Putting together a good SMS campaign may sound easy, and if executed properly, they sure look this way to the recipient.
After all, they’re the one who is getting a short, simple, but hopefully powerful text message encouraging them to take some action or take advantage of a wonderful offer. How hard is it to send a text, anyway?
Since you mention it, sending one text to one person is as easy as pie. But sending the same text thousands of times to your audience requires much more skill and preparation.
Unless your organization has a legion of fast-fingered teens at its disposal whose job it is to blast out the same messages all day long to your entire mailing list (hey, a job’s a job), you’re likely more interested in ways to make the automated process faster, easier and more effective.
Luckily for you (and for those tired teens, we suppose), Trumpia and other sources offer a variety of solutions to assist you in building, managing and executing your list of SMS recipients.
One method is a bulk SMS gateway, which helps you send out multiple messages to different mobile networks. Here’s why this kind of outsourcing is a good idea.
- A bulk gateway lets someone else handle the mechanics. Your business may be good at what it does but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to do it all, including hiring people and purchasing the hardware, software and bandwidth to coordinate distribution of thousands of texts on a regular basis. The gateway can also help coordinate some of the other processes such as making sure subscriptions and un-subscriptions are current, plus sending out messages are pre-assigned times.
- A bulk gateway follows the rules. When you’re dealing with person-to-person electronic communications, there are best practices to follow. Some are general guidelines, such has how many items can be sent out on a daily basis. Some are absolute legal rules with potential violations that could include everything from a business being blacklisted from sending anything to fines for chronic spamming. Some existing rules apply to email campaigns that have been around longer than texts, but texts face similar regulations. You can still help the gateway service by making sure your list of recipients is “clean,” meaning everyone on it has consented to receive information from you. There are also different rules for contacting people in different countries, which you may not be familiar with, but your gateway should be.
- Gateways allow you to segment your mailing lists. As you begin to grow your audience who has expressed interest in receiving information by SMS, you can begin to get creative with who gets different messages and promotions. Rather than “everyone receives the same message,” you can select various demographic groups, such as age, gender, location or interests and tailor your messages especially for them. A bulk gateway can handle different message channels at once, which makes it easier to manage your campaigns.
- You can still receive data. Even though you’re outsourcing this role, your gateway should still provide regular reports about the performance of different campaigns, including how many people were contacted, how many people responded to your link, and any undelivered/undeliverable messages. This saves your people from having to compile this information.
- Security. You should be smart about worrying about security within your network. But if you’re reaching out to hundreds or thousands of customers, you also should worry about security here as well. Your SMS solution provider can help you protect the data of any customers who contact you, along with your own data. Trumpia, for instance, includes a variety of firewalls that can help block various attacks.
If your company decides to begin investing in SMS marketing, which is smart due to the explosive growth of people owning smartphones, you’ll want to find bulk mailing solutions capable of handling potentially thousands of customer contacts – so you won’t have to! You can still design the messages but a bulk gateway can be a useful outreach tool.
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