Think about how you communicate with your friends and family. Chances are, you don’t spend much energy wondering if a phone number is textable -- every friend, family member, acquaintance, and kids’ soccer coach that you communicate with has a single number that you can call or text without thinking about it.

Communicating with your business should be just as straightforward -- it’s what your customers expect. Here’s why you should enable texting for all of your team members.

Topics: Business Texting, Text Messaging, SMS

Gone are the days when businesses set the rules of engagement. The internet has leveled the field. Your customers are used to getting what they want, when they want, whether that’s an instant delivery from Amazon or on-demand customer support when something’s broken.

But the good news is it’s pretty simple to meet clients where they are. Your best customers just have a few requests about how they reach you.

Topics: Business Texting, Text Messaging, real-time communication

Business texting, like any communication, is a psychological art. Use these science-driven tips to get fast, meaningful responses from your best prospects.

Topics: Business Texting, Text Messaging, SMS

Let’s be real: cold calls are old-fashioned and awkward, and don’t get results. We don’t like cold calling. Your customers don’t like cold calls. But phone calls are still an important tool. You can make calls more powerful by being strategic about when you use them.

When you combine a well-timed text with a call, you get the double benefit of the quick casualness of text and the warmer connection of a real voice. Think of texts and calls as partners getting the same job done in different ways. So let’s look at how to make that partnership successful.

Topics: Text Messaging, SMS, TextUs Voice, real-time communication, conversational SMS campaings

If you aren’t texting, you’re missing out on potential deals. Sales have had to pivot since inception, from door-to-door salespeople to letters to phone calls (a big leap!), then calls to email. And, just as you would’ve been missing out on great connections if you hadn’t started emailing your prospects in the past decade, today, you need to text your contacts. Just take a look:

• 97% of Americans - a bulk of your customer base - text every single day.
• Texts have a 98% open rate. Email has 20%. And the percentage for returning voicemails is abysmally lower.
• 90% of engaged leads prefer to be texted vs called.

Let’s put those numbers into words.

Topics: Business Texting, Text Messaging, Definitive Guide to Business Texting, SMS, sales

Use texting for quick announcements and emergency blasts to internal staff and contacts. Brief enough to grab attention and more widely-accessed than email or calls (which may be jammed during an emergency), texts are a great way to quickly get time-sensitive messages to your audience.

Reasons you might send an emergency text:

• Impending catastrophic weather
• A national emergency affecting your business and customers
• An active, dangerous situation inside your building

Prepare on how to send an effective SOS text so you’re ready if the emergency strikes.

Topics: Business Texting, Text Messaging, SMS

Remember when you had to message back and forth endlessly just to find a time to meet with a contact? How people would wander off during the scheduling process if it was taking too long to get a meeting on the books? How sometimes you would double-book meetings, not realizing you’d offer the same time slot to two people?

If you’re thinking something like, yes, because these things happened this week!, then we’re going to take a moment to geek out to you about digital scheduling services. If your company isn’t using a platform like Calendly or Doodle or their sales tool cousins, like Hubspot’s Meetings or Drift Meetings, please try one of them out right now.

Aren’t they awesome!?

Topics: Business Texting, Text Messaging, meeting booking

Meridian Technologies, an IT staffing firm, knew the power of texting. “If you’re not texting candidates, you’re behind the eight ball,” said Justin Van Tassel, Director of Recruiting, Talent Acquisition, Training & Development.

Their recruiters were using their personal cell phones to text with prospects and candidates and seeing great response rates over email and phone outreach alone.

But not everyone was comfortable using their personal cell phones, and as a result, Meridian wasn’t able to adopt text messaging company-wide. What’s more, when the staffing firm was using a BYOD (bring-your-own-device) model, management had zero insight into the quality, frequency, and efficacy of text outreach. This left a big hole in their analytics.

