Technical savvy of sects of Bulk SMS services

May you belong to any domain of industry or service sector in today’s business world, the thumb rule that should be adhered to business success is ‘effective communication’ with the target audiences. Speaking in pretty layman terms, it is pretty clear that the baseline for any business is its potential customers and existing clients. If an effective interaction is developed between these clients and the associated business houses, then the business is surely to achieve great success and audience affirmation. In order to accomplish such affirmation comes the concept of bulk SMS services. Bulk SMS service, or also termed as bulk messaging is a business marketing technique that allows the business organization to communicate with their millions of target audiences directly using the power of short messaging services (better known as SMS). Adding further, these services facilitate business houses to deliver bulk SMS to the broadcast audiences safely, directly and swiftly. With a wider lens in the picture, the broadcast audiences greatly include business stakeholders, clients, and customers, organization employees or students along with all other business acquaintances.

1. The Bulk SMS categorization

With a firm understanding of bulk messaging services and its seamless potential in the field of business marketing and communication, bulk SMS is widely split into two kinds of messages depending upon the source of message sending. Let’s get our focus in knowing these types and the reason for the classification:

• Retail bulk SMS services
  

One of the major segments of the business world is dominated by the business houses that directly offer their services to the end-users of the common public. Such businesses are known as business to customer firms (generally abbreviated as B2C). As the name suggests, these institutions need to develop direct connect with the end-users as they cater products or services which are consumed by the run of the mill multitude.

The bulk messages that are sent by business units to these audiences are categorized under the banner of retail bulk SMS services.

If you find your business domain lying in the B2C arena, it is suggested to opt for retail bulk messaging services.

Let us understand the role of retail bulk messaging by taking the case of an e-commerce business. The primary focus of B2C bulk SMS marketing is to convert potential customers into sales. The e-commerce industry is full of dynamism and thus brings in new products and/ or services that it wishes to order its customers and clients. There may be new products or renovation in existing product categories. Also, depending upon the time frame, the business might wish to entice its customers with seasonal and festive offers, discounts, loyalty benefits, etc. The key point to emphasize here is that the business must ensure getting the desired target audience aware of the above-stated offers and discounts. Further, since these offers time-bounded, it is also crucial for the timely spread of information. Retail bulk SMS services stand perfect in such situations. The e-commerce business can send bulk promotional messages to a huge customer base in an effective manner by employing services from a trusted SMS service provider. 

Many times, when the business needs to send bulk messages to filtered audience group it can opt sorted tagging methodology offered by the SMS service providers. Updating customers with loyalty benefit messages is a classic example of filtered messaging. Say, for example, the e-commerce business wishes to offer huge discounts to the customers who are loyal to the enterprise for the last 5 years. As not all the contacts in the business customer database fit the criteria for the reception of loyalty benefit messages, it is important to filter the contacts and send the intended messages only to the clients with criteria match 5 years and above. Using bulk SMS services, this can be done just a jiffy. Using the tag sorting feature, the e-commerce application can simply send messages to the filtered customer database rather than sending broadcasting the promotional bulk message to entire audiences.

The basic principle that supports this functionality is tag sorting and grouping. The intended business can simply upload the contacts and group them with sorting features. Once this is done, all that the business needs to do is compose promotional bulk messages and choose the desired customer group to whom message must be sent. Owing to the averment of SMS services, within minutes the sent message is received and read by the target audience. Simultaneously, the business can also track sent/received bulk SMS to get constructive data on customer engagement. This data can further be used to sharpen future marketing campaigns.

2. Wholesale SMS services …

The other category of messages is known as wholesale SMS services. These messages are sent to the uses from bulk SMS resellers. As a business, if you wish to outsource the task of bulk messaging and marketing, then you can opt for wholesale SMS services. Under this banner, the bulk SMS is received by the end-users from bulk SMS resellers institutions. 

As the intended business organization, you must provide the outsourced bulk SMS institution with the list of target audiences to which you would like to send promotional messages along with the message draft. The reseller outsourced firm shall be responsible to send the above-stated messages to your provided client-base in an effective and efficient mannerism. Depending upon the SMS service provider chosen, you might be licensed to receive timely SMS reports and statistics that shall help you in keeping track of transacted messages.

The efficiency of Bulk SMS over Electronic mails
Taking the 21st century into consideration, almost every other individual holds a mobile phone with an activated SMS service. Therefore, if the business house sends messages to the given mobile number, the end-user owning that number is most likely to receive the message. Adding further, the received messages are often read by the receivers in less than 5 minutes of its delivery. This ensures that every received message is deemed to leave a long-lasting impression on the recipient and thus hold maximum inheritance to encash the potential customers. This is not the case with bulk emailing. Further, limited access to emails for the majority of end-users limits its effect in business marketing and thus entitle bulk SMS services as the best business marketing and communication techniques in the 21st-century business world.