Still using a landline at your business? You’re in good company. 

For almost 150 years, businesses have used landlines to speak with their customers. (The first landlines date all the way back to 1877.)

To this day, businesses still rely on landlines for their daily calls—both internally with their teams and externally with their customers.

To give you an idea of how many U.S. businesses use landline phones:

At Salesmsg, we took a closer look at just the businesses using landlines in one county in South Florida. We pulled the data from 65,000 registered businesses in Palm Beach County. Out of those 65,000 businesses, an astonishing 70% still use landline phones to handle their daily calls.

That means 70% of those South Florida businesses may have missed out on a massive opportunity: Using their landlines to text their customers. 

If you're using a landline for your business, just making your number “textable,” is such an easy way to connect with your customers.

In this post, I’ll explain why texting is such an overlooked opportunity for businesses with landline phones. I’ll also show you how to get started with landline texting—and even check if your business line is capable of texting. 

(Be sure to watch my video above for all the details.)

What Is Landline Texting and How Does it Work?

Yes, it’s easy to text from a landline phone number. It’s also easy to encourage your customers to text you back.

Landline texting has been around for years. The technology has allowed all kinds of businesses to benefit from texting their customers.
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As you can probably guess, "landline texting” is enabling your business landline phone number to send and receive text messages.

Once you text-enable your landline, your number works exactly as it did before. You can still make and receive calls on that phone number just like always. The difference is you now use a texting platform like Salesmsg to text through that landline number too.

At Salesmsg, we built an entire platform that makes it easy to text your customers from your business number—including landlines. We can help you text-enable most landlines, so you can use your existing phone number for two-way text messaging and SMS broadcasts.

Use your landline phone number for two-way texting

‍If you’re new to business texting, two-way messaging means you can text your customers from your landline and they can text you back.

There’s so many reasons to use two-way texting for your business. For example, your support team might want to respond to customers’ questions via text—and invite your customers to text back any follow-up questions. Or your sales team might want to use two-way texting to close deals faster than on the phone.

Or your marketing team might want to send out requests for feedback via text, and invite your customers to respond.

You can set all this up inside our texting and calling platform, Salesmsg.

Send out SMS broadcasts from your landline phone number

‍‍Once you text-enable your landline, you can also use that number to send out SMS or MMS broadcasts.

A SMS or MMS broadcast is a text message you send out to a group of contacts at once.

Why send out a SMS or MMS broadcast? Simple. The average open rate for a text message is 98%, which means 98% of people read text messages within the first five minutes. Imagine for a moment what you could do in your business if 98% of your customers saw every message you sent.

Think of what your marketing team could do if 98% of their would-be customers saw their promos or content. Or 98% of the leads in your pipeline saw your text from your sales team. That’s all possible with texting.

Why Do You Need to Text-enable Your Landline Phone?

If you’re already a Salesmsg customer, you can start the process to text-enable your landline phone number from inside your Salesmsg account. This initial setup takes between 5-10 minutes of your time. Then you usually have to wait about one business day for the setup to be complete.

It’s worth the effort. Here’s why…

Your customers expect it

In 2024, customers expect to text your business phone number.

Research shows that 58% of customers have tried texting back after missing a call from a business.

As you read this, would-be customers could be texting your landline phone number on your website. If you don’t text-enable that number, all those messages get lost before they reach you. Customers' questions go unanswered. Complaints get ignored (and potentially create very unhappy customers). Compliments also disappear, before these kind words can become your next five-star reviews.

The reality is: You’ll have no idea customers are trying to text you until you text-enable your landline.

At Salesmsg, many of our customers discovered their clients were likely already texting them—when we text-enabled their landline phone.

Our Salesmsg clients were surprised to find texts rolling in as soon as we made their phone number textable. That tells us customers were likely texting them all along, and they missed out on conversations because their landline wasn’t text-enabled yet.

Your customers would rather text

According to 99Firms, every generation of your would-be customers from Gen Z to Boomers are already texting. They also prefer texting three times more than face-to-face interactions. 

With this in mind, it's extremely important to use a dedicated phone number to both send and receive text messages from your customers.

Here at Salesmsg, we call texting the new “white glove experience” for your customers. It’s the way to delight your customers and exceed their expectations at every step of their customer journey—from their first texted question before they become a customer—to the day they text you a five-star review as your raving fan.

Texting = faster than emails or calls

One of the biggest reasons to enable text messaging on your landline phone number is because texting saves time for your entire team.

It takes less than 90 seconds to reply to a text. That means your support team can respond to questions faster. Your sales team can close deals via text faster than getting on the phone.

Your marketing team can also send SMS or MMS broadcasts much quicker than sending an email. Your team can simply write a text message once, and with the click of a button to send it as often as they like.

Your competitors could enable texting first

In the 21st century, customers expect instant responses. The businesses that respond to these expectations are more likely to attract customers.

One of the easiest ways to provide this level of service is to enable your landline for texting, so you can easily respond in a personal, one-on-one way to your customers’ questions and comments.

If you don’t provide this level of service, your competitors might beat you to it. So why not try it first?

Is Your Landline Phone Number Textable?

If you’re already a Salesmsg customer, you can check to see if your landline is textable from inside your Salesmsg account. 

It’s as simple as navigating over to “settings” to find out if your number is textable or not. From there, you need to enter your address, verify that you own that specific phone number, sign an electronic letter of authorization and finally assign your new textable number to a text inbox.

It’s only five steps. Again, it only takes five to 10 minutes.

(Be sure to watch the video for all the details.)

Final Thoughts on Texting with Landlines

Landline texting can benefit your business in a lot of ways.

Investing in texting ASAP can make your business stand out from the competition, give your customers that white-glove experience, drive more sales and boost your revenue. 

To ensure that your business can make the most out of landline texting, we suggest you check out Salesmsg. You can sign up for a 14-day free trial here.