Would my contacts rather text?

People rather text because they will actually see your message

It sounds obvious and it is, but one important aspect of communication is literally receiving all parts of it. When it comes to phone calls, there's so much spam and a general lack of willingness to speak on the phone that calls are largely ignored. Voicemail boxes are often full, not set up, or never listened to.

Emails come into our inboxes at rates we cannot keep up with and many of them fall into junk or spam categories that your contacts will never see. Other modes of communication, like social media, can work but your contacts must be on one of those platforms and not be distracted by the actual social media platform enough to have some dialogue with you.

This is where texting shines. Think about how many text messages that you get that you just never open or read at all? Is it zero? It is probably close and you are not alone. A Gartner study found text message open rates of 98% and response rates at 45%, compared to emails at 20% and 6%, respectively.

Texting is a simple channel for communication

At this point, nearly everyone has a mobile phone and if you have a phone, you know how to text already. It's a core piece of value that cell phones provide. There's nothing new for a contact you message to learn on top of whatever you are sending them. Plus, text messages are naturally pretty short messages, which people prefer over long-winded ones. When it comes to communication from an organization or business, brevity and directness is key. Just make sure to gain consent to be sending text messages to the person in the first place.

Sending text messages to your contacts is a way to cut needless complexity, giving you a better shot at effectively communicating. That's the goal of the message in the first place.

Who do "contacts" refer to?

We're saying contacts here because it is a general term and there are many use cases for texting on behalf of your organization. In general, people would rather text for communications. Those people could be your current and/or potential customers, coworkers, business contacts, members in your community, and whatever other group your organization communicates with. Who and what you communicate is highly dependent on what your organization does, but how you communicate can be the same across any industry.

How to facilitate texting for your organization

Now that we understand that texting contacts is a great idea, how do you go about doing that? Does the thought of managing your work communications from your personal cell phone make you sweat? It might, especially if it's more than a few messages.

This is what Rather Text exists for - making it easy to get text messages out to people. On the receiving end, texting on your phone is the preference. On the sending end, it quickly wears out its charm through the natural limitations it has. Here's a list of some of the top things that make texting from a phone not so great for power senders:

• It's linked to a mobile phone number, which is likely your personal one
• You cannot easily share your messages with other members of your organization
• Writing a lot can be difficult on small virtual keyboards on your mobile phone
• You have access to the features of your texting app, which are quite limited compared to what you can build on the web
• Bulk messaging is either non-existent or has a cap on the number of recipients

Rather Text provides a solution to all of these by providing a website catered to both the power sender and the contact you're communicating with. The website serves as a super powered phone with features missing from your device when texting. You use the website and your contacts use their normal text messaging app. It's a win-win.