After you’ve reached out to all your assigned customers for the campaign, you will inevitably encounter customers who don’t reply. View the "Open" or "SMS No Reply" category to check your messages that haven't received a reply yet. This is where you have sent the last message and are awaiting a response from the customer. Let’s review a few tips on what to do when this happens.

Statflo prevents you from sending too many messages in a row to the customer after you send your initial text by waiting for a certain number of days. The default is set to 3 days and is configurable at an admin level depending on your business’ preference.

Have patience if you haven’t received a reply during the waiting period. When a customer replies, the conversation automatically moves to the “To Answer” category, and you can respond to continue the conversation. However, try the next tip if you still don’t get a reply after the waiting period.

If you follow up, you may think you're annoying the customer. Our data tells us that conversion rates can increase up to 3x if you follow up despite not receiving a response after the initial outreach.

Make the follow-up message as simple and human as possible. A text like “Hi again, just following up to see if you got my last text?” will work. One recommended pattern we have seen work is a text-call-text pattern when you don’t hear back. Try other patterns to see what clicks best for your customers!

The best follow-up strategy is to switch mediums. We have found that the conversion rate is the highest when you do that.

The highest converting pattern is going from a text to a call, which has a 79% increase from the initial outreach. Meanwhile, the conversion rate that shows the least increase is starting with a call and following up with a call again at only 13%.

One thing to note is not to worry too much about the do not contact (DNC) rate by following up with a call; it is substantially less than the DNC rate of starting with a call. The benefits might be worth it for managers reading this depending on your customers and sales staff. Likely with training, the DNC rate for follow-up calls can be reduced to less than 1%.

Some customers may not feel the need to respond but may visit the store, resulting in a sale because of that outreach. After all, the read rate of SMS messages is 98%.

If you are following up and not getting responses, it’s OK! Don’t get discouraged. You're doing your job well by initiating conversations, following up, and logging your activities.

Besides being good life advice, it's good practice to end a conversation gracefully. Review your assigned customers who haven't responded at the end of the campaign period and send one last touch point to inform.

An example message could be:

This lets the customer know you are open to being contacted again for any future needs. Remember to close the conversation by changing its status. The more practice you have with situations like this, the better you will be at engaging both responsive and unresponsive customers. Great job!