Contrary to popular notions, business messages are still an integral part of routine transactions and communications with customers.
A customer ordered your product? Send them an SMS confirming the order. Planning a seasonal sale of your brand? Send an SMS to your customers announcing the date of the sale. Want to update the customer about the status of their order? SMS to the rescue again.
Business messages are efficient as they help to establish direct communication with the customer.
In fact, messages have an open rate of 99% as compared to emails, which has an open rate of 20% at the highest. 90% of SMS are read within 3 minutes. Studies also reveal that 75% of customers prefer receiving offers through SMS.
Considering that business SMS are still relevant and more efficient than other channels, it’s time for enterprises to prioritize it while developing their marketing strategies.
But they must adapt to the changes in their industry and customer choices.
This means that they must transition from sending bulk messages to personalized messages. 72% of customers confirmed that they engage with personalized messages. They prefer to receive messages that are tailored to their interests and choices.
Another shift that enterprises must pay heed to is Rich Communication Services (RCS). Considering that customers are used to receiving rich multimedia messages through instant messengers, social media messengers, etc. plain text messages can be dismissed easily. Rich text messages can help enterprises create a more intuitive and engaging message for customers. These messages contain links, rich visuals, colors, etc. Customers can even participate in polls, quizzes, and contests through these messages.
RCS messaging has become so popular that it is poised to grow to a market size of $11.7 billion.
Common Challenges In Business Messaging
Although personalization, RCS, and other forms of A2P messaging have redefined how enterprises send text messages to customers, they come with their own set of challenges. These challenges exist even after considering that the enterprise has the creativity and skill to put together attractive, evocative, and meaningful messages that can leverage the full power of the RCS format.
One of the leading challenges in business messaging is grey routes. Grey routes are unauthorized routes through which the messages are delivered. So, although the message is delivered, it gets exposed to security risks and could also pose a threat to the recipient. Apart from posing threats to the customers, it also damages the business’s reputation. Sometimes customers also receive fraudulent messages and spam messages that expose them to security threats.
Grey routes also result in revenue leakage for mobile operators as the message delivery route is unauthorized. They also lose revenue when the SMS termination does not occur in their network.
Regulations such as GDPR can also prove to be a challenge for enterprises as they need to seek opt-in from the customer to send messages to them.
As enterprises expand their reach to new markets, new countries, and new customer segments, they need to ensure safe and seamless communication with their customers.
They need to find the right business messaging partner who can help them reach the right customers at the right time without exposing them to security risks.
A right messaging partner will also help operators prevent issues and reduce revenue leakage.
What To Look For In A Business Messaging Partner?
Here are a few things that enterprises and network operators must look for in a business messaging partner:
Enterprises
The messaging partner must provide API connects to allow enterprises to send transactional and promotional A2P SMS to their customers.
Enterprises must also check if the messaging partner offers options to send rich communication messages such as push notifications, geo-targeted texts, etc.
Telecom operators
The messaging partner must have a direct interconnection with international carriers and telecom operators. This will help operators with direct SMS termination and avoid revenue leakage.
Most importantly, they must offer high-quality direct routes to prevent the messages from being sent via grey routes.
Operators must also ensure that the messaging partner supports SMS Firewall and content filtering capabilities. This will help them to filter and block spam and fraudulent messages and prevent customers from receiving them.
Conclusion
Enterprises have realized that the only way to thrive in a hyper-competitive world is by having continuous communications with customers. Messaging has helped enterprises of all types and sizes to successfully build just that connection with customers. As a business messaging partner of enterprises and mobile operators, we understand the changing dynamics of business messaging like no one else.