Retail text messaging for sales and customer loyalty

Create a truly customer-centric shopping experience with personalized messaging. Retail SMS empowers your store to engage, convert, and retain customers.

A woman shopping and sending a text message to a retail store

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What Is retail text messaging?

Retail SMS encompasses communications with leads and customers through business text messaging. Small, medium, and large retailers adopt it to improve shopper relationships and make more sales.

Stores use it to:
✓ Answer shopper questions
✓ Engage with customers
✓ Improve event attendance
✓ Ensure customer satisfaction

Retail text messaging platforms like Heymarket enable you to send, receive, and manage hundreds to thousands of messages through shoppers’ favorite channels.

Transform your business with retail SMS

The impact of retail SMS extends far beyond the smartphone screen. It can change the way you communicate with customers, close deals, train associates, and run your marketing campaigns. With text message marketing, retail stores can connect with shoppers at critical moments and nurture them into long-term customers. Heymarket unlocks the power of retail text message marketing in an easy, intuitive platform built for teams.

Drive sales with fast responses

The faster you can reply to customers and get them the information they need, the more likely you are to make those sales and gain loyal customers. Ensure no messages slip through the cracks with your shared inbox, where all team members can see incoming messages and reply. Use tools like SMS templates to answer common questions or schedule follow-up messages. Rely on private comments to get accurate answers to customers quickly.

Streamline workflows with automations

Respond to customer FAQs faster with retail SMS automations for an instant, personalized text. Create SMS templates for common answers. Heymarket can send the templates when incoming messages feature certain keywords or key phrases. You can even send an auto reply to customers who reach out during busy times of the day or after hours.

Grow customer loyalty with retail SMS campaigns

While emails often go unread, texts have a 98% open rate. Reach out to all your customers at once, without sacrificing the personal touch. Use custom fields to populate message templates with a customer’s unique information. Share opinion polls and new product drop details. Create a list of VIP customers and let them know how many loyalty points they have to spend. Heymarket supports retail text message marketing that converts.

Provide an omnichannel shopping experience

Heymarket allows your team to receive and reply to messages from shoppers’ favorite channels. It works with native SMS, Facebook Messenger, Instagram Messenger, WhatsApp, Apple Messages for Business, and Google’s Business Messages.

Train associates and manage schedules

Use SMS scheduling to plan shifts, contact staff, and send out valuable information at the right time. Create a list of contacts for each shift or training session. Then, send a single message to all of them at once. None of your team members will see each other and they can reply privately to you with any requests. Each text message can even include a link to your scheduling software.

Evaluate channel and team performance

Rely on Heymarket’s built-in reports to measure team response times, resolution times, and more. Weigh the channel’s popularity by comparing average chat numbers to other channels like email and phone calls. Watch your team improve over time—or identify areas for improvement and go from there.

Retail SMS to drive sales and build loyalty

Answer common questions at scale, close deals faster, and create personalized customer connections using SMS marketing for retail.

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Retail SMS FAQs

Have other questions about retail SMS? Explore our answers below, and reach out to our team if you want to learn more.

You can either text-enable your current business number or receive an entirely new number from Heymarket. Shoppers can text that number to reach your shared inbox. Alternatively, if you integrate your channels, they can message you through Facebook Messenger, Instagram Messenger, WhatsApp, Apple Messages for Business, or Google’s Business Messages. Your team will also receive those messages in your shared inbox.

No. You may only text customers who have given their explicit, written permission for you to text them. You must provide them with key information, like how often you plan to message them and what kind of content you plan on sending. They must text in a specific keyword to opt in. Then you can confirm their subscription to your retail SMS program.

You must send customers the kind of content that you said you would send when they signed up for your SMS service. Focus on customer service content, such as order information, ticket follow-ups, and satisfaction surveys.

If customers have opted in specifically to SMS marketing content, you may send it. Keep it customer-centric and engaging. For example, send opinion polls, product drop notifications, and product tips.

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