SkioSMS

Overview (TL;DR)

SkioSMS is a subscription management tool using transactional SMS and is powered by Skio
Subscribers are notified before each order and can change their charge date, swap their product, skip, and even cancel their subscription
All texts are 100% free and automatically triggered by subscription events (eg upcoming charge) which reduces unnecessary support tickets

What is it

SkioSMS is a free subscription management tool that allows your subscribers to manage their subscription through text. Since our texting service using transactional texts instead of marketing texts, Skio can text all of your subscribers as long as their is a phone number on their account.

Our texting tool is available to all merchants at no additional costs. Setting up the service is a very simple process and can be toggled off at any time for any reason.

Here’s what the SkioSMS page and tool looks like:

Why should I use it?

Skio is focused on empowering our merchants to provide a frictionless subscription experience to their merchants. Passwordless login is a great example of a feature that removes a common pain point for subscribers and SkioSMS is another tool in your tool belt.

SMS is the next evolution in customer engagement. With email open rates falling each year, on average, SMS opens up the door to ensuring your notifications are read by your subscribers. Email open rates tend to hover around 20-35% whereas texting open rates around 95%+ with opt-out rates typically less than 5%.

Subscription management should be easy and the fewer pain points a subscriber has to manage their subscription, the more revenue that subscriber will bring in over time. Overall, the more a subscriber interacts with their subscription through edits and adjustments, the higher their LTV tends to be while also reducing their churn risk.

How do I set it up?

Setting up SkioSMS is simple, fast, and 100% free. Within your Skio Dashboard, we added a SkioSMS page within the lefthand panel titled “SkioSMS”. In this tab you can enable SkioSMS, edit each message, and setup product swapping options.

Once you enable SkioSMS, you’ll also be able to send all of your store’s notifications though SMS as well as email (see the Notifications tab in your Skio Dashboard).

Before enabling SkioSMS by toggling on the enablement button at the top of the SkioSMS page, we recommend setting up the following:

Edit the messages to stay on brand
Setup swappable products

In SkioSMS, you will be presented a list of each message that is sent through our system. Every single message can be edited to match your brand’s voice as well as include useful variables that will pull in dynamic information such as the customer’s name or the product they’re subscribed to. The available variables are listed on the lefthand side when editing individual messages.

If you want to enable product swapping via SMS, you’ll need to setup Swappable Products which can be found at the bottom of the SkioSMS page in your Skio Dashboard. If you do not add in swappable products, subscribers will not be able to swap products through SMS.

To add a swappable product, all you have to do is click the “add product” button at the bottom of the page under the title “Swappable Products”. Then choose the product you want to add. When adding a product you can choose the Product Title and the Swap Number. The product title is the title that will populate in the text and the Swap Number is the number that a subscriber will reply with to trigger the swap. For example, replying with “1” will swap for Product A and replying with “2” will swap for Product B.

FAQs

Do I get to choose my phone number?

We provide a phone number for you and it is 100% free to use. Every inbound and outbound text is covered by Skio.

What are transactional texts and how do they differ from marketing texts?

Transactional texts have a different legal definition and do not have the same opt-in requirements that marketing texts demand. The major perk with this approach is that we can send texts to all subscribers who have a phone number on file.

Can I use this for marketing campaigns?

No; since SkioSMS uses transactional texts our tool is not built for outbound marketing texts. If you are interested in using a marketing SMS tool, we can help integrate with your tool to send transactional texts through your marketing platform OR you can run marketing and transactional texts through different numbers. We find that having separate numbers is typically preferred by customers because they want the ability to manage their subscription via text without receiving marketing texts.