Every company that uses business SMS faces a singular challenge: managing their many contacts. Once customers hear about a business’s texting services, they often switch over from their prior method of communication. While this is great for businesses that want to connect with as many customers as possible as efficiently as possible, managing all of these new contacts can be a challenge.
Teams that are new to business SMS often assume that contacts have to be manually added into their business SMS platform, then manually entered into their CRM, then manually updated in both platforms when the contacts text in with updates. This process, filled with repetitive legwork, can be frustrating for teams that just want to connect with their customers efficiently.
That’s why we’ve created a list of 5 ways to spring clean your business SMS contacts. These best practices will help your team reduce errors—and increase efficiency.
Time to get your (digital) brooms out!
Contact Spring Cleaning Tip #1: Check for Reissued Numbers
There’s a lot of legislation around compliance and business SMS. During your contact spring cleaning session, be sure to manage compliance-related issues first. In the case of contacts, you’ll want to check for reissued SMS numbers.
Reissued numbers are simply numbers that have been transferred from one of your customers to another person. Sometimes, phone providers will not notify you that this reissuing has occurred. Even though this might not be your fault, violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA)—like texting a consumer who hasn’t specifically opted into your SMS program—can result in some hefty fines per unwanted text message.
When it comes time for contact spring cleaning, review your contacts and delete those who have not replied to one of your texts in a while, or those who have not reached out to make contact. There’s a chance those numbers could have been reissued, and you don’t want to risk contacting them in the future.
Contact Spring Cleaning Tip #2: Reorganize Your SMS Lists
SMS lists are useful for sending large 
lists of recipients personalized messages. But professionals tend to create many lists for seasonal or project-based campaigns, then forget to delete them once they are not useful anymore. After you’ve cleared out any potentially reissued numbers, you’ll want to declutter your lists, too.
Go through your SMS lists and delete those that haven’t been used in a year, or those that were used for a one-time project or campaign. You’ll want to keep:
- Frequently used lists (reports will identify these lists)
- Ongoing SMS drip campaign lists
- Lists used within the last 3 months
Having only relevant and useful lists in your business SMS platform will make it easier to quickly send mass texts to the right contacts for the rest of the year.
Contact Spring Cleaning Tip #3: Automate Lead Intake
One of the reasons contact management gets out of control is the lead intake process. Team members sometimes rush to add new contact information when a customer signs up for their texting services. This is especially true if a team receives many leads at once, such as during an ad campaign. Luckily, the lead intake process can be streamlined with business SMS.
You’ll need to set up an integration between your lead collection source and your business SMS platform. For many popular lead collection sources, like Facebook Leads, this will be a built-in option. When customers fill out their lead information on a lead ad or web form, the original source can send that data back to your business SMS platform. Then, your business SMS platform can record it.
Automating your lead intake process with a business SMS platform makes contact organization much easier and much more accurate—reducing repetitive legwork for your marketing or sales team, too.
Contact Spring Cleaning Tip #4: Integrate Your CRM
SMS CRM integrations are the best way to spring clean SMS contacts, and keep them organized all year long. This kind of integration is a connection between your business SMS platform’s API and the API of your CRM app, like Salesforce or HubSpot.
An SMS CRM integration will empower both of your platforms to automatically update the other when new information is added to it. For example, if a new client texts your business SMS platform, the contact will automatically be added to the system. Then, your CRM platform will automatically update with the new contact. If you update a contact’s information in your CRM platform, your business SMS platform will automatically update, too.
Integrating your CRM with your business SMS platform is the best way to ensure your contacts are always up-to-date and accurate—without any extra effort from your team.
Need help spring cleaning your business SMS contacts? Let us help.
