Capture More Weekend & After-hours Leads With Text

See how texting, especially a web-to-text widget on your website can help your business capture and close more leads after-hours and on weekends.

In today’s 24/7 world, there’s no such thing as business hours. Technology and our phones have us plugged in at all hours of the day and night. This has both positive and negative implications for business, of course. It’s easier than ever to connect with customers but how can you be available at all hours?

Offering text messaging from your website with a web-to-text widget can meet customer demand during and outside your regular hours. Your business can capture more after-hours leads with text without stretching your staff or budget too thin.

Giving customers the option to text us has led to a significant number of conversions outside of our normal hours.

Alex Gaskill – Owner, All About Garage Doors

Text is always on

There is more to selecting a real-time communication channel to offer your customers than you might think. While many make their move to live chat, they fail to understand the impact of “not-live” chat.

Greeting your website visitors with a live chat that is actually marketing you are offline is a deterrent from them contacting you. We found that over 57% of consumers leave a website when they click a live chat that then tells them to email as they are offline.

Allowing customers to text you, directly or via a web-to-text widget, offers a real-time channel that is always on. Don’t shut the door on prospects and customers willing to come in, make sure you can let them start the conversation.

Text is trusted and easy

We’ve all likely filled out contact forms or left voicemails with small businesses that went unreturned. Text is a trusted channel because it hasn’t failed consumers yet. Response times are shorter, notifications alert you to new replies, and it’s the app we use the most on our phones.

These all combine to make texting easy and trusted.

Our study of 2,000 US consumers showed that SMS is the preferred channel for communication over phone calls and emails. Offering texting for weekends and after-hours makes reaching out and hearing back from your business easy for your prospects.

Garage door repair company All About Garage Doors owner Alex Gaskill has experienced this since adding web-to-text on their website.

“Prior to implementing Leadferno our only after-hours option for our customers was to leave us a voicemail or submit a contact form on our website. Giving customers the option to text us has led to a significant number of conversions outside of our normal hours. Even if we do not respond to the customer until regular business hours resume, the automated messaging helps retain the lead.” said Alex Gaskill.

Prioritizing response times

Response times are incredibly important to turning new leads into customers. The mere sound of a voicemail can be enough to convince a caller that your business has fallen behind the times.

Adding a web-to-text widget to your website is one step to being available after-hours, but combining it with an auto-reply delivers an immediate response to the prospect.

Our Auto Replies feature sends an immediate text reply to new leads to establish immediate contact, set an expectation, and even further the conversation or a next step. This can make your prospect feel like you are responsive even when you are personally not available yet.

Creating internal processes and even rewarding your team for quick responses is a great way to close more after-hours leads as your team is aware of their value. Texting is a great way to increase response times, not only for your team but the prospect’s replies as well. Text replies average just 90 seconds compared to 90 minutes for email replies. That’s a 60x difference!

Close more after-hours leads

Landing new business when you are not even working sounds like a magical world. You can make this magic happen for your business by offering the right communication options for conversion and responding at the right times.

Text messaging is that channel and the combinations of the channel, auto-replies, and prompt follow-up give you affordable and manageable ways to close after-hours and weekend leads to sales.