Text Us message conversion from Website and VDP?

[Marc Lavoie]

There's one thing I realized over the years with a few exceptions.

The "Text Us" CTA is weak for converting new business from your website (or other 3rd parties).

Weak means it works, but there's about 20 more compelling CTAs to turn a visitor into a sales opportunity.

It only makes sense, because it fails to follow a very universal rule.

The WIIFM rule.

What's in it for me?

So you want me to text you, how is that helping me? What are you going to do with my information?

Does that ever work? Online or Offline?

Try it, run into the next person you see and tell them: "Text me" ... See how it goes. You might have a little work to do before they text you


The big mistake is thinking that the initial contact and communications are the same.

There must be a high-value component that you can trade with your customers in order to get their most intimate communication channel.

Once you have established a relationship, text can become very powerful when used the right way.


What works

Offer them to send an additional offer, value proposition through text. One they can't get anywhere else. I can tell you right away these leads will need some work to convert in sales. Just managing yo

 

[joe.pistell]

I'm suspicious of low CTR of 'text us' on dealer websites. With Mobile use so off the charts, anyone know of a dealer(s) that have put 'click to text' on their SRP/VDP's?



Surely Svc is all over this, but, what of marketing & sales use? CRMs are ready.

thoughts?

 

[Jerry Thibeau]

This works! Why give customers free info on your VDP's? Make them give you something in return if they want your internet price.

 

[craigh]

We have played with this.
We added a mobile-only toolbar to the bottom of all pages, which can optionally contain "click to text", "click to call", etc.
Most dealers don't have the text option turned on because they don't have a single number that can accept text messages and manage them properly. The link is nothing special either, it's just a SMS html link, so it is handled differently by different phones.

I don't have firm numbers on it, but when we reviewed with those that used it I was surprised by how few messages they got. Up here in Canada people seem very hesitant to use text messaging for business and companies are paranoid they'll get slapped if they text customers illegally.

 

[Marc Lavoie]

From my experience "Text Us" buttons are nothing short of catastrophic in terms of conversion.

I think you need to build a bridge before asking to be in someone's pocket... You know!

It has to be an exchange of value of some sort for sure, the "we'll have your cell number" trap is too much for most consumers. And I don't see how it's going to improve.

 

[Tallcool1]

This works! Why give customers free info on your VDP's? Make them give you something in return if they want your internet price.

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@Jerry Thibeau , I like this idea. I had thought of something like this awhile back when I was considering going to a squeeze page. I felt this would be much less aggressive while still accomplishing the same goal.

Do you see a correlation between credit score and form submission on this type of CTA? Why I ask, I have peers that tried different types of squeeze pages and most seemed to come to the conclusion that sub-prime type customers were the overwhelming majority of the submissions. If I were primarily a sub-prime dealer, that would be great! Unfortunately, I am not.

Any information you can share would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks