Pre-digital communities were defined by the space they occupied, but technology is erasing this dependence on physical proximity. Expanding into virtual space, communities now can be anything from an in-person group to an online forum.
Digital or not, however, no community can survive without communication. Every strong community is built from and sustained by the trusting relationships that emerge from open and effective communication.
Nurturing community can also help companies with revenue and retention. More than ever, customers are choosing virtual communication over in-person interactions or phone calls, so having robust digital communication options is integral to modern community building.
Whether you’re looking to build, retain, or grow your existing or prospective community, one digital channel stands above the rest. As we’ll see, by its very nature as a communication medium and how it can be leveraged, business texting excels at bringing your customers together into a loyal community.
1. Build on your existing community with digital outreach
New digital communication technology makes it easy for people to accomplish a wide range of daily tasks without visiting brick-and-mortar establishments, once the hub of a brand’s community.
Be it sales, marketing, or customer support, the future of all core business functions lies in digital communications and, to be relevant, companies must now build on their existing communities with digital outreach.
And while we have the tech to do this, remember that some tools are more effective at creating the community people crave.
Pre-built for community building
Business texting, for one, is one of the fastest and easiest ways to build on your existing community, affordably and at scale. Your customers likely use their phones to do everything from finances to shopping, and business texting leverages this familiarity to achieve massive outreach.
Beating out other channels on open, read, response, and conversion rates, it’s clear that people prefer business texting over intrusive phone calls or overstuffed email inboxes.
Familiar, relied on, and preferred – business texting already has the hallmarks of a communication medium that people can gather around and use to express themselves.
Campaigns that keep on giving
Business texting also helps build community with outreach campaigns around specific products or events or steps in the customer journey. Whether it is a Christmas campaign, welcome campaign, or iPhone launch campaign, sending personalized messages establishes an open, two-way conversation with customers. Greeting a new customer by name, checking in on how their product is working, or asking about their recent support experience shows that you are available, responsive, and take their concerns seriously.
Customers appreciate personalization and feeling heard, so your outreach should engage in an authentic dialogue about their specific needs. This creates an exceptional customer experience and nurtures the trust that leads to more than retention – it is the critical foundation for a loyal community.
Proximity, redefined
As businesses reduce traditional stores and branches to cut costs, the traditional locus of building community is disappearing.
Untethered from location, digital community communications like business texting also allow companies to reach clients in more remote locations who may not have previously visited stores or branches. Their very remoteness left these existing customers isolated from your community and on the sidelines of essential conversations.
With business texting, remote customers can finally be part of the important dialogues concerning their individual needs, instantly and seamlessly.
2. Build your prospective community with digital outreach
As we transition to digital communities, companies should not only focus on their existing client base but also on prospective communities who are already firmly entrenched in digital communications or will be very soon.
Younger generations grew up with smartphones, making them much more inclined towards digital communications and a perfect prospective segment to engage with and bring closer to you.
Engaging with younger generations requires their preferred communication methods, and business texting is clearly ready to handle their needs. Gen Z and millennial audiences predominantly use texting to communicate for work and leisure, expecting frictionless, seamless, and fast consumer interactions.
An ideal prospective community, so much so that Insider Intelligence concludes in their recent study that “marketers looking to build relationships with [them] would be wise to invest in SMS communications.”
Communi-T(ext)
Integrating digital communication tools into your community-building strategy doesn’t mean closing every in-person branch or retail store. Some people will always want face-to-face interactions; but more importantly, this isn’t a zero-sum game.
Instead, think of business texting as a tool that supplements, enhances, and expands your communication capabilities by maximizing and optimizing the kind of informative, seamless, and personalized messaging customers want.
This gives you the opportunity to build trust and work together to make their lives easier - which is the very definition of community, a feeling of fellowship with others as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals.
Book a demo today and start building your digital community with the power of texting.
