SMS reminders

One of the best ways to use bulk SMS is by sending event and appointment reminders. Sending text reminders is a great way to ensure that your customers or patients show up to an event or appointment at the right time and on the correct day. You'll also be ensuring that your employees time and resources are used in the best way possible as cancellations and no-shows can be very disruptive and costly.

By sending a text reminder, you'll also be providing your customers and patients with great customer service. It's really easy to book an appointment well in advance and then completely forget about it when the time approaches. So, a reminder could make all the difference. Regarding the value of sending out reminders, research by Small Biz Trends found the following benefits:

• Less than 5% of appointments are cancelled when a text reminder is sent to customers.
• 75% of millennials believe that text reminders are beneficial .
• Customers are 28% more likely to recommend a brand that uses bulk SMS to their friends.
• 58% of consumers have a more positive outlook toward brands that use text messaging.

The healthcare industry is a great industry to use when discussing the benefit of sending SMS appointment reminders. At present, around 5% of the 307 million yearly appointments with GPS, nurses and other departments are currently missed without enough notice to invite others. That cost equates to approximately 15.4 million missed appointments at a cost of over £216 million to the NHS. However, if sending a text reminder could get just 1% of those people to attend their appointment then there would be a saving of over £2 million. While some practices do incorporate SMS reminders, many others that are yet to incorporate text reminders into their communication strategy. Here are some other benefits of using bulk SMS to send reminders:

Open rates

One of the biggest advantages of using SMS to send out appointment and event reminders is that it has a 98% open rate. This essentially means that almost all of your customers will see your message within plenty of time. On top of that, 90% of texts are also read within the first three minutes of being delivered. This means that you can get time-sensitive information to your customers and be confident that they will see your message quickly.

Accessibility

Another benefit of sending appointment and event reminders via SMS is that it has great accessibility. There are is still a large number of people that have a mobile phone that is not a smartphone, like the classic Nokia 3310 for example. This group typically only uses their phone for communication purposes and may not have access to emails, digital calendars or other apps. Therefore, by sending them an appointment reminder via text, you'll be able to communicate with them effectively while removing the need to use direct mail.

Simplicity

A big advantage of using Bulk SMS is that it is simple to use. If you have a web team, then they can integrate our API with your existing systems. Then, every time a customer has an event or appointment scheduled, you can trigger an SMS reminder a certain number of days before. The alternative way to send texts is by using our online dashboard. Once you've logged in, it's as simple as typing out your reminder and then pressing send. The whole process can be completed within a couple of minutes maximum. And, you can save templates that can be accessed at any point.

Cost-effectiveness

Sending an SMS marketing reminder costs as little as 1.6p per message. That penny could be the difference between your customer attending an event or appointment or not. Should they decide not to, then the cost in wasted resources and time will amount to a much higher figure than the penny that could have gotten them there.