SMS Contact List Management

It allows every department in the organization to have the details they need to conduct their daily operations and carry out personalized communications. A business contact list may include previous, current, and prospective customers. And with an efficient contact management strategy, companies can leverage data and boost sales.

How Does Contact List Management Work?

The process is comprised of 3 key steps: acquiring contacts, segmenting them, and managing them. 

Acquiring and Gathering Contacts

The acquisition of contacts involves collecting phone numbers and obtaining their consent to send them text messages. Businesses can do this through various touchpoints like events, in-store interactions, mobile apps, and opt-in forms on landing pages. 

Implementing a double opt-in process can help guarantee compliance with regulations and verify the accuracy of the phone number. This is where contacts provide their phone number and reply to a verification text—often with a keyword—or click on a confirmation link, confirming that they’re willing to receive messages. 

Contact List Segmentation

Segmentation is the process of categorizing contacts into smaller groups based on common characteristics. This helps businesses personalize their messages for specific audience segments, making their campaigns more relevant and effective. 

Several factors can define segments. These often include interests, demographics (age, gender, location), and customer behavior (purchase history, engagement level). 

For example, a retailer might create a segment for loyalty members, one for occasional shoppers, and another for new customers. This way, businesses can launch campaigns that are relevant to each group, resulting in higher engagement and conversion rates. 

Storing and Management

The contact information a business collects often goes into a central database, such as a CRM system or a marketing automation platform. These programs offer solutions for efficiently managing everything from names to phone numbers to opt-in dates and segmentation criteria. They also help in keeping contact details updated and synchronizing with other marketing channels. 

Certain systems even integrate with text messaging platforms, allowing businesses to seamlessly reach out to their audience segments. By effectively sorting contact data, companies and organizations can easily access and use the information to create targeted SMS campaigns while maintaining compliance. 

Why Is Contact List Management Important?

Strong SMS contact list management has the power to reflect its benefits throughout each part of an organization. In addition to providing every department in the company with valuable insight and automation, it enhances the customer experience in every aspect and maximizes the return on investment. 

Text message contact management also allows businesses to spend less time on mundane administrative duties that can be automated and more time on critical tasks. And by enabling businesses to send out SMS messages to the right recipients at the right time, a contact list management system can turn leads into loyal customers. 

Best Practices for SMS Contact Management

Keeping Contact Data Clean

Having clean data is a key part of maintaining a smooth contact list management system. Inaccurate or contradictory data hinders business operations and is detrimental to the customer experience. While it’s possible to minimize the volume of faulty data that goes into the system by implementing clear processes, avoiding all of it is difficult.

Quarterly cleanups can solve this issue. This involves removing duplicate contacts, false or obsolete data, and contacts who have opted out. Business messaging services often automate these procedures. 

Syncing Data Between Applications

For an SMS contact management system to be effective, the databases in your apps mustn’t be isolated from each other. Business tools including the sales stack, SMS marketing applications, and customer relationship management are most effective as a unified system. The ideal solution in this case is to synchronize relevant contact data between various apps within the organization.  

Centralizing Contact Information

Having a centralized database that contains all the contacts in one place is essential for customer list management. By centralizing the data, you’ll have access to critical insights all in one app. It also allows other departments to retrieve the contact information they need without having to log in or train for marketing tools and contact management features they won’t be using. 

Collecting Insightful Data

Integrating contact data among your apps and systems automatically enhances the insights you have access to. Valuable data that you can leverage can include geographic information, birthdays, email addresses, and content consumption. By gathering this information and syncing it with your SMS platform, you’ll have the flexibility to personalize the interactions you have with your audience—for instance, sending SMS alerts about special discounts on their birthday. 

Protecting the Information

Small businesses, large enterprises, and organizations have a legal obligation to protect contact data. Regardless of regulations, respecting the privacy of your contacts and protecting the information they provide allows you to gain their trust. Although this aspect of SMS contact management doesn’t have a return on investment you can measure, having clients who trust your business will always have a valuable impact. 

How to Use Dexatel’s Contact List Management Tool

Dexatel’s SMS contact list management system lets you divide your contacts into groups and save them under the “Audiences” section here. 

You can add contacts in two different ways. The first option is to add them manually by entering their phone numbers along with their full name and any other data you have about them. If you have a large contact database, the other option is to import the data in bulk via an Excel or CSV file. In this case, you can still add relevant information to personalize the messages you send to your audience. 

To add contacts, select “Create Audience,” enter a custom name, and choose the importing option you prefer. Once the upload is successful, you can manage the list whenever you need. This includes removing obsolete contacts, adding new ones, performing data entry, and updating information about specific contacts. You can also add recipients to the stop list when they opt out of a certain campaign. 

Why Choose Dexatel

Dexatel’s SMS platform comes with a wealth of useful features, which include contact list management. The tool is intuitive and user-friendly, making it easy to organize your subscribers’ information in a way that’s useful for your messaging campaigns. The platform also offers dedicated customer support to assist you with any questions or concerns you may have. 

Features like personalization and automation form a comprehensive service that can be an indispensable part of your business messaging strategy.