Ring! Yawn. We wake up in the morning to the smell of automatically brewed coffee and swipe on our smartphones to check the weather, news, Facebook feed, and email. And that’s just the beginning of our day.

Elsewhere, in many parts of the world, such luxuries aren’t so pervasive. People have to make do with what was considered high-tech over a decade ago, like short-message service (SMS) messaging. In working in developing countries, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) must adapt to the local conditions, so solutions like two-way texting from FrontlineSMS have proven to be a popular and effective way of communicating on a large scale for cheap.

Two-way texting is a great alternative to voice calls by providing a quick way of sending concise bits of information to many people at one time but also offering a way for recipients to respond back. Despite the growing popularity of smartphones, text messaging continues to be a popular channel of communication, even in industrialized nations. So regardless, it’s still a great way to get in touch with your audience.

One major benefit of two-way texting for a business is that you can build positive customer relationships by responding to customer questions and concerns in real-time. This shows that your business is made up of real people and actually cares about what its customers think and want. For all types of organizations, two-way texting can also be an efficient way of getting direct and honest feedback from audience members, as studies have shown that mobile text offers the highest open and response rates of any mode of interactive communication.

Try two-way texting for yourself by logging into your Trumpia account and using our innovative text-messaging features:

• Mobile keyword. Set up a keyword that anyone can text in to automatically get your text message. Users can follow up with their own message, which you can respond to via any web browser.
• Mobile voting. Run a survey that users can participate in through their mobile phones just by texting in their votes, which are automatically sorted and tallied in our system.
• Appointment reminder. Schedule mobile-text messages to be sent to your members to remind them of appointments or reservations. They can text back with confirmations to help you organize your other appointments.

This month, we’re running a special promo for our loyal blog readers! Text in “TrumpiaBlog” to 69302 to find out what it is!