Topics: Business Texting, Staffing and Recruiting, Case Studies, Text Messaging, SMS, Bullhorn

One day, the team and I were talking (again) about how to really show the value of text messaging for staffing firms. We’d been really digging in, trying to get at a way to identify the most meaningful metric, and I had one of those lightning bolt moments that we’re all hoping for when tackling tough problems.

Topics: Staffing and Recruiting, Text Messaging, ROI

Nowadays, it’s expected that businesses use text messaging. In fact, 64% of customer prefer text messaging over voice when it comes to customer service. Because texting for business has become the norm, you can use it much in the same way you would phone or email to get a conversation with a prospect going. The biggest difference? That’s right -- people actually read their text messages.

Topics: Business Texting, Text Messaging, Sales Acceleration, SMS, Marketing, sales, 101 Text Message Templates

Staffing Hub, the go-to site for staffing industry intelligence, just introduced The Staffing Show, the only podcast that delivers tools, tips, and tactics from the staffing and recruiting industry’s top executives and thought leaders. TextUs is proud to co-sponsor The Staffing Show.

Topics: Business Texting, Staffing and Recruiting, Text Messaging, Staffing Referrals, SMS, Bullhorn, podcast

You can’t reach your goals unless you have solid metrics to track your progress as you go. You can’t get healthy without measuring pounds lost or calories burned. You can’t get rich without measuring profits or ROI.

And you can’t improve your candidate experience without metrics that let you know how often your recruiters are communicating with your contacts.

Topics: Business Texting, Staffing and Recruiting, Text Messaging, SMS, Bullhorn, sales

As recruiters and salespeople, we spend tons of time and energy reaching out to our candidates and leads.

Topics: Inside Sales, Business Texting, Staffing and Recruiting, Text Messaging, Sales Acceleration, Bullhorn, sales

Now that we’ve discussed how to use text messaging to promote job postings and to qualify potential candidates, I want to showcase how you can use text messaging to nurture your relationships with candidates you’ve already placed.

Topics: Business Texting, Staffing and Recruiting, Text Messaging, Staffing Referrals, SMS

Sometimes, the right message is all it takes to get a meeting with your contacts. And text messaging is the perfect medium for setting appointments. It helps you ask simple questions and get quick answers back, just what you need to fill your calendar.

Topics: Inside Sales, Business Texting, Staffing and Recruiting, Text Messaging, Sales Acceleration, Templates, SMS

Recently, we discussed how to promote your job postings using text messaging. Now we’re going to take things to the next level and talk about how you can use conversational texting to qualify leads.

Topics: Business Texting, Staffing and Recruiting, Text Messaging, SMS, Business Texting Framework

You can now stream the 2018 State of Staffing Webinar, featuring an in-depth exploration of the data from the State of Staffing report. It also offers actionable tips on how you can align your outreach strategy, candidate experience, and tech stack to fuel optimal growth.

Topics: Business Texting, Staffing and Recruiting, Customer Service, Text Messaging, SMS, Marketing

Your team works hard to source candidates, connect with top talent, and fill open positions as fast as possible. The race to scoop up talent is real, and you know that if your team isn’t the first ones out of the gate, your odds of winning plummet. But, do you know how your team compares to industry averages for days to close?

Topics: Business Texting, Staffing and Recruiting, Text Messaging, 2018 State of Staffing, SMS

When text messaging first started being used for business, campaigns were all about impersonal marketing. Contacts received bland, promotional messages from 5-digit numbers. These messages didn’t inspire conversation or connection -- often they were just interruptions that got quickly deleted.

Topics: Business Texting, Text Messaging, News and Updates, Product Updates, High Volume, SMS

In the recent State of Staffing Benchmarking Report, surveying hundreds of staffing and recruiting professionals, fast-growth staffing firms are more likely than their slower growth peers to use text messaging at every stage of their relationships with candidates and talent.

Topics: Business Texting, Staffing and Recruiting, Text Messaging, 2018 State of Staffing