If you’re like most businesses, you read about one out of 10 incoming emails. The interesting ones are sandwiched between missives that are legitimate enough to get through your spam filter, but that are quickly deleted.

SMS communications, however, have a sense of immediacy and importance that email has lost. So obviously, text marketing has enormous potential. Your brand is much more likely to be seen.

San Diego-based Social Fuse helps its clients harness this potent technology in a positive, state-of-the-art way.

A Powerful Partnership

Text marketing screams for automation. And Social Fuse found that needed building block in its partnership with Infusionsoft. (Check out their Thrive 365 free goodies for small business when you’re done reading. Only available during November.)

“Infusionsoft has been an important part of our business and growth,” says Social Fuse’s Jake Efstration. “It offers a fantastic tool for small businesses to succeed using automation. SMS text messaging adds a layer of communication that makes sense.”

That “layer of communication” gets through to its audience. Efstration says that SMS text messages are opened and read five times more than emails, and provide an unmatched level of personal communication.

Mobile Responsive Webforms Are Key

Social Fuse’s unique technology links mobile responsive webforms and SMS text messages, which lets users build their databases quickly and easily. Further, Social Fuse lets users send SMS text messages from any Infusionsoft sequence (a series of steps that describes the stages of a marketing campaign).

Social Fuse has built the only system that sends mobile responsive webforms in text messages. Its easy-to-use webforms work on any smartphone. The company follows all CTIA and MMA guidelines for proper message delivery, and its commercial shortcode (5-digit phone number) allows business owners to communicate at a rate of 30 messages per second.

But Social Fuse does much more. It supports:

• The use of tags, to help segment lists.
• Infusionsoft/Social Fuse field-merging, including custom data fields.
• Two-way messaging, so users can ask questions and capture responses in Infusionsoft.
• Duplicate data-checks.

A Broad Audience

Social Fuse works with many types of businesses to help them build lists and communicate their messages. They include:

• Speaker and Presenters. Capture the contact data from people attending live events. (Our CEO, Desiree Scales, uses Social Fuse at her live events.)
• Retail (brick and mortar). Retail shops use the platform to build lists (by offering specials and promotions), segment them and send relevant messaging. Text messages can alert customers to sales.
• Retail (online). Online stores can also send shipping notifications to customers and ask about their shopping experience, capabilities once reserved for the ‘Big Boys’ like Amazon.com.
• Real Estate. Real estate agents and brokers can collect prospect information from rider signs, segment their databases and send follow-up messages.
• Service Professionals. Send appointment reminders and allow for scheduling changes.

Working Night and Day on Enhancements

So what’s next for Social Fuse? Expect to see a revised drag-and-drop webform-builder (which will include matrix surveying) and the ability to send Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys by text message soon.

And expect to see its partnership with Infusionsoft continue to expand on the powerful possibilities of automated text marketing. Watch the video below to learn more!

Infusionsoft Text Marketing Integration – Social Fuse from Social Fuse on Vimeo.