Copyright: tofumax / 123RF Stock Photo
Study after study shows so many people are increasingly becoming attached to their smartphones.

This means traditional forms of interpersonal communication like talking, or even emailing, are becoming as obsolete as 8-track players, and today’s phone owners, the younger they get, prefer to text and expect to be texted to.

Unless you’re a tiny company that has few customers, it’s a poor use of you and your staff’s time to send out many individual texts on a regular basis, especially with the same message. So it makes sense to look for a company to provide Small Message Services at a larger level.

You want to choose someone that provides inexpensive bulk texting service, and someone that integrates your audience database into them. But beyond that, other wished-for services may vary.  For those putting together a list of “must haves” and “must not haves” to start your search or narrow down your finalists, consider these qualities:

• Access to short codes. If you plan on sending out thousands of the same promotional text, you may want thousands of sales or at least clicks-throughs to your site or offer page, but you don’t necessarily want or need thousands of people texting you back. But a short code can give recipients a short string of numbers to text back, and in some cases, combine it with a certain keyword.  This could be helpful for everything from voting on certain items to making donations to a favorite charity.
  
  
• Automated service. With some texting services, you have to assemble the message, choose the audience and hit “send,” and the behind-the-scenes stuff is taken care of such as contacting the gateway and different phone carriers. But some providers even allow you to create some rules where certain messages are automatically sent, such as a birthday message to a recipient who shared his or her birthday during the registration process – if you requested that field. Or a thank-you note if they performed a task, like signing up for a contest or completing their profile. To the recipient, it looks like you took the time to contact them directly.
  
  
• Integration with your loyalty club. People join loyalty clubs for various reasons. Often, it’s to save money or get special members-only offers. But whatever the reason, it provides an active audience for you that you can cultivate. It’s up to you and your company to define the terms of your club, such as who can join, how they can do so and what being a member entails. But your SMS provider can assist with managing the audience. Do they get separate texts in addition to the ones that your “every customer” gets? Do they get more frequent contacts?
  
  
• The ability to send different products.  Maybe you don’t want to always send texts. How would your provider handle something else, like a photo, a video or a coupon? These technically go beyond SMS and into MMS category (Multimedia Message Service), and sometimes your recipients may not be able to access these due to their phone’s security settings, but it’s still a good question to ask if your provider has the capability to change things around if needed.
  
  
• Familiarity with the law/best practices. In theory, your SMS provider should have a better knowledge of proper text formats and current regulations/guidelines than you do, since they also may be liable if you include something dangerous in your text or send to people who haven’t quite opted in. The Federal Trade Commission said commercial message providers and any service they use must be even more careful with smartphone communication than traditional non-commercial communication.
  
  
• The ability to assist in data collection. As the customer, you are ultimately responsible for growing your database, which can be everything from including a “sign up” button on your site to requesting sign-ups/opt-ins for anyone who walks into your location or tries to buy something online. But perhaps your provider can make this process more efficient – instead of having customers/supporters fill out a lengthy registration as a first step – a process that likely can dampen enthusiasm in a hurry -- and also require you to manually enter it,  they can simply text a keyword to your texting provider and have their basic information automatically added.
  
  
• A helpful API. Not every business is the same so a “one size fits all” approach really won’t fit anyone so well. Instead, clients with knowledgeable developers may be eager to work with your SMS provider to help customize channels, schedule message delivery and other specific configurations.
  
  

A good texting provider can be thought of as a useful tool, able to work with the client to make sure both see success, and also able to grow as the client’s business grows. For more suggestions on what available features you should be considering, visit trumpia.com.

Free Mobile Marketing Success Kit

Get Your Copy Today