To Make Mobile Messaging Work for Your Business. by John Pinson, Senior Manager of Content Marketing, Message Systems

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1 10 STeps To Make Mobile Messaging Work for Your Business by John Pinson, Senior Manager of Content Marketing, Message Systems

2 The World is Moving Faster than Ever Before The explosive growth of mobile messaging, smartphones, the mobile web and social media has brought enormous changes to existing industries and created entirely new ones. For business decision makers the pace of change can be disorienting and raise a lot of difficult questions. Do we really need a mobile strategy? Where do we start? Should we concentrate on mobile apps, or do we need advanced functionality like unified communications and social networking features? Answers to these questions will vary depending on your industry and your business model and objectives. But what won t vary what holds true for every business wanting to serve an increasingly mobile customer base is that you need to have a mobile messaging strategy. So right off the bat, we ve got answers to some of those difficult questions: Yes, you need a mobile strategy. Where to start? Mobile messaging. when went mobile, messaging went supernova The reasons for basing your mobile strategy on messaging are straightforward. Mobile phones may have been first envisioned as portable devices for voice calls, but with the broad adoption of SMS text messaging in the early cellphone days, and then mobile apps and push messaging in the smartphone era, they quickly evolved into something profoundly more powerful. The fact is, data traffic on wireless networks is far outstripping voice traffic some industry watchers predict that voice call traffic will account for only.3% of mobile data traffic by The other 99.7% will be comprised of business data, video, file downloads, application usage and other types of data. 1 Yet the initial or controlling element in most mobile transactions will continue to be some type of message, whether it be , text or push notification. It s no mistake that SMS text gets called the native language of the mobile medium. SMS is built into virtually every mobile device and mobile network on the planet. The real game-changer in mobile messaging, though, was the advent of mobile in the early 2000s. Or perhaps more accurately, the advent of the smartphone era ushered in by the RIM BlackBerry in For the first time, mobile users could easily text, and IM from a single mobile device. Mar 81% Growth in mobile viewership between October 2010 and March Dawn of the Smartphone Age This ability to access and send on your phone seemed like a simple upgrade in capability at the time you didn t have to be at your PC to get anymore, you could get it anywhere at anytime. Yet this simple upgrade in capability represented an enormous jump in capacity. The hours per day people could conveniently compose, send and receive messages of all kinds effectively doubled. Anytime anywhere connectivity changed the way people interacted with each other and with businesses, to the point where users began to joke about their CrackBerry addictions. Mobile messaging in its various forms was well on its way to becoming mainstream. Today, nearly ten years into the smartphone era, the opportunities to create new businesses and services around messaging are endless. And it s easier than you might think to take advantage of mobile messaging to advance your business goals. Let s consider 10 steps that you can take to make mobile messaging work for your business. Know the differences between SMS and . Text messaging has so much value as a business-to-consumer communication channel not just because it s the standard format for virtually every one of the more than five billion mobile phones worldwide, but because people pay more attention to texts than they do to . Some estimates show open rates for SMS text messages as high as 97%, while only 16-17% of messages get opened and read. 3 This difference in open rates makes SMS highly useful for conveying time-sensitive notifications, or any kind of information that consumers need to know in a timely manner: Banking and Financial Services Fraud Alerts Overdraft Alerts Transaction Confirmations Healthcare Prescription Alerts Appointment Notifications Maintenance Care Reminders Travel and Hospitality Flight Alerts E-Ticketing Reservation Confirmations Retail / Customer Care Mobile Promotions Loyalty Programs Click-to-Call Location-Based Services Short Code Programs Payments Mobile App Extensions Delivery Notifications Know the various players in mobile messaging. It s common knowledge that when you hit the Send button on an from, say, your work laptop, that message gets routed through your company server, on to your host ISP s server, on to the Internet, to the receiving ISP, and finally to the recipient s server where it can be downloaded and read. But how do SMS texts get routed and delivered? And what about push notifications? For individuals, when you type and send a text from your smartphone to a friend or family member, that message travels within the networks maintained by wireless carriers, such as Verizon, Sprint or Vodaphone. But for businesses sending hundreds or thousands of text messages to customers as part of a marketing campaign, business interaction or customer service program, many other players come into the picture. Carrier. The entity maintaining the wireless cell network and customer relationships with a base of mobile phone subscribers. Note that carrier networks are privately owned, and that unlike , which freely travels over the open Internet backbone, SMS traffic is closely managed by carriers as an important revenue stream. Mobile Aggregator. Unlike ISPs who generally accept incoming from any source, wireless carriers will only accept incoming text messages from other carriers and mobile service providers, known as aggregators, who can meet specific standards for message handling and delivery. Businesses wanting to use SMS as a marketing or customer service tool will, in most cases, need to partner with an aggregator. Mobile Transaction Network. Many aggregators also provide business customers with services to facilitate conversion, billing Cisco Visual Networking Index By 2015 annual mobile data traffic will reach 75 exabytes. The total of all global IP traffic generated in the year 2000 was 1 exabyte. blogs.cisco.com 2 3

