How Watersport Operators Can Manage Customer SMS/Text Messaging Communications with Ease!

Text messaging is considered one of the most effective ways to communicate important information to your customers, and the watersports industry is no exception. This blog article will cover all the crucial aspects of text messaging watersport and boat tour operators should know and how WaveRez software can help you achieve that via SMS and texting feature.

Why Text Messaging is More Effective than Emails

First of all, let’s start with the basics. While communications via email can supercharge your watersport business, it doesn’t mean that you should set up your email marketing campaigns and call it a day. To go above and beyond with your marketing communication efforts, you’ll need to make some additional arrangements, and that’s setting up your text messaging or SMS marketing. Here are key reasons why watersport operators run SMS campaigns:

1. Text messages have a larger open rate, which is one of the steps watersport operators take to handle customers arriving late. While your customers are on the go, it’s more likely that they will check a new text message rather than a new email. Emails unintentionally require more attention from readers to details and tend to be more formal, which is why emails usually don’t get open right away. Additionally, text messages are usually sent by someone a customer knows personally, and it wouldn’t be typical for someone to reach out via email that way, which creates a sense of urgency to react.
2. You don’t take risks with text messaging like with emails – Emails often get delivered to spam inbox and, therefore, are left unnoticed by recipients. However, with text messages, you don’t have to worry about whether or not your text was delivered, as it has a 100% chance of delivery rate unless a customer changes their phone number.
3. Customer’s phone doesn’t require an internet connection for receiving a text message – lets face it, seniors might not use smartphones, hurricanes take place, leaving people without the internet, as it happened recently in LA, and many mobile operators don’t give unlimited data, so customers need a Wi-Fi connection to get connected. However, emails are different unless a person gets notified by text that they have received a new email, which the email service providers don’t really practice.

But, wait, there are not just smartphones, but desktops too…

True; however, mobile marketing has proven to be the big trend these days, while desktops have become a secondary way to consume information. That’s why it’s a no-brainer that watersport operators should heavily concentrate their efforts on developing a solid text messaging strategy. Further below, we’ll discuss when you should send text messages to travelers & vacationers, what info to send via SMS, instances when you should refrain from texting, and how WaveRez can help you manage your text messaging customer communications.
 

When Boat Tour Operators Should Send Text Messages to Travelers & Vacationers

When it comes to setting up SMS marketing campaigns, it has to be about the balance, as with any other marketing campaign, such as email marketing. Sending too many messages can be overwhelming, and sending too few can make customers forget about you and your watersport business. As a rule of thumb, here are the best timeline checkpoints for boat tour operators to check on their customers:

1. An hour or 2 before your customer’s reservation: Our partners in Destin, FL, prefer to send a text message sooner than later because of how bad traffic could get in the city. Customers arriving late, among other issues, is one of the most frequent ones local watersport operators deal with due to the “vacation mode” that travelers get in.
2. As soon as a booking is confirmed and paid: Notifying your customers about it manually each time can be cumbersome, but our WaveRez integration with your website lets it happen automatically at no extra cost; schedule your free demo with our sales rep to learn more.
3. Right after the customer’s reservation: This type of SMS message can contain a link to the customer satisfaction survey and/or discount for the next booking. Both can help you find out what your customers are up to and if there’s anything you should consider to enhance their experience in the future. Offering a discount can also be a way to resolve situations with difficult customers.

What Info to Send via SMS

Once you figure out when to send an SMS/text message, it’s good to have the content of your messaging ready to use. Many watersport operators choose to go with existing templates for saving time since it’s pretty much standard information that gets sent to all customers. Here are some examples of text you could send to your customers:
Reminders about having every person in the customer’s party fill out a waiver: To save your and your customer’s time, you can send an SMS reminder to your customer to fill out a waiver so that they don’t have to do it once they arrive. If you don’t ask your customers to fill out a waiver, we highly recommend you to start doing it because the lack of waiver in place may involve severe financial consequences. One of WaveRez’s features includes integration with Wherewolf, which lets your customers fill out a waiver online, and, WaveRez can help you send a waiver to your customer; here’s how one of our partners handles that:
 

Updates on the customer reservation: At any moment, a customer can call you to ask you to change their booking time/date, which is a no-brainer if you use WaveRez (to learn how – drop us a line, and our support team will be happy to explain to you how it works). Once you complete the change, your customer will surely appreciate getting a text message on the new details of their reservation via text; here’s how WaveRez’s partner manages this type of communication:
 

How to get to your business location: If you could find an ideal location for your watersport business and think that it might be hard for your customers to navigate it, simply send the text describing the directions! Here’s an example of how WaveRez’s partner describes how to get to them:
 

Time-sensitive content: Knowing when to send the text message to your customer can also help you determine what needs to be sent (e.g., a kind reminder to arrive on time).
Duplicate info you sent in emails: Sometimes, just to be safe and ensure that your email doesn’t end up in the recipient’s spam folder, duplicating your supercharging emails in SMS format can be helpful.
 

Are There Instances When Watersport Operators Should Refrain From Texting and Stick to Emails Instead?

With all the factors pointing at text messaging being more effective than emails, there’s only 1 case scenario we could think of that suggests you might want to refrain from using SMS and utilize email instead:

• Customers might suspect you of scamming if you haven’t communicated with them for a while (e.g., a year). Instead, we’d encourage you to use emails instead for your promos, or be sure to re-introduce yourself in the message properly so that they can recall you! Stealing personal info via SMS is prevalent for cybercriminals, which is why it’s so important not to let your customers confuse you with a bad person. At the end of the day, email marketing can also supercharge your watersport business, and your customer might have changed their phone number.

How WaveRez Helps Water Sport Operators Manage SMS/Text Messaging with Their Customers

If you enjoyed reading this blog post and looking to implement some or all of the strategies we’ve discussed here, good for you! We’d like to offer you our help with our watersport operator’s software solution. Check out the video below to see how you can send a text message using WaveRez:
 

Apart from sending text messages and email, there are many other features that WaveRez has in store for you at no extra cost. The best way to learn more about how a blend of WaveRez features can all work for your watersport business specifically is through a risk-free demo with our sales team with no commitment whatsoever. Or, if you rather just communicate with us electronically, be sure to drop us a line or use a live chat function on our website; we can’t wait to hear from you. 🙂