One of my old employers used to constantly bring up 1800-flowers when talking about positive customer contacts. After sending his mother flowers for her birthday, they sent him a reminder email next year quote "Hank, dont lose your memory Gretas birthday next month. Order some flowers today and well make sure they arrive on time".

In fact when it comes to customer contact points and encouraging repeat sales, few businesses do better. You ARE using follow up emails right? Of course you are!

Well, its instant to take that concept to the next level. How many of you utilize SMS to contact customers? In fact, how many even understand what SMS stands for?

SMS stands for Short Message Service, and is nothing more than those cell phone writing messages your kids constantly send back and forth. While they are responsible for making available us with a ton of internet slang, bad grammar, and "wrds tht r typd wthout usng vowels 2 save kystroks", it could be used for beneficial purposes too.

Recently, hospitals have started using writing messages to remind patients about appointments. A patient signs up for the writing communication reminder accomadation , and is sent a text message an hour or so before the appointment reminding them to show up. Since it rolled out, hospitals have seen a 30% decrease in missed appointments.

People must actually be reading these!

Now, imagine if instead of his electronic mail , Hank got a writing message to his phone quote "Dont lose your memory your moms birthday. Call us at 1800 Flowers or visit us online to view our birthday bouquets." If your customers are anything like me, theyll appreciate you for acquiring measure to remember their mothers birthday. (If theyre really anything like me, theyll have forgotten completely about it until acquiring your message.)

SMS is simple, fun, personal, way more likely to be read than electronic mail , and just as effortless to send. In fact, most cell phone providers support sending writing messages via e-mail. This means your current mailer code might send an SMS without having to contruct any changes. (Just keep your communication under 140 characters to be safe.)

If you want to see how well they work for yourself, you may use a internet page like textmemos.com to send yourself a free of price writing message reminder.

Start offering text message reminders today as an added accomadation and watch as your highly defined, personal messages increase your sales in ways you never imagined.