3 and monetary transactions. A full-service intermediary between the business and the carrier and the end user, these entities maintain what s known as mobile transaction networks. Content Provider. The term for businesses sending mobile messages to customers via SMS or mobile . The Apple and Google Android Push Service Networks. Apple and Google both maintain proprietary push notification networks that enable application developers to stream text messages, sound notifications or other kinds of content directly to ios and Android devices. Subscriber. The term for customers receiving mobile messages from businesses. Know the different types of SMS text messaging. Additionally, there are various flavors of text messaging formats. Mobile Form Factor Industry reports tell us that as much as 20 percent of is now read on mobile devices, and that number is expected to rise dramatically in the years ahead. Are you optimizing your creative and content for mobile users and their small screens? Marketers specializing in mobile outreach have developed a number of best practices to make sure customers can receive, read and interact with messages on mobile devices. Learn more at these sites: Business 2 Community Mobile Marketer imedia Connection Bulk SMS. Generally used in marketing scenarios, bulk SMS is not billable to the recipient, there are no sending guarantees and no delivery notifications are returned to the sender. Premium SMS. Messages that can be billed to a subscriber. With premium SMS, senders do get a guarantee on delivery rates, options on address personalization and a delivery notification for every message delivered. MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service). MMS is the standard for sending mobile messages that contain graphics, sound or other multimedia content. Short Code. Not a message type like SMS or MMS, short codes are essentially abbreviated mobile phone numbers. They are commonly used in promotional campaigns (text YES to to enroll) or to make it easy for subscribers to make one-time payments or donations to charitable causes. It should be noted that short codes are used only in the US and Canada; alerts can be sent out internationally without short codes. Leverage existing infrastructure and data assets for mobile. Nearly every customer-focused business is going to have some kind of systems, assets or processes in place to conduct messagebased interactions. Most likely this infrastructure is -specific, with content or data input sourced from a CRM, or other customer list or data store. Thought leaders in the direct marketing and mobile services space would contend that mobile messaging needs to be conducted in the context of existing message-based programs, and with good reason. To the greatest extent possible, you ll want to exploit in-place messaging systems for mobile. Keep in mind, however, that not all mobile equipment or service provider offerings will readily integrate with your data sources, business processes and applications. Realize also that existing and campaign management systems are most likely designed to create and deliver content for conventional desktop interfaces, not the interfaces on smartphones. Update your infrastructure if needed. Some mobile messaging advocates would contend that in cases where your messaging infrastructure can t support or integrate mobile messaging programs it s better to rush forward with a mobile point solution or carry out one-off standalone campaigns. This would be unwise. Effective marketing, customer care and transactional interactions whether carried out through or mobile text is highly reliant on maintaining a common subscriber view through a measurement framework. If mobile messaging is walled off from your processes, customer insight becomes progressively more difficult to maintain and will ultimately become all but impossible over time. If your message sending capability and back-end data tracking systems are incapable of fully integrating mobile into your processes, it would be far wiser to consider implementing the kind of multichannel message technologies that are specifically designed for digital communication in the smartphone era. Ideally you ll want to have a single platform for sourcing, managing and delivering the various types of messages , SMS/ MMS, IM chat and push notifications and this platform should also centralize all messaging activities across the enterprise. Integrated multi-channel messaging from a central platform provides businesses with far greater flexibility in using mobile messaging for customer outreach and engagement. There are also numerous benefits in terms of greater capability to integrate customer data sources, more options to take advantage of contextual awareness (right channel, right time), and the single-platform approach provides for better security as well. Collect relevant data. Effective mobile messaging does not exist in a vacuum; sometimes your customers want text, sometimes . And those preferences are likely to vary by time of day, day of week, and any number of other variables depending on the context. The better you re able to find out how, when and where your customers wish to be contacted, the greater your ability to keep them engaged, satisfied and loyal to your brand. Facebook users have a wide range of preference options for receiving alerts via or SMS. 4 5

