TOP 10 MISTAKES COMPANIES MAKE WHEN EVALUATING AND BEGINNING AN INTERNATIONAL SMS PROGRAM

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1 TOP 10 MISTAKES COMPANIES MAKE WHEN EVALUATING AND BEGINNING AN INTERNATIONAL SMS PROGRAM IF YOUR COMPANY DOES BUSINESS GLOBALLY OR HAS SUBSIDIARIES OVERSEAS, TEXT MESSAGING IS AN IMMEDIATE AND EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION CHANNEL. 1 BELIEVING THAT SENDING MESSAGES OUTSIDE OF THE US IS NOT IMPORTANT Sending SMS outside of the United States is critical to ensuring your customers have a great experience regardless of where they are and what phone number they use. When travelling, Americans expect to be able to use the services to which they are accustomed. Provided a customer has an international roaming plan, they can continue to use a US phone number abroad and receive text messages. Similarly, you may also have US customers who move abroad either temporarily or permanently and wish to continue using your services from an international telephone number. In addition, an average 70 million people also travel to the US annually. These customers may also wish to use your services here in the US, and if text is a part of that service, then it is important that international numbers are supported. If your company does business globally or has subsidiaries overseas, text messaging is an immediate and effective communication channel. For example, SMS can be used to notify customers of product shipments, send banking alerts or inform them of newly available products. Supporting all 200+ countries is important, but if you do nothing else, you must ensure that you can support these top 10 countries: Canada, Mexico, UK, Japan, Brazil, Germany, China, France, South Korea and Australia. These countries represent the top 10 foreign nationalities visiting the United States.

2 BEGINNING 2 GIVING UP BECAUSE IT S TOO DIFFICULT AND COMPLEX TO GET STARTED The United States has more carrier regulations and longer SMS campaign set up times than any other country in the world. If you are already sending text messages within the US, sending texts internationally is relatively straightforward. The key difference when sending SMS in the United States is that unique short codes must be used as sender ID s (the from: address of the text message), which need pre-approval from the carriers on a campaign-by-campaign basis. This campaign setup process takes on average between 8-10 weeks. Companies are able to send messages outside the US from an Alpha sender ID (e.g. Yahoo ), and long numbers are frequently used as reply paths (i.e. the ability to send a reply message). The ability to send a text message from any originator possible without prior setup and approval means that messaging campaigns can be automated for more time and cost efficiency. With the right provider, global text messaging campaigns to over 200 countries can be set up in as little as 5-10 minutes. 3 4 NOT TAKING INTO CONSIDERATION THE MESSAGING ROUTE QUALITY Not all SMS providers provide the same quality of routes. Some aggregators may choose to compromise route quality in order to lower prices. Choosing price over quality is never worth the risk. On a degraded route, messages are often not delivered, and if they are, they may take a long time to reach their destination. On an inferior route, it is also possible that your message could be tampered with. There is no guarantee that the message body or the message originator will appear as intended. Top message providers are constantly testing routes in order to provide customers with only the highest quality routes and delivery guarantees. FEARING THE RISK OF LITIGATION IS AS HIGH AS IN THE US In the US, the right SMS messaging provider will assist their clients in complying with federal and state laws and regulations, as well as industry association rules and guidelines. A provider with global presence and expertise can also extend this guidance to jurisdictions across the world, guiding clients through their obligations under various