Any business that ships physical goods has a lot of moving pieces to consider. One that shouldn’t get by you, however, is keeping your customers updated on the status of their purchases. For that reason, you should absolutely consider implementing SMS notifications for order details. Not only is SMS marketing convenient, but it can also save you extra headaches and make your customers feel taken care of.

What are SMS notifications on order details?

Following an order, there are a few points of outreach you’ll want to implement to inform the customer along the shipping journey. Traditionally these notifications are done through email. However, email can be clunky to use and doesn’t have a great open rate compared to text. With SMS ordering notifications, your customers will be updated immediately through text—and since 95% of all texts get read within minutes, you can be sure your customers will be up to speed.

Why are SMS notifications useful?

Communication will improve customer satisfaction

Really that’s all there is to it—keeping your customers updated also keeps them happy. Even if there’s something wrong with their order, your customers will be happier to actually know what’s going on instead of lacking information. Especially for customers who purchase high-volume or high-value products, it’s important for your customers to feel like they can trust you, and being very clear about where their product is at will make a huge difference for them.

SMS messages save your business time

In any business, time is crucial. SMS order notifications will in fact save you time—you’ll spend less time on the phone or answering emails from customers, and you’ll be able to reinvest that saved time into other areas of your business. Having texting capability will also save you time in other ways as well, especially if your texting service allows two-way communication. You can easily resolve issues and even process returns much more easily than over the phone or email. You may even consider an SMS ordering system.

When would you use an SMS notification?

Order successful

The first SMS order notification lets the customer know that their order was successful, including some form of confirmation number and invoice for their purchase. Without this crucial step, many (if not most) customers may not even know that their purchase was successful and may accidentally submit multiple orders. A simple notification gives customers peace of mind specifically with online ordering.

Updates

Secondly, your customers will want to know the status of their order. A notification at this point will let your customer know when the order has been shipped from the warehouse and when to expect it. It may also include relevant shipping information like a tracking number or hyperlink to the shipping service.

You may also find it useful to send a notification on the day the shipment is expected to arrive, as well as a final shipping notification letting the customer know their purchase did ship successfully as well as what to do if there are any problems with their order.

There may be a need as well for supplementary notifications to alert customers when something goes wrong in the shipping or delivery process or if there are unexpected delays.

Re-engage users who have abandoned cart

Cart abandonment is common for online retailers. It usually signifies that there was some sort of friction or hesitation in that step of the purchase process for the customers. Check out our abandoned cart SMS templates for ideas for re-engaging these customers.

SMS order templates

The easiest way to send SMS shipping notifications is to create a template with fields that populate based on the order. Here’s a quick sample template for an order confirmation text:

sample sms shipping template

Hi [customer name], thanks for shopping with [business name]! Your order [order number] of [product name] + [x] other items was successful. Your order should ship soon. If you have any questions, changes, or returns, visit [url] or text us back here.

SMS shipping templates

Here’s a sample template for a shipping notification for SMS:

sample text shipping template

Hi [customer name], your order [order number] has shipped! Your order should arrive on [date]. Track your package here: [url]

SMS delivery templates

Here’s a sample template for an SMS delivery notification:

sms shipping example

Congrats [customer name]! Your shipment [order number] has been delivered. For returns, questions, or issues with delivery, visit [url] or text us back here.

SMS order return templates

Here’s a sample template for an SMS order return message:

sms shipping sample

Hi [customer name], your return for order [order number] has been processed and your account has been refunded.

Send your first SMS message in minutes

It’s easy to get started with SMS messaging for your retail business. With Podium, you can compose, send, and automate SMS messages to your customers, as well as gather reviews, communicate with customers, and run text marketing campaigns—just a few ways text marketing is revolutionizing local business. You can start texting your customers today.