4 Gain the flexibility you need to be creative. As discussed above, mobile messaging is a medium with many moving parts, and infrastructure for SMS is going to vary widely from business to business. For instance, a multinational bank maintaining an SMS fraud alert capability to instantly reach customers in the U.S. will need a completely different set of aggregator relationships and back-end data management processes than an international retail brand launching a mobile promotion with a transactional component into Europe. Different capabilities, different partners, different processes. This is why flexibility is such a crucial quality for your mobile messaging infrastructure. Regardless of vertical industry or business model, mobile messaging needs for every business will change over time. You re going to need full range of motion when it comes to sourcing data or interfacing with aggregators, transaction networks and carriers. And you ll definitely want the ability to open multiple aggregator relationships and direct your mobile messages to the ones that offer you the best price and the highest quality traffic handling. This means you re going to need a partner that can navigate international challenges, and a technology platform that works with every network you ll encounter. So when you re gauging mobile messaging architecture, insist on all of the following: Protocol support for all standard mobile message formats: SMTP, SMPP, MM7 and REST. An open API framework to support pluggable data source integration for LDAP, ODBC, PostgreSQL, MySQL and flat file formats. A unified interface for reporting and billing audits. Scriptable message policy development and support for advanced queuing and routing rules. Easy integration with any gateway infrastructure. Have a plan for what to do when things go wrong. As a rule, SMS text messages aren t subject to most of the deliverability challenges encountered when sending . That is not to say that problems don t arise they do. If you re an airline trying to send a customer a mobile alert about a canceled flight, or a bank issuing a fraud alert, you re out of luck if that customer s battery goes dead or if that message gets caught in a spam filter as is increasingly the case. Since customers depend more on SMS text messages for critical info than , it s important for you the sender to get message disposition information as quickly as possible. So to ensure your customers are getting the information they need when they need it, you must have visibility into your mobile message streams. Ideally, you ll want to empower your customer care reps with precise insight into the origination, delivery and disposition of your messages. So when an important text message or for that matter fails to be successfully delivered, you ll know right away. Again, when you re considering a mobile messaging solution or infrastructure, here s what to look for: Integrated reporting that streams delivery notifications, performance metrics and other relevant data back to your CRM, customer care or other internal systems. A quick and easy way to access and review delivery notifications and transactional log files that track message disposition. Alerting capabilities that prompt customer care reps to resend messages or take other actions in case of delivery failure in time-sensitive situations. Know the regulatory framework SMS is not , and neither is push! Spam text messages are a growing problem in the U.S., but rates are still far lower than for spam. 4 This is not a happy accident, it s the result of strict adherence to best practice guidelines among stakeholders within the SMS text ecosystem, and enforcement on the part of regulators and legal authorities. The key governing principal guiding business-to-consumer mobile messaging is the Opt-In Clause of the U.S. Consumer Best Practices guidelines published by the Mobile Marketing Association, which begins with the following: Content providers must obtain opt-in approval from subscribers before sending them any SMS or MMS messages or other content... Program flow and information must not be misleading in any way. Additionally, it s important to note that Apple and Google maintain strict rules regarding appropriate use of their respective push networks. Most of these rules apply to rights and permissions (for instance, apps can t send notifications without prior consent) but there are also restrictions on the nature and type of content that can be sent over their networks. In particular, Apple s App Store Review Guidelines section 5.6 states: Apps cannot use Push Notifications to send advertising, promotions, or direct marketing of any kind. What this means is that push is a channel only for conveying information that endusers will find notable or useful. Push cannot be used simply as an analog to marketing. In practice, it s OK to send a notification telling people Our Spring Sale starts tomorrow. It s not OK to send a notification saying 75% off all merchandise during our Spring Sale! Be Ready for Rapid Change. Mobile messaging is a medium in flux. Estimates vary, but it s likely that around half of all messages are now read on a mobile device. 5 Does that mean that SMS and and push are becoming interchangeable and that businesses can simply take an either or approach to messaging to their mobile customers? Not at all. If anything, the mobile communication landscape is becoming more fragmented and complex. For instance, app developers like WhatsApp and SnapChat and established Internet brands like Google and Facebook are introducing mobile messaging apps that enable individuals to send Crackberry Webster s New World College Dictionary named crackberry the New Word of the Year for en.wikipedia.org/wiki/blackberry and receive IM chat messages within their own networks, bypassing telecommunication carrier networks altogether. The pace of change is likely to accelerate as network speeds, bandwidth and device capabilities all expand. The one constant with mobile messaging is that businesses will need the flexibility to proactively take advantage of these changes as they occur. Which is why smart decision makers will be on the lookout for the mobile messaging technologies and strategies that can propel their businesses forward now and in the future. 6 7

5 About Message Systems The industry leader in messaging technology, Message Systems offers a family of software solutions and services that addresses the digital communications needs of today s most innovative companies. Telecommunications carriers, ISPs, marketing services providers, cloud computing firms and social media companies rely on Message Systems software to power the message-based communications driving their critical business initiatives. Message Systems solutions get billions of unique messages to the right place at the right time every day through the full range of channels: , SMS text, MMS messaging and more. Founded in 1997, the company is headquartered in Columbia, Maryland. footnotes 1 Mobile Data Usage Trends: 1GB per Day by GottaBe Mobile. September 25, on The Move: The Future of Mobile Messaging. Return Path. 3 AirCARE SMS Text Messaging Campaigns. Air2Web. 4 Why Is Spam So Much Worse Than SMS Spam? Amir Lev, Computerworld, Mar 18, According to Movable Ink, almost 60% of all opens in March 2013 were on a smartphone. Movable Ink Opens, March 2013 (2013). Published by Message Systems, Inc guilford road, suite 100, columbia maryland messagesystems.com tel toll free usa Message Systems, Inc., all rights reserved.