A Customer Relationship Management solution, or CRM, simplifies the process of finding new customers and organizing their information, allowing you to engage with them effectively. Integrating a highly efficient tool like a CRM with an equally effective communication channel like SMS unlocks limitless potential for your marketing and customer relations.

What Is Bulk SMS?

Bulk SMS is a form of SMS marketing that allows you to send large volumes of text messages to an extensive contact database via an online platform. It is an essential tool that should be a core part of your SMS marketing strategy.

To send bulk texts, you first need to build your contact database. Users can join your list by opting in via your website or by texting an opt-in code, and they can opt out at any time. Bulk texting allows you to deliver promotional content to a large number of customers instantly via SMS.

What is a CRM?

Customer Relationship Management, or CRM, is a tool for managing relationships and interactions with both existing and potential customers. It helps you improve business relationships and grow your company.

A CRM is more than just a standalone tool; it is a system that manages your contacts, sales, and team productivity. Its use is not limited to customer acquisition; it can be used to manage interactions across the entire customer lifecycle, including marketing, sales, and customer service.

Why Should You Combine Bulk Text Messaging With CRM?

Send Texts In Bulk

Sending bulk SMS with Octopush offers more than just the ability to send one message to many users. You can send customized texts in various languages and character sets to a specifically targeted audience across a global network. You can reach a large number of people in just three steps: prepare your message, use filters to create your contact list, and send. It doesn't stop there; after sending your messages, you can track results and measure campaign effectiveness using UTM parameters.

Get A User-Friendly Solution

Businesses typically send bulk emails for newsletters and other promotional messages. However, in terms of open rates and delivery rates, SMS is more effective than email.

When you send bulk SMS, messages are delivered instantly, without requiring an active internet connection. The read time of SMS is also exceptional compared to other channels. If you need to ensure everyone on your contact list receives your message simultaneously, bulk SMS is your best option.

Engage In Two-Way Communication

Compared to email, SMS offers a highly interactive communication medium. If you are sending texts to a large number of customers at once, high response and click-through rates make it easier for you to engage with them. To leverage these high engagement rates, you should give your customers the option to reply to your texts. To provide a great user experience, you need to capitalize on two-way communication.

Customers often receive support calls while in meetings or classes, where they are unable to answer. The advantage of text-based customer service is that if your customers are busy, they can read and respond to the message later. Keeping your line open for replies from your customers has more benefits than you might expect.

Set Up Workflows Easily

You can easily set up workflows thanks to the simple integration between your CRM and Octopush bulk texting. Setting up workflows involves drag-and-drop functionality, giving you full control over the simplicity of the process.

You can also use a workflow builder to manage your entire multichannel marketing campaign on a single platform. This allows your sent messages to be logged automatically, just like CRM functions, and eliminates the hassle of managing multiple systems.

Take Advantage of Personalization

Customizing individual texts with your customers' personal information helps make your SMS more relevant to your recipients. When you send bulk SMS using a service like Octopush, you can add tags that automatically replace the customer information fields stored in your contact database. You don't need to replace these tags manually, as the process is seamlessly automated for every user. However, avoid overusing merge tags, as your texts may end up looking cluttered.

Segment Your Audience

Segmentation makes it easier to send relevant information to your audience. Your audience needs to relate to your message, and the best way to achieve this is by aligning their intent with your content. Since it is impossible to have a contact list where everyone meets the exact same criteria, segmentation helps you identify the right audience.

An audience targeted using relevant parameters is highly likely to engage. SMS marketing tools like Octopush provide access to user activity statistics, helping you analyze your marketing efforts so you can target the ideal group for your campaign. Targeted promotions help you boost conversions and align your promotional message with your customers' intent.

Use Behavior-Based Triggers

Behavior-based triggers help you send the right message to the right person at the right time. Once a customer or prospect is identified based on their actions, a text is sent automatically in response. This response contains the message you previously set up, such as a notification, update, or reminder. This allows you to interact with your customers without delay and eliminates the need for manual decision-making during real-time interactions.

Receive Unified Reports

Businesses typically use different platforms to analyze data from various marketing channels. With CRM and SMS integration via Octopush, you can monitor analytics from both email and SMS on the same platform, without having to constantly switch between multiple applications. You can also easily build custom reports by setting parameters according to your needs. A unified report gives you a holistic view of the results of your email and SMS marketing efforts.

Plan for the Long Run

SMS offers marketers a channel that can get their message across to a large number of people quickly and ahead of the competition. Along with being a real-time communication medium, it helps them leverage high reach and response rates.

The high efficiency of SMS in terms of delivery and engagement makes it a highly effective channel for sending bulk texts, whether promotional or transactional. SMS maintains high engagement rates for both real-time and scheduled communications.

What Does Octopush Offer?

Octopush offers an easy and cost-efficient way to integrate your CRM with its SMS API. It allows you to send bulk texts globally to a wide range of networks quickly and efficiently. Beyond its ease of use, Octopush is GDPR compliant and guarantees maximum data security in accordance with current legislation.

Octopush also supports three different CRM tools: Salesforce, Zapier, and Microsoft Dynamics.

Salesforce

With Octopush’s integration with Salesforce, you can send SMS to more than 200 countries. You can use the integration to receive SMS notifications for events such as account creation, order placement, product stock-outs, contact form responses, return requests, and more.

If you run an eCommerce business, this integration can significantly simplify your workflow. You can receive texts triggered by events such as order confirmation, customer account creation, changes in order status, package tracking numbers, password recovery requests, discount code redemptions, and much more.

It provides maximum flexibility and helps you customize workflows to suit your needs. Furthermore, you can personalize texts using parameters such as name, package number, or address. In addition, you can utilize tools and statistics to monitor message status, check shipping history, and receive daily reports on your store’s activity.

Zapier

With Zapier, you can connect Octopush to more than 3,000 services. You can leverage this integration in various ways to significantly boost your productivity.

You can use it for customer onboarding by sending a welcome SMS whenever a prospect creates an account on your eCommerce site. You can also send cart status updates and other notifications regarding order processing and product availability. Moreover, you can send both transactional and promotional messages. When you update a user profile in your CRM, you can send a text to the user confirming the change to their personal information.

Microsoft Dynamics

With the integration of Microsoft Dynamics and Octopush, you get all the features you need, such as receiving reminders and alerts triggered by your customers' actions.

Similar to the Salesforce integration, you can receive transactional texts in response to actions such as account creation, order placement, product stock-outs, contact form responses, return requests, and more. You can also receive alerts for eCommerce actions such as order confirmation, customer account creation, changes in order status, and package tracking numbers.

Automate Bulk Texting With the Octopush SMS API

You can connect your CRM software and automate bulk SMS sending with Octopush using its SMS API. Connect your software to Octopush via the SMS API to automate your SMS marketing and save time and resources.

If you need assistance, Octopush provides that too with its SMS API Documentation featured on its website. This documentation is easy to read, understand and implement, helping you to complete the integration process in just a few hours. Once the connection is established, you can seamlessly utilize Octopush’s automated bulk SMS service within your CRM.

You can use HTTP, along with 5 supported programming languages, to complete the integration. If you prefer to send your text messages via an internet messaging interface or email, SMTP will suit your needs.

How Can Integrating Bulk SMS With Your CRM Benefit Your Business?

Craft Engaging SMS Marketing Campaigns

With its high reach and low spam rates, SMS is an ideal medium for sending large volumes of marketing messages. Integrating bulk texting with your CRM provides you with an efficient and easy way to reach a large number of users.

You can schedule your SMS campaigns and automate them to be sent at the optimal time. Timing is crucial for promotional messages to avoid reaching customers during off-peak hours. Scheduling ensures that your marketing messages reach your intended audience exactly when you want them to. Given the high click-through rates of SMS, you can also drive traffic to your website and boost conversions. Octopush offers a service called SMS 2.0, which allows you to send a customized landing page to your SMS list and increase user engagement.

Send Mass Notifications Instantly

Using your customer database in your CRM, you can instantly send important alerts to your entire list via bulk SMS. With a mere 1% spam rate for SMS, you can be confident that your important notifications will be delivered.

As a business, there may be times when you need to notify all your customers at once. This could include informing them about website maintenance, changes in business hours, updates to terms and conditions, or even shipping delays. In such cases, sending bulk SMS is particularly useful.

Send Your Latest Sales Alerts

If you follow the common practice of sending sales alerts in bulk via email, you might want to rethink your strategy. Since emails have a spam rate of 49.7%, it is likely that nearly half of the sales alerts, product arrival updates, and promotional offers you send are ending up in your users' spam folders. Moreover, alerts regarding new releases or flash sales are time-sensitive, making them ideal for bulk text delivery to ensure they are seen instantly. During the holidays, you can send personalized bulk SMS to your list with warm greetings and a discount offer that is sure to put a smile on their faces.

Provide Timely Product Updates

The high efficiency of bulk SMS helps you get noticed by your users. You can send the latest updates to your product catalog via bulk SMS. Given the high click-through rates of SMS, you can include a link that redirects users to a landing page featuring the latest additions to your catalog.

Users are unlikely to check your website regularly, which is why sending product updates is a particularly effective way to inform them of your newest releases. Furthermore, including product updates in weekly emails or newsletters may not yield the same results, as the average user receives an overwhelming number of promotional emails every day.

Conduct Customer Surveys Easily

You can use the CRM integration with Octopush to gather feedback or conduct market research by sending polls and surveys to your SMS list. Gathering feedback helps you stand out by ensuring a high quality of service.

Reach out to users who need help with issues they encounter while using your product or service. Once you have resolved their concerns, follow up by thanking them for their support and feedback. Your customers will appreciate you taking the time to address their issues. Engaging with your customers in this way helps you build a strong connection with them, which in turn helps increase customer retention rates.

Integrating bulk SMS with your CRM not only allows you to manage customer information and interactions but also helps you build strong relationships, which goes a long way toward securing customer loyalty. With this integration with Octopush, you get premium bulk SMS features at a low price, helping you maximize your ROI with minimal effort. Get started with Octopush with a free trial today by creating a free account!