For years, marketers have been claiming, “there is money in the list” to urge companies to take advantage of the benefits of building a list of engaged email subscribers. But, with SMS texts producing 6-8 times as much engagement as email marketing, a text marketing list could very well be the "new list in town" and a veritable goldmine for business marketing campaigns.
How do you get people to subscribe?
While there are multiple strategies to obtaining consent for your text marketing list, one of the easiest and most cost-effective methods is interactive voice response.
Interactive voice response, or IVR, is a technology that allows people to interact with recorded messages via voice or a keypad input. Interactive voice response is used by businesses for call routing, or to send surveys to gather customer data.
With IVR, you can send a custom message to thousands of recipients simultaneously and within seconds. Each recipient will then receive a call and be prompted to opt in to receive future text messages from your company.
How does it work?
The process is simple and seamless. Let’s take a look at how CallFire’s IVR systems work as an example.
Once your recipients pick up the call, they will be prompted to press “1” on their keypads if they consent to join your company’s SMS campaign. Then, the message prompts the recipients to enter their 10-digit mobile phone number. The broadcast will recite back the recipient’s phone number for accuracy and allow the recipient to confirm whether or not the number is correct. If the number is incorrect, the recipient can simply press “2” instead to re-key it in. Once recipients confirm, CallFire then stores the number in its system.
The Benefits
One of the benefits of using interactive voice response to collect and store consent from SMS subscribers is that your messages will get maximum exposure.
With typical opt-in SMS campaigns, your campaigns may include posting in-house signs, sending emails or notifying people on your social profiles. But if your customers do not respond to these messages, they may not see them again unless they come back in the store or you send out another batch of emails. By using interactive voice response, you increase the chances of recipients responding to your opt-in message because they will have another chance to opt in if they did not receive your first message.
If your recipient did not get your first message, CallFire’s “Best in Class” Answering Machine Detection system will leave the message on your recipient’s answering machine and assign and store a unique 10-digit phone number. The voice message prompts recipients to call back this unique number as displayed on the caller ID, if they want to opt in. Since CallFire stores this number and also provides an IVR for inbound calls, your recipients will have the opportunity to call back and opt in, providing their cell phone number to continue the process. All of this occurs automatically with no additional effort on your part. It is also a seamless process for your call recipients.
CallFire stores these outbound and inbound numbers for easy access if you want to send future text messages to your subscribers. This is also a viable alternative to using keywords as a way to categorize phone numbers.
Do you want to learn more about how CallFire’s interactive voice response can help you grow your text subscriber list? Take a look at our flexible, affordable pricing here with pay-as-you-go plans as low as 5 cents a text. By working with CallFire, you can partner with an industry veteran that has been helping businesses with simple, cost-effective solutions that target and engage more customers and increase their bottom line.