“I was amazed with the results…we had a 280 percent response rate!” Diane Kephart, marketing director for Chick-fil-A at El Con, explained. “We sent a text message offer to 64 existing customers and generated 182 redemptions in just three hours! The costs were negligible and the ROI from add-on purchases was excellent.”

The smartest, easiest and fastest way to improve revenues has always been to sell more to existing customers and clients and to have them refer you to new prospects. Account representatives, customer service representatives and retail and counter clerks can do this by cross-selling and up-selling at each transaction. Direct mail offers and outbound calls to existing or dormant customers can stimulate traffic and repeat purchases. But sending sales text messages (TMs) to existing customers can be much faster, far less expensive and more effective.

“It’s a new medium with excellent response rates,” said Levi McClendon, co-founder of BoomText, a Phoenix-based text messaging company. “We usually see figures of from 10 percent to 60 percent, but Diane’s example is remarkable.”

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Kephart explained, “In this case I encouraged existing customers to forward the TM offer to their friends, so there was a viral effect. We generated new customers through referrals.”

Debra Brown and John Hand IV, recent grads from the University of Arizona and co-founders of MobilizeUs, another text messaging company, explain how it works: “First you need a group of your existing customers to agree or to ‘opt-in’ to receive TM offers from you. You should only send messages to those who have asked for them. Then you need to create a well designed offer with an immediate call to action measured in hours, not days. If you add the forwarding feature and if your offer is ‘hot’ enough, your opt-in list can grow virally hour by hour with new, first time buyers.”

Is this Twitter?

No, explains Geoffrey Schultz, BoomText’s account representative in Tucson. “Twitter recipients often receive multiple tweets each day and few, if any, require immediate action.” Schultz cautions, “Sales TMs should be sent no more than six to eight times a month. Otherwise you may annoy and turn off your audience.”

It’s easier than Twitter to opt-in for TMs, too.

According to Kephart, “Many of our customers use their cell phones to opt-in to receive our TM offers as they are enjoying their meals. Tent cards at the table walk them through the steps.”

What’s the cost? Both organizations offer free trial periods, and the charge per message is well below that of a direct mail piece or the full cost of an outbound call.

“We are still at the stage where we have a new solution searching for the right applications,” says Brown, “While opt-in TMs won’t replace traditional ways of increasing repeat purchases, they are still a great new medium with extraordinary ROIs for sales applications.”

Contact Sam Williams, president of New View Group LLC, at swilliams@newviewgroup.net or (520) 390-0586. Williams is looking for topics readers would like to see covered, or with questions or comments. New View Group provides revenue development consulting to CEOs and sales managers and sales and sales management skills training to business to business sales teams. His Sales Judo appears the first and third weeks of each month in Inside Tucson Business.