Purple Frog’s SMS Success
Purple Frog Group, Birmingham-based student estate and letting agents, reports increasing success through SMS marketing techniques, with increased open and response rates from student tenants and viewers by using text message reminders.
Looking for improved communications, they found students did not regularly check emails. This led to urgent emails about notifications of changes in viewings or contact information for maintenance issues, not being seen or actioned in time.
Recent research found that 98 per cent of business messages sent via SMS were read before the end of the day – 90 per cent within three minutes – but only 70 per cent for students.
Purple Frog worked with Textlocal to create automated SMS reminders on paperwork, rent, viewings and emergency contact information. The messages had reply features when applicable, meaning the company could receive quicker responses to any simple information requests. The company then also used SMS for marketing purposes, using text message alerts to deliver details of prospective future properties to students.
Purple Frog increased their open and response rates as students saw messages through push notifications – and student feedback indicated that text messages were preferred to phone calls for convenience and speed.
Patrick Garratt, Managing Director, said, “Using SMS to communicate with our customers, we have seen a far better response rate than other communication platform. Not only does it help our business run more efficiently, but we’ve also found that it is students’ preferred method of communicating – when they feel more comfortable about how they keep in contact with us, both parties benefit.”
