How to Make Text Message Polls

Looking for customer feedback about your products or services? Seeking to consistently deliver a memorable brand experience by driving more engagement at scale? Or want to access more customer insights to understand your marketing effectiveness better?

Then, it’s time to incorporate EZ Texting into your communication strategy as a powerful, personal, easy-to-use text-to-vote tool.

Many industry-leading businesses and organizations utilize our Short Message Service (SMS) polling feature to increase brand awareness, gather valuable customer feedback, analyze purchase intent, and more.

The fact is that SMS polling is an effective and inexpensive way to generate increased customer engagement. Moreover, text-to-vote polls are simple to set up and cost just pennies to manage and maintain.

The data doesn’t lie – 98% of text messages are opened and read within the first three minutes of receipt. This compares favorably to the 22% open rate for email.

More on Text to Vote: How to Create SMS Polls

Before we cover how to create a poll in a text message, let’s ensure you understand the ins and outs of this marketing strategy.

So, let’s start from the top. What are text polls, and why should you use them? Text polls refer to surveys your business can text its customers to collect feedback. You should use text message polls to gather and gauge your customers’ thoughts, insights, opinions, and preferences. For instance, are your customers ranting or raving about their experience with your brand? With this information, you can tweak your business practices to help them better align with your customers’ wants and needs.

You should also consider using text message polling because it can give you feedback in real time. When your customers receive a poll in a text message, they can open the text, click on the poll, and provide their responses within just a few minutes. It’s quick and hassle-free for your customers to respond to your poll, and their answers will instantly arrive in your inbox, meaning you don’t have to wait days or even months for their responses.

What Questions to Ask in a Text Message Poll

Now, your next thought is probably, what kind of questions can you ask in a text poll? You can ask multiple questions in your text poll, such as multiple choice, open-ended, yes or no, and rating scale questions. You can create a poll in a text message asking your customers to rate their latest purchase, provide feedback about a recent interaction with your brand, offer insight into an event you hosted, or send their opinions regarding a new business idea, product, or concept. You can also create polls that collect personal information about your customers because the more you know them, the more you can tailor your content to suit their preferences.

Examples of Text-to-Vote Polls

So, what kinds of text-to-vote campaigns work the best? Here are a few quick examples to help you get started:

Text-to-Vote: How to Create Text Polls Using EZ Texting

So, how do you create a text poll? There are just a few simple steps: choosing a text platform, determining your questions, texting your customers, and monitoring the results.

Begin by turning to EZ Texting. After all, EZ Texting is a trusted text marketing provider that makes it easy to utilize successful text-to-vote campaigns and SMS polls with as little as a few well-planned questions and a contact list. Creating text message polls through EZ Texting is simple and works for nearly every business and organization, including retail, faith-based, food and hospitality, fitness, real estate, and many others.

You can launch your first text-to-vote campaign with EZ Texting in just minutes. Here’s how to get started:

Create Your Text Poll

Brainstorm and identify the core questions for your audience in conjunction with the Keywords and Sub Keywords they must use to register and engage with your brand further. This step also includes creating and drafting the messaging for your group texts, such as reply templates. This is the simplest way to launch your first text-to-vote campaign, but there are plenty of other ways to poll your target audience.

EZ Texting text polls incorporate Keywords and Sub Keywords. To help you get started, EZ Texting provides five quick and easy options. This is the simplest way to launch your first text-to-vote campaign, but there are plenty of other ways to poll your target audience.

Incorporate Text Message Polling Best Practices

For additional guidance, let’s cover some ways to get the best results.

So, what are some best practices for creating effective text polls? Some best practices include keeping the poll short with only a few questions, making the instructions easy to follow, providing fun and engaging content, and sending your participants a thank-you message after they complete it. Of course, after you run your text messaging polling, you’ll want to analyze your results and implement actionable insights.

Promote Your Keyword & Short Code

Just because you’ve created a poll in a text message doesn’t necessarily mean your customers will automatically respond. So, how do you get people to participate in your text poll? You can promote it and encourage your customers to provide feedback.

In addition to promoting your text poll by sending out SMS messages to your database of opted-in text marketing contacts, you can also spread the word about your text message polling on social media, paid ads, and newsletters. Be sure to prominently display your Keyword and Short Code so your customers can easily navigate to your text poll. Also, let your contacts know what the survey is about, how their feedback will benefit your business, and what steps are required.

Wait for Customers’ Responses

In minutes, you’ll start to receive answers to your survey questions. Afterward, customers will be greeted with a customized follow-up message. A simple “thank you” should suffice, but some businesses choose to send special rewards or gifts. These thoughtful gestures may help encourage your customers to participate in future text message polls.

Monitoring Text-to-Vote Results

After you’ve sent your first text-to-vote poll, EZ Texting makes it simple to monitor your results. You’ll receive customers’ replies in real time. In most cases, results are typically reported via an easy-to-read graph. Results can also be transmitted and exported via CSV file. You’ll also be able to analyze delivery rates, open rates, response rates, and spikes in engagement.

Now, what happens after the poll closes? After the poll closes, you should consult your analytics to determine how many people engaged with your text poll and what the feedback looks like. What is the overall sentiment of the responses? Can you gather any insight? And can you apply any findings to the way you conduct business?

Use this valuable information to improve your business and fine-tune future text message polls. Effective SMS polls tend to be shared and remembered, increasing brand awareness and potentially growing your database of opted-in customers.

Launch a Text-to-Vote Campaign with EZ Texting

EZ Texting’s polling and voting capabilities allow customers to launch and manage text-to-vote campaigns. There is no better way to ensure that your important polls are answered.

Text message marketing is one of the most proven and cost-effective methods for engaging prospects and customers. Its benefits and features exceed text-to-vote campaigns!

Sign up for a free 14-day trial today (no credit card needed), and tap into 98% open rates using text today!