Your business’s success depends on regular customer engagement. Texting is one way to reach your customers and feel confident they’re reading your messages. With the rise in popularity of smartwatches, your messages are even more likely to be seen by the recipients, even when they aren’t using their phones.
What Are Smartwatches?
Smartwatches do much more than tell time. They let the wearer track their steps, monitor their heart rate and more. Plus, they’re typically linked to a person’s smartphone and allow them to get notifications that would normally appear there, such as text messages and calls.
Can You Send Texts to Smartwatches?
A smartwatch that’s connected to a smartphone, whether it’s an Android or iOS device, can receive SMS or text messages. If the user has linked their watches to their phones and have notifications turned on, they’ll get your messages. Unlike other messaging apps that must have an app downloaded to their phone that also has a watch version available to receive messages on a watch, SMS is native to the operating systems and doesn’t require downloading. There are very few options for third-party messaging apps even available for the watch, so sticking with SMS is the most reliable option.
Compared to email, sending SMS messages to customers has several benefits. People are more likely to open and read texts, while they may just let an email sit in their inboxes—or worse, delete it unread. If your customers also have smartwatches, they can receive your messages anytime and anywhere, even when they’ve left their phones in another room.
How to Craft the Perfect Smartwatch Text
If you’re already using texts to connect with your customers, you don’t have to do anything different to have your messages appear on their smartwatches but you may want to think about the types of messages you’re sending for easy readability on both the phone and the watch. The screen on a smartwatch is much smaller than the typical smartphone screen. To ensure people read your entire message, it pays to be brief.
It’s right in the name: short message service (SMS); so rule of thumb, try to be short and succinct by keeping your messages under 160 characters (which is considered one text in the SMS world). The less scrolling the better.
People can reply to messages using their watches, but it’s more complicated than on a phone. Make it easy on your customers by asking for short and simple replies. Instead of asking them to type out “YES” or “NO” to confirm or cancel an appointment, have them reply with “Y” or “N.”
Timing is everything when sending messages. No matter if they are reading your SMS on their phone or watch, send it at hours that are convenient to the recipient, don’t send overnight or during rush-hour in their timezone.
Learn More About Red Oxygen’s SMS Solutions
More than 300 million smartwatches are expected to ship in 2023 alone. Take advantage of the smartwatch boom by tailoring your messages to appear in one of the most convenient ways possible — on a little screen on someone’s wrist. Red Oxygen makes it easy with SMS solutions for multiple industries.
Contact us today to see how it works.