Targeted SMS Messaging
Getting the right person and the right time enables you to sell to them; at any other time, they are useless to you. Funneling potential leads is not to add to your call list for the day, but remove the outliers to stop you from wasting your time. At some point in time everyone can be sold to, however is that now, and is it worth the time to call them? Engage with customers through application-to-person (A2P) SMS messaging. SMS smart messages that use chatbots enable users to be either directed to the right support content, automate workflows such appointments, and funnel and filter through an automated validation process.
Optimized Messages
A2P SMS messaging providers get SMS specialists optimize messages and personalize content. Personalized domain URLs can be used. Multimedia messaging service (MMS) can allow you to have up to 40 seconds of video or equivalent media content added to a message, including audio. Images can be used in slideshows to show a user a product quickly.
A2P verses P2P
There are two main ways to send SMS messages to an individual; A2P and P2P (person-to-person) messaging. Due to A2P allowing for a high degree of automation it is regulated or restricted in many countries such as India and France. As such best practice is to use one of many A2P messaging providers and Ideally one that offers specialist creation of messages to not just aid the sale of the offering in the best light it can be, but also get around any potential regulatory challenges a non-experienced team may face. Restrictions that you could face may include message filtering by recipient carriers or delayed message delivery.
Typically, along with A2P, a messaging provider may also provide P2P SMS messaging as a service. This is a two-way SMS messaging conversation between two humans. As you can tell this method is another effective way of working and most companies using these will have predefined scripts and responses that can be used by staff. The only challenge with it is that it takes relatively a lot of staff to run it effectively, or a reduced throughput.
So, what can you do to make life easier for your staff? Well, combine your approach; first use A2P where you can without loss of response quality, automatically feed responses to CRM and then follow up on validated potential clients through P2P before taking things further. Better yet get the a2p SMS messaging provider to do the heavy lifting and follow up once a potential lead has been validated.
Administration
Users can manage and monitor campaigns through an accessible user interface. Straight away you are aware of the money you have spent and adjust accordingly. The great thing about A2P SMS is that the A2P messaging providers is that they specialize in optimization and may be able to help improve the yield of campaigns and worth talking to prior to adjustment.
What numbers or senders should I focus on?
In the US you can send to long phone codes, short phone codes, and toll-free phone numbers. For non-US countries you may wish to look into using short codes or alphanumeric sender IDs to help your campaigns. If you use P2P messaging, you should use custom numbers from the same country as your client list to ensure two-way SMS messaging functionality works correctly.
Summary
A2P messaging providers allow you a whole new world of SMS messaging that can be either used by itself or better yet together with P2P for an optimized approach with users. No matter your business SMS smart messaging solutions can generate sells quickly with little investment from corporate staff.
