In another thread, @deairby asked whether we preferred phone or email for keeping in touch.

This morning, I received a text from:

1. The girl that cuts my hair reminding me of my appointment tomorrow.
2. Arby’s letting me know about todays lunch special.

We use text to alert our partners to conference calls, webinars and new info on our site, and I’m wondering if any of the SME group keeps in touch with your list via text messaging.

If not, why not? What’s your logic behind the decision not to use texts?

If so, what type of results have you gotten? Better or worse than anticipated?

Obviously, there is no right/wrong answer, I’m just curious.

It’s always important to use the form of messaging that best fits the needs of my audiences, if I’m speaking of business communications.  Some like being texted, some hate it.  For some email is best, other phone calls.  And so on.

Personally, I think texting has gone WAY around the bend, as not only young people (to me, that’s anyone under 30) but also my wife will text me from another room of my house versus either calling or or walking a few feet.

@warrenveach, I’ve had a few clients text me for tech support. I will text a client only if they’ve initiated a text conversation in the past. My 1st preference is email because everything gets organized & archived.

@bernsteincrisis

I can still remember those sales seminars that talked about the impotance of mirroring the communication style of your propects.

Of course, then they were talking about verbal communication.

Oddly enough, last night there was a news story about a group that has been doing a 9 year study on texting that started with a group of then 9-year olds that were given blackberrys and how much their texting has changed over the years.

And, the parents even commented how much easier it is to get a response from the kids via text as opposed to trying to get them to answer the phone when they were out with their friends.

I think texting is here to stay.

And we also will send a text sometimes instead of yelling up the stairs….

@designbykiltz

Christy,

I’ve started to notice that once a customer texts me, that more and more conversations occur that way, and it is often easier to contact them via text from that point on.

But, either way, it is important to catalog the conversations.

@warrenveach As far as tracking messages as  @designbykiltz and others mentioned, I believe Trumpia and other companies I checked out ave tracking of the messages. I haven’t rolled out full use with Trumpia yet but I know many of the platforms for texting use a web dashboard you can send and receive the texts from. Additionally there is email integration as well and time based communications which can be great in recirc!

@warrenveach If you use an overall CRM system you might want to look for one of the text services that has exporting capabilities so the text logs can be added into the system as well to keep all communication logs in one place

@alexandrabriggs @roryramsden

Yes Alexandra, do tell….