A US-based restaurant review site has introduced a new service which could inspire businesses to get more creative with their SMS marketing.
Customers looking to get restaurant recommendations sent straight to their mobiles in New York City, San Francisco, Chicago or Denver can sign up for the Text Rex service on review site theinfatuation.com. Instead of simply sending an anonymous automated text, however, customers begin to interact via SMS with a real, live person.
When businessinsider.com.au signed up for the service, they were sent a few welcome messages before being asked “Anything we can help you with right now?” The customer asked for somewhere to go to dinner in a particular part of town, prompting the reply “Got it. Any preference in terms of type of food or atmosphere?”
The customer then asked for “Something casual but fun for date night” serving “American or basic bar food”, and quickly got a confident suggestion in a reply, alongside the restaurant’s URL.
This form of creative text marketing could inspire other businesses to do something similar alongside their more automated SMS campaigns. Restaurants, for example, could use it as part of a close-range marketing strategy, perhaps to discuss the evening’s specials with nearby opted-in customers. Comparison sites could use it much in the same way that The Infatuation does, to create a more personal service using texting – which should also boost sentiment and engagement alike.
