Billions of people use messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and SMS – allowing them to make payments, talk to their bankers, and submit applications from their mobile phones. Conversational messaging has become the preferred business communication channel around the world.

Now you have a chance to test drive the newly updated version of SMS-Magic!

If you already have created a sandbox environment, we would like to push an Early Release Preview to your sandbox in the next two weeks. We’d like you to try it and let us know what you think. Here’s all you need to do:

• If you have a sandbox in Version 1.68 now, do nothing. We’ll push the new release to your sandbox automatically.
• If you’d rather not play, send an email  to marketing@sms-magic.com to tell us to exclude your sandbox from the push.
• Be sure to save your work before the auto-push.

Once you’ve tried the new version of SMS-Magic, we need your feedback. We’ll give you some time to try the new release out, then we’ll send you an email with a feedback link. Your input will help us create a better product for you.

What’s New in the Early Release Preview?

SMS-Magic is known for sophisticated, easy-to-use APIs designed for CRMs like Salesforce and Zoho. The upgrades in the new release make those integrations even easier and give you more control over how you engage your customers.

• Enhanced User Experience: Personalize your user experience with additional role-based permission sets and organize the records detail page with conversation component resizing.
• Multimedia Conversations: Send bigger rich-media files over instant messengers and set Salesforce as the storage location for them.
• Tame the Templates: Enjoy quick access to org-wide templates from SMS-Magic Global Navigation.
• Find Your Conversation Flows: Search by “app name” or “PA-Key” and view process builders, workflows and flows linked with any Converse App.
• Launch Conversations at Scale: Manage multiple high-volume campaigns directly from SMS-Magic Global Navigation.
• Engage with Customers at the Right Time, Every Time: SMS-Magic’s Early Release Preview keeps track of your conversations from start to finish in a single thread – before or after you create the record. Modifying objects and templates? No problem. Your conversations are always on. You can immediately spot conversations assigned to you and keep them uninterrupted and synched with Salesforce at all times.
• Enjoy Stronger Compliance & Support: We’ve enhanced the back-end so you can track all SMS-Magic user activity in one place and access all activity logs when you need them. Configure opt-in and opt-out keywords, templated messages, and message tags. Maintain audit trails and enable reporting for multichannel compliance, opt-out rates, message delivery, and more. Have a question? Our support team is ready to help resolve any issues you encounter. You can turn on full- or limited-access to the support team for seven days at a time.
• Confidently Continue Conversations On the Go: You can spot new messages anytime, anywhere. The upgraded SMS-Magic Mobile App prominently displays how many unread messages you have. The app also lets you continue conversations from your mobile phone and tracks them in your CRM. You can share exact map locations in conversations to improve any in-person meeting experience.

The new release of SMS-Magic’s Early Release Preview is your perfect partner to power high-stakes conversational messaging for moments that matter. Help us make it the best it can be with your feedback. If you have questions, please contact customer support.

If you haven’t tried SMS-Magic yet, our customer support team would love to show you how SMS-Magic can make reaching your customers easier and more effective. Ask for a demo or a free trial!

To help you master this part of text messaging campaigns, we have compiled 6 things that we’re sure your boss wants you to know. Here they are:

1. You must have express written consent before your company can legally send text messages to anyone. That means more than just asking for their phone number. It doesn’t matter who it is – an existing customer, a former client, a trade-show lead, or someone on a purchased marketing list. Before that first message goes out, your customer must say it’s okay. In other words, they must opt in.

2. Several governing bodies regulate commercial text messaging. They include individual countries, including the U.S., consortiums of countries like the European Union, state or local governments, and the carriers who deliver messages around the world. Your text messaging partner, like SMS-Magic, should be able to help you navigate the rules for your campaigns.

3. Include the following in your first text:
   • Your company name. Don’t make your customers guess who’s sending the message.
   • The promotion premium. If you’re offering a coupon, discount or e-book in exchange for permission to text, do it at the beginning of the text.
   • Message frequency. Let your customers know how often you plan to send.
   • Message and data rates. Remind customers that they might be charged to receive SMS messages.
   • How to opt out. “Reply STOP to unsubscribe” works well.
   • How to reach customer service or ask questions.

You’ve probably received opt-in requests from companies you do business with. Take a look at how well they’ve provided information to their customers. Some of the offers we’ve seen have been really creative. One was on a parking meter. Learn from the best.

4. Track opt-in and opt-out requests so that you send only to the customers who have specifically asked you to. European laws also require you to “forget” a customer at their request. That means purging all their information from your system and being able to show your work. If regulators ever ask, you must be able to prove you have permission to text.

5. In the United States, commercial text messages are governed by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). It prohibits the following types of text messages:
   • Unsolicited Text Messages – businesses are not allowed to text consumers without their permission.
   • Requesting Payment – businesses may not request payment or additional identifying information before revealing the actual message.
   • Scrambled Messages – businesses must send readable texts. They may not scramble the message or use unintelligible audio.
   • Do Not Call Registry – businesses must respect the Do Not Call registry established by the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission.
   • Robocalling & Automated Dialing – businesses may not use robocalling to generate phone numbers or send text messages.

6. The last thing we think your boss wants you to know has nothing to do with rules and regulations. Instead, it’s about being authentic in all your customer interactions. Behaving like a trusted friend helps you build customer relationships that can last for years. Text messaging is the perfect channel for building trust.

Staying in touch with your existing customers and getting to know your potential customers has become a requirement in today’s business world. SMS-Magic, through conversational and automated text messaging, can help you reach out to customers in new ways.

SMS-Magic offers a free trial so that you can get a feel for our product. If you’re as pleased as we think you will be, you can choose the level of service that’s best for your company.

Contact us to set up a demo or to start your free trial. Let us show you how you can engage your customers in new ways!

Most of our customers say it’s virtually impossible to get a customer to return an email. And we hear comments like, “No one answers the phone anymore” or “They won’t answer if they see a strange number on caller ID.”

So the question is: If you can’t reach customers and prospects, how can you provide a service or sell a product?

As a software-as-a-service company developing SMS and MMS texting solutions, we think we know how to reach your customers, but we thought it might be better to let our customers show you how text messaging works in their businesses.

Why Use Text Messaging?

Before we get to the great ideas, let’s take a minute to talk about the reality of communication in 2022. Emails were great when everyone read them sitting in front of their desktop computers and the alternative was sending mail through the postal service. Voice mails, too, served their purpose.

These days, however, emails are easy to ignore. In fact, we only open 22% of the emails we receive. And the more mobile we’ve become; the more unwieldy emails have become. It’s just not convenient to reply on the run.

And most of us don’t even listen to the voice messages we receive. It’s likely we will wait for a text.

Texts are quick, easy and always with you. We send more than 5 billion texts every day, and we read 98% of the ones we receive. Clearly, text messaging is the channel we prefer.

Here are some great ideas from two of our customers. You can apply these ideas directly to your own business or modify them to fit your unique situation.

When You Have Seconds to Respond

In the high-stakes legal world, the key to winning new business is responding quickly. When legal prospects have a need, they normally shop for an attorney online. One of our customers estimates that he has seconds to reach out to a prospect before they move on to a competitor.

To engage a prospect quickly, our customer has developed a series of automated text messages that are triggered by where the prospect is on the firm’s website. Different practice areas are housed in different sections of the website, so it’s possible to tell where the prospect’s interest lies and tailor messages specifically for that need.

No matter what the prospect needs, the initial messages introduce the law firm and ask how the firm can help. As the prospects reply, the conversations continue with pre-programmed messages. And when it’s appropriate, a member of the intake team takes over with live messaging and continues the conversation.

The system is designed to be active 24/7. The automated messages launch even if the prospect is searching at 3 a.m. National practices can benefit from a time-neutral system because prospects may shop for an attorney at any hour of the day.

Once a prospect becomes a client, SMS-Magic makes staying in touch easier than ever. Our customer uses Litify to manage his firm, and SMS-Magic is designed to work seamlessly with Litify. Messages are tracked by SMS-Magic in the Litify environment. That means everyone in the firm opens one application, rather than two. They can see all the client’s information, including all text communications, in one place.

If an attorney is away from the office, anyone at the office can respond to queries and a different attorney can continue working on the case. The case doesn’t stop because the lead attorney is unavailable. It saves the firm time and better serves the client.

When You Must Respond on the Fly

Another of our customers manages large rental properties. They wanted to handle maintenance issues as quickly as possible, and they asked their residents to email maintenance requests to a dedicated address. Staff members responded as soon as they were in front of their computers.

It was a great plan, but it didn’t work. Residents complained that their requests weren’t handled quickly enough and started texting requests instead using email. Residents liked the immediacy and the convenience of texting.

The workflow, however, wasn’t designed to accept requests via text. Trying to make sure texts were transferred promptly and accurately created extra work for the management staff. The staff was missing requests and couldn’t always be sure issues had been addressed. And staff members could only respond to requests when they were in the office.

Our customer’s CRM was Salesforce. SMS-Magic is designed to work with Salesforce, as well as other CRMs, and the integration made using a text-based system for maintenance requests easy. Once our customer installed SMS-Magic to handle all their text messages, maintenance requests began to flow smoothly.

SMS-Magic tracked all customer contacts, no matter what the source of the contact. Our customer was able to track all maintenance requests – by email, phone or text. And anyone on the staff could access the record. That meant anyone could give a resident an update on their request.

It also made sense to equip each staff member with the mobile version of SMS-Magic. With the app, they could answer texts from either their own phones or from company phones. The system would track the contacts in Salesforce no matter what phone was used. No longer were staff members tied to their desks. They could visit company properties and respond to maintenance requests at the same time. Our customer said it was a game changer for their business.

How Can You Test Drive SMS-Magic?

Would your business benefit from an integration between your CRM and your texting platform? We’d love to help you start texting or help scale your texting to a higher level.

We have experts ready to help you take SMS-Magic for a spin for FREE! Schedule a demo or start a free trial today! We think you’ll love what you see!