Must-Have SMS Automations to Put Your Sales on Autopilot

Cart Abandonment Feb 18, 2021

Automations are a crucial part of any SMS marketing strategy. Not only do automated messages create personalized, behaviorally-tailored messaging for your customers, but they help your marketing team make the most of bandwidth and resources. By creating a series of messages that are pre-built and triggered by certain sending conditions, marketers are able to optimize their own workflows and automate the process of interacting with customers on an ongoing basis. Most importantly, these automations can be a super simple way to automate sales by creating set-it-and-forget-it SMS blasts that act to recover lost revenue, prompt new purchases, and nurture relationships with repeat customers for continued retention.

Read on to discover some of the key automations you should have in place to boost your revenue and put your sales on autopilot.

Cart abandonment

Maybe people came to your site organically, or maybe they ended up there as a result of a promotional text or email that you sent out to your list; either way, you’re bound to have prospective customers who reach your site and spend a bit of time browsing, only to then add something to their carts but navigate away from your shop without completing the purchase. These customers have demonstrated a clear interest in your product offering by adding something to their carts, but unfortunately, an “almost there” sale doesn’t mean much for your business if there’s no follow through.

With cart abandonment automations, you can create a reminder SMS blast that is triggered by an incomplete purchase after a product has been added to a customer’s cart. This message can act as a simple reminder, or can include a promo code to incentivize users to complete the purchase. Either way, this is a quick and easy method of recovering lost sales by circling back with contacts who have already demonstrated strong intent and interest in what you have to offer.

Pro tip: Your best bet when setting up a cart abandonment SMS message is to configure the automation to go out shortly after a cart has been abandoned; maybe 30 minutes to an hour. Why? It’s best to strike while a product is still somewhat fresh in a customer’s mind.

Win-back offer

It’s natural that some people in your audience might become a little more distant or inactive over time. When that’s the case, a small nudge from your brand can reinvigorate people in your audience who have grown quiet in recent months. The benefit of a win-back campaign is that you’re reaching out to contacts who have already made a purchase from you in the past. This means that these people have been high-intent leads at some point in time and may offer a promising return when prompted to re-engage with you.

A win-back campaign is one you might build to be triggered two or three months after a customer’s last purchase. This is far enough out that you’ve given the customer a little bit of space without coming off as overbearing, yet close enough to their most recent purchase that your brand is still familiar and relevant to them.

One great way to approach a win-back SMS campaign is to entice recipients by teasing out some of the newest products you’ve rolled out in the past few months. This will create a sense of curiosity and encourage customers to check out what they may have missed.

Pro tip: A strong win-back campaign may also include a promo code to further encourage disengaged customers to come back and make a purchase with some additional savings that feel a little bit exclusive to them.

Loyalty rewards

On the opposite side of the customer spectrum from disengaged customers you’re hoping to win back, you’ve got the highly-engaged customers who never dropped off. These active contacts are people who make repeated purchases, continuously open your marketing emails and texts, and have impressively high CTRs in their repertoire.

Utilizing SMS automations can be a great way to reward loyal customers who have established a great conversion track record with your brand. By setting an order milestone as your trigger — i.e., “customer has made 5 purchases” — you’ll be able to automatically follow-up with a customer shortly after they make a notable purchase to reward them for being a loyal customer. While this automation gives your brand major props on the customer experience and relationship-building fronts, it’s also a strong opportunity to boost sales by encouraging customers who have a strong conversion record to make future purchases, such as by offering a loyalty promo code.

Pro tip: When setting up your loyalty automation, it could be a good idea to enable a delay of one or two days from a customer’s purchase milestone. This increases the chances that your SMS campaign will drive further sales by giving customers a little bit of time between their milestone purchase and their next potential order.

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