SMS

With the mobile industry still growing at speed, it’s becoming more and more important that businesses are able to adapt in ways that best suit their consumers. With over 60 million active mobile phones in the UK today, it’s clear that the vast majority of consumers have access to and are like to use a mobile phone as their preferred means of contact. SMS services are a popular way for companies to offer an alternative to dialling long numbers, this can prove a faster and often cheaper way for consumers to submit enquiries or register selections.

Features

Premium Rate SMS (also known as PSMS) is a simple way for consumers to pay for services and products via their mobile handsets. Rather than providing payment methods such as credit or debit card, the customer is simply charged for sending or receiving a premium rate SMS on their next bill. Commonly used on TV voting systems or competitions, consumers are given the option to text a 5 digit shortcode (eg 66888). The cost per text is predefined and can range from the same as a standard network SMS right up to £10 in extreme cases.

The pricing is clear to consumers therefore anybody who uses the service is aware how much they will be charged. PSMS can be run on either dedicated shortcodes where the user owns the 5 digit code or on shared shortcodes where the user shares the same 5 digits with other users but is able to distinguish their business using a keyword (eg Text KEYWORD to 66888). Shared shortcodes allow businesses to keep set up and rental costs to a minimum rather than purchasing their own unique codes.

In the same way that revenue is generated by callers to premium rate numbers, income is also received by the company using the SMS service. This means that for every text message that your business receives you will see an increase in cash flow, the prices charged to the customer (and in turn back to the business) are variable depending on their purpose.

Bulk SMS – this is a fantastic feature for businesses as it offers a simple way to contact thousands of customers at once or send individual alerts at specific times. Ideal for marketing campaigns and debt collection but is also used as a disaster recovery tool or fail safe should systems go down or if there is a need to send notification to numerous recipients at a moment’s notice without the need for manual outbound calling.

Examples of users;

SMS Voting / Competitions
SMS Chat
Subscriptions
Marketing Campaigns (mass distribution)
Disaster Recovery (eg, in Schools)
Debt Collection