The ease and accessibility of texting make the medium a desirable platform for communicating with prospective clients and shoppers. However, sending out text messages at the wrong time could mean that you don’t receive many responses at all. Instead of wasting time sending messages that will go unanswered, consider some strategies for improving your business’s approach to the timing of texts.
Look at Your Opening Hours
You might think that sending text alerts should be an activity reserved for the end of the day. However, imagine that prospective clients receive the texts and want to call your business with follow-up questions or to sign up for the opportunity that your company is offering. If the company is closed for the day, these individuals won’t be able to get through immediately. Being unavailable to speak with a client immediately after sending out a text to that individual can create a bad impression.
Consider Your Prospects
Whether your prospects are corporate or personal has an effect on when you should send text messages. For example, if you’re trying to get shoppers to sign up for a subscription or people to come into the store, many of your target audience members may have to work during standard business hours. Consider how sending messages before or after work hours is more appropriate than in the middle of the day. On the other hand, if your prospects are of a corporate nature, sending the messages when recipients are in the workspace makes sense.
Conduct an Analysis
Delve even deeper into the specifics of your prospects. In other words, conduct an analysis of your target audience to determine the best time to send text messages to these individuals. For example, understanding whether your prospects tend to respond to messages in the morning or evening will allow your business to take a more refined approach.
Avoid Odd Times
Do not send text messages in the earliest hours of the morning or when it’s late at night. Disrupting people’s sleep with text messages is a sure way to avoid turning these individuals into paying customers. Even if these prospective clients have notifications turned off on their phones during their sleeping hours, people are often rushed upon waking up and may still miss the text message.
Take Time Zones into Account
Once you’ve determined a suitable time frame for your text alert system, remember to take time zones into account. You might be sending texts right after the work day has ended for you. However, if your prospects are in a different timezone, you could be interrupting these individuals if they are settling down to go to sleep or while they are trying to get the kids out the door to school. When you have prospects who are located in multiple time zones, you’ll likely need to send out messages at different points of the day.
Evaluate Weekends and Weekdays
In addition to determining the right time of the day to send text messages, you’ll also have to consider the appropriate day of the week. On weekdays, people may be more focused on work-related prospects or shopping opportunities. On the other hand, some individuals simply have more time on the weekends to review texts. Analyzing your target audience should reveal the best day of the week for texts. In a corporate setting, avoiding late in the day on Fridays is generally best.
Be Inclusive of Holidays
Sending a text message asking people to sign up or to become customers when they are celebrating a holiday can also give off a negative impression. Make sure that you are inclusive when it comes to scheduling text messages around holidays. Your prospective clients might not celebrate the same holidays that you do. Keep in mind that you might want to make sending holiday greetings a part of your campaign if doing so is appropriate.
The time at which you should send text messages to your prospects is going to vary depending upon multiple factors. Early on in the process, determine who exactly your prospective clients are, what their needs and habits are in terms of text messages and what their schedules are like. Approaching your text-messaging campaign in a manner that is culturally sensitive, aware and informed is smart.
