Long Live the Professional SMS!

According to the “Informe de Internet en España y el Mundo” (Report on the Internet in Spain and the World) published by Ditrendia, the digital strategy consultancy, it is estimated that by 2018 there will be 4,900 million mobile users in the world, with 342 million of these in western Europe. This presents a genuine business opportunity for companies who must make space for mobile marketing in their strategies. And this must include SMS which, although it has seen its highs and lows, is again recovering its predominant role.

Let’s take a look at its strong points:

1. Immediacy: we must not forget that 97% of all SMS are opened within 3 minutes of their receipt. No other channel allows you to reach the clients in your databases so quickly.
2. Instant impact: it’s opened, read, and more attention is paid to the message. Nowadays receiving an SMS is a wake up call, because it has become a type of communication that is used for very specific matters, normally those considered more “important”.
3. It doesn’t rely on mobile data coverage: unlike other types of messaging such as OTT (Over the Top), there is no need to have access to 3G data networks or WiFi to receive an SMS.
4. It reaches all kinds of mobile devices: from the most sophisticated smartphones to the most basic terminals (feature phones), opening its reach to a wide range of clients of every age and level of disposable income.
5. Bulk sending brings the cost down: thus it becomes an affordable way of initiating marketing actions.
6. It allows you to incorporate links to landing pages.

Admittedly, it is a channel with its own peculiarities: the standard length of an SMS is 160 characters (if we pass this limit we pay for two messages instead of one), it shouldn’t be felt as intrusive to the receiver and the sending has to be as affordable as possible. But at the same time it offers many possibilities.

Therefore, far from nearing extinction, SMS is proving to be one of the best channels for professional communications and shows signs of a promising future. If businesses (or institutions) use SMS in a specific way, adapted to their business, they can achieve excellent results: they can be used to start a campaign, to share news, access coupons, create alerts and notifications, reply to surveys, build customer loyalty, and even to pass on a thank you. This makes SMS an excellent form of one-to-one communication.

At LINK Mobility we are betting on this channel continuing to coexist with others such as instant messaging or email, while proving to be much more effective for business and institutional communications.

This is why we take such great care of SMS as a channel for marketing, notifications, alerts and certificates, through details such as HLR (Home Location Register) functionalities, which can detect whether the mobile device is active or not, and Certified SMS, which provides the message with legal validity.

A convenient, effective and secure channel.

Long live the SMS!