are you still interested in reviewing Agile CRM? Here are links to our review portals G2Crowd, Capterra and Getapp. Would love it if you could share a 10/10 review 🙂 Also, let us know your preference between the Amazon gift card or Agile CRM subscription credit. Let us know if you need help with the reviews. Thanks!

A customer who responds to your outreach with a negative response, on the other hand, might receive an automated reply like this:

No worries, {name}. Thanks for letting us know!

Even though SMS messaging has a high open rate, that doesn’t mean prospects and customers will always respond to the message. So it is wise to also build in a follow-up campaign if you don’t get a reply to your first outreach.

Hi, {name}. Just wanted to remind you that we’d love for you to share your Agile CRM experiences, and we’re prepared to offer a $25 Amazon gift card or credit toward your Agile CRM subscription as a token of our appreciation. We hope to hear from you!

Now it is Your Turn

Twilio is a full-featured cloud communications platform, so there’s much more you can do with it as an add-on to Agile CRM, including telephone calls, click-to-call, automated note taking, appointment reminders, masked phone numbers (so contact data isn’t compromised and abused), call tracking/metrics, and instant lead alerts by SMS for sales reps.

Now that you’ve seen an example of SMS marketing in action, give it a try. Together, Agile CRM and Twilio allow you to craft compelling inbound/outbound digital campaigns that return fast and effective results.