A lot of customers have been asking me the different options for whether they should use marketing automation or not, and most customers want to, but most times it comes down to a phone issue. We now have several good options where you can use marketing automation in your business.
Option 1:
You have a very brandable phone number that your business has had for years and want to keep it:
In this scenario, if you still want to use our service that automatically texts a reply to your potential customers when you miss their call, what we can do is this: We can set the number of rings your phone company will ring the phone (for example, 4 rings), and if not answered, we can then forward the calls to our tracking number. The tracking number will immediately go to voicemail, and your potential customer will receive the customized text, such as “Sorry we missed your call, is there something we can help with?”
The pros of this solution will be that you can have a text message go out immediately when you miss a call, and not lose that potential customer forever.
Is there a con? Well, the voicemails will now be on our call tracking software, so you can listen to them via a web browser or in the mobile app. This is generally more preferred to the antiquated voicemail options your local phone company has. So this can be a pro or a con, depending on your current way of checking voicemails.
Option 2:
You can Port your business number over to our call tracking service, currently we use Twilio. How does this work? Just like when porting a cell phone from Sprint over to Verizon, we would port your Cincinnati Bell (or Time Warner, etc) number into Twilio. Then you would no longer be paying the phone company, but would still have use of your business phone number.
You could make calls from the business number using our mobile app, or via a web browser using your computer, laptop, tablet, iPad, etc.
The pros of this, usually it is cheaper than paying the phone company their monthly service and you get to keep the number. This also allows you to just use the same branded business number in your SMS communications with customers if you want, including the missed call auto-reply with a text feature. Keep in mind with this, you no longer have the old school landline phone to call people back from.
Option 3:
Some businesses don’t want to answer the phone, such as busy restaurants. With them, we just forward the business line to the Twilio line and they can have their customers texted with a link to order online, and a form to fill out if they need something else. This allows them to call people back later as needed, without worrying about phone calls going unanswered.