The Challenge

As the organization expanded beyond 100 locations, its SMS strategy became fragmented.

The business relied on a shortcode for large-scale broadcast campaigns, while individual stores handled customer conversations using local business smartphones. This made it difficult to maintain consistency, track performance, or understand how messaging impacted sales across locations.

Key challenges included:

• No centralized visibility into message volume, response behavior, or conversation quality
• Inconsistent account management with untracked, one-off store-level texting
• Disconnected systems, with SMS living outside the HubSpot
• Operational risk at scale, making brand oversight increasingly difficult

The company needed a solution that allowed local teams to move fast without sacrificing centralized control.

The Solution

The retailer implemented a centralized, HubSpot CRM-native texting platform designed for multi-location teams.

By integrating its existing shortcode and connecting texting directly in HubSpot, every location could send and receive messages where all customer data already lived.

With this approach:

• Each location operates from its own shared inbox
• Corporate teams maintain centralized oversight and governance
• All conversations are tied directly to HubSpot contact records
• Messaging becomes faster, more personal, and easier to manage at scale

Today, the organization runs over 100 shared inboxes, one per location, with role-based access for administrators and regional leaders.

Core Capabilities Used

• HubSpot-Native Texting: Sales teams text directly from their CRM with full customer context.
• Broadcast Messaging: Centralized one-to-many campaigns for promotions and alerts.
• 1:1 Store Messaging: Personalized, location-specific conversations.
• Saved Replies: Consistent, on-brand responses across locations.
• Image Messaging: Share product visuals directly within conversations.
• Multi-Location Reporting: Visibility into inbound and outbound messaging by store.

Results

Connecting texting directly to HubSpot unlocked significant engagement across the retailer’s entire network.

Across more than 100 locations:

• 50,000+ one-to-one text conversations per month
• Hundreds of thousands of broadcast messages sent monthly
• Faster response times, with many messages receiving replies in under a minute

Texting became a core sales enablement channel, supporting leads before visits, during comparison shopping, and throughout a mobile-first buying journey.

Business Impact

• Scalable personalization using full CRM context at every location
• Faster engagement with customers on their preferred channel
• Centralized control without slowing down local teams
• Sales enablement at scale across a nationwide footprint

“Managing texting across more than 100 locations requires both flexibility and control. Giving each location its own inbox while maintaining centralized oversight completely changed how we engage customers at scale.”

— VP Marketing & Ecommerce, Nationwide Automotive Retailer
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