Engage your customers with business text messaging

Text messaging is an efficient and convenient way to connect with your customers. More and more, businesses are answering sales questions, verifying information, and providing customer service through text messages. In fact, studies say that 48% of consumers prefer texting to phone calls. So make your customers happy by giving them the option to text you.

Setup a text-enabled toll-free number in your BellesLink account so customers can reach you by text or by phone. Make it your main number or use it in a marketing campaign. Text messaging gives you another way to engage with customers.

Build your opt-in list with people search

The BellesLink people search platform helps you find and contact customers. You can append new phone numbers to your list with a Batch Search and enrich your contacts with new numbers from People Searches. Search results identify mobile numbers that can be texted.

Conversations that begin on the phone can easily be transitioned to text with an opt-in from your customer. BellesLink’s powerful combination of people search, phone calls, and text messaging helps you build your texting opt-in list, and that helps you build your business.

A platform built for customer conversations

Small businesses thrive on customer conversations. Whether it’s sales, support, or just checking in, connecting regularly with your customers helps your business grow. The BellesLink platform is built to make customer conversations easier to have. Batch and people searches help you find current phone numbers, the business phone system, contact dialer, and text messaging give you ways to start a conversation and keep it going. Start more customer conversations with BellesLink.

Making the most of text messaging

For businesses that use people search, BellesLink helps you make the most out of text messaging. Add a text-enabled toll-free number to your account and start building your opt-in list through phone calls and campaign keywords. Manage conversations and track your work with the Contact Manager. Keep it professional with built-in compliance and industry best practices. BellesLink’s simple and effective design helps you go from finding data to making contact.

Inbound texts are free

We want you to have more conversations with your customers, so we’ve made inbound texts free. Each Pro and Business plan subscription includes a monthly allowance of texts that you can use for sending messages. You’ll never be charged for the texts your customers send you.

Custom opt-in keywords

Custom opt-in keywords help customers subscribe to receive text messages from your business more easily.

For example, as a real estate agent you could promote texting as way for customers to contact you by putting a message on your website like, “Text SELLMYHOUSE to (XXX) XXX-XXX for current home pricing in your neighborhood.” The custom opt-in keyword “SELLMYHOUSE” informs the customer about the business and records their opt-in. You can add custom keywords to your account. Keywords are subject to approval by BellesLink.

Longer text messages

BellesLink lets you send messages that are up to 420 characters. This means you can include more details to make your texts more informational and effective.

Text from a contact

In the Contact Manager you can have a text conversation without leaving a contact record. You can send text messages to any number that has opted-in to receive them. Just click to text. For longer conversations, you can send the conversation to the Text Messages screen without missing a beat.

Text when on a call

Have you ever wanted to text someone while on a call with them? It’s a convenient way to share information or a web link that’s relevant to your conversation. In BellesLink, you can do exactly that: anywhere you can place a call, you can also text the number you’re calling.

Create new conversations

On the Text Messaging screen, you can easily start a new conversation by selecting a number from your list of opted-in customer numbers. You can filter the list by name or number to quickly find the contact you’re looking for. Because the Contact Manager links everything, your text will be saved to the contact record of the person you texted.

New text notifications

Never miss a new text message. In the setup for your text-enabled toll-free number, choose how you want to be notified when your number receives a new message. The notification can be sent to either the email or mobile number in your user settings.

Manage your conversations

The more you text, the more you’ll need to manage your customer conversations. Conversation list filters allow you to choose a date range and the number of conversations to display, which is helpful when searching for an older message. You can also close conversations you don’t want to display and block numbers that send spam or abusive messages. Each conversation links to its contact, where you can find and review past messages.

Text Enabled Toll-Free Numbers

A BellesLink toll-free number can accept both phone calls and texts, which means you can have one number for all your customer communications. You can either add a new toll-free number or text-enable an existing one. To comply with federal regulations and industry best practices, businesses need to register for texting messaging and verify their toll-free number before they begin texting. Check out our tutorial, Business Texting Registration and Toll-Free Number Verification for details on the registration process.

Get text messaging in our Pro and Business Plans

Text messaging is an efficient and convenient way to stay connected with customers. For businesses that rely on people search, you can start conversations on the phone and move them to text with an opt-in from your customer.

BellesLink offers a powerful combination of people search, phone calls, and text messaging to help you build your texting opt-in list, and in turn, grow your business.

To get started with BellesLink, check out our Pro and Business plans. With access to people and batch searches, phone calls, text messaging, and all the tools you need to go from finding data to making contact, you’ll have everything you need to succeed.