November 13, 2018 Posted by Pocketstop in Mass Notification Social Share
Modern day communication provides companies and individuals with a gateway towards a long-lasting, fruitful, and beneficial relationship, regardless of the area or industry in which it is used, from relationships between customers and their favorite brand, property managers and the businesses or individuals renting their buildings, to relationships between businesses and their employees, and everything in between. Whether we are talking about internal communications to select groups of employees or tenants of a commercial real estate building or employees at a financial services branch, the ability to send mass notifications is now a requested feature from all mass communications solutions, a feature that helps businesses save a lot of time and money when conducting their activities.
Why Text Messages?
If back in the day text message was more a channel of communication between family members and friends, nowadays, with the rise in use of mobile phones, text messages are the go-to solution for anyone, from businesses to non-profit organizations, when it comes to communicating with interested parties such as employees, tenants, stakeholders, and more. With an open rate of 98%, text messages have proven to be a reliable mean of communication, surpassing the popularity of emails, and even of social media. With modern mass notification solutions being developed and upgraded with such swiftness, the question should not be why should one use text messages for their internal communication needs, but how to best implement it in order to result in more fruitful outcomes.
The goal when it comes to business communications is to be able to have a flexible platform at hand, one that will allow marketers and communicators to engage with easy with their recipients, no matter the channel. Which is why, using something other than a mobile phone or a web-based application to send text messages can be useful, if that solution is one you are already relying on, such as Outlook, the personal information manager that you use for sending emails.
Using Outlook for Text Messages
Tying multiple communication channels into a single platform is an excellent way for streamlining your internal communication strategies with little to no effort. With the help of an add-in solution, you can turn Outlook into a great text messaging tool or multi-channel mass notification solution with just a few easy steps. You can then draft and send messages via text message, social media, email and more, without leaving Outlook, whether you are using the web version or the desktop application.
What Can You Get from an Outlook Add-In?
Nowadays, companies and marketers need to be aware of the problem posed by both the lack of time and needing to keep up with industry innovations/customer demands, but also with the need to reach a large number of people in a short period of time with a message or notification, such as the case of internal communication notifications. In order to fulfill goals and objectives to the best of one’s ability, solutions need to be implemented towards achieving a certain level of effectiveness and assure the overall growth of the business. With a plethora of mass notification solutions coming your way either from industry developments, client suggestions, or from your own internal communications team, deciding how to implement and analyze them all can be a real hassle. But having access to a solution that allows you to have all your content broadcasting needs in one place can change that. Using Outlook to send text messages will allow your business to:
- Access the needed content from multiple accounts
- Give access to multiple users to company content
- Simplify text message communications
- Replace statistic email lists with dynamic and flexible groups
- Segment your business’ audience without having to change platforms or leave your inbox
- Save time by not changing platforms all the time and by having all the information in one place
- Save financial resources by not having to train all employees on how to use various platform, but also cut costs with the implementation of multiple platforms software
- Have access to detailed reports about for further analysis and management of data
- Centralize communication and have a more in-depth control on all the content your business is broadcasting either via internal or external communication strategies
- Benefit from support in case something goes wrong with the content
Availability of Outlook for Sending Text Messages
Outlook is an email client that comes with more than one version of software, and more than one type of application. It can be accessed from the web browser, via Office 365, or via the desktop application, from a range suites of Microsoft software. The great news about having an Outlook add-in for sending text messages is that it will work with all the versions of Office, web or desktop-based. So regardless of how you are interacting with your email client, from how many devices, or on how many accounts, the ability to send text messages (and more) from the same place you are sending your emails will always be just one click away.
Regardless of sector or size, if you choose to integrate sending your text messages from Outlook with your existing strategies, you will have a better understanding of how your strategies are evolving, and a much more thorough database to analyze. Also, it is cost-efficient, and saves time, as previously mentioned in the brief listing of benefits.
Using Outlook to Send Text Message is a Long-Term Solution
Email clients are not going anywhere. With the development of new technology, they might get updates and improvements, but they are here to stay, and marketers need to be aware of that. Even though solutions much simpler than email have arisen for internal and external communication, offering a multi-platform mass communication option is still mandatory for all businesses, from property managers to first responders, which is why being able to broadcast from a single source is and will remain an optimal solution.
All in all, using Outlook to send text messages through the help of an add-in is a solution that needs to be in the strategy drafting of all companies, as it provides a wide range of benefits, with no additional cost, no need for complicated hardware or software installation, and no effort of training employees, or engaging with recipients in a complicated manner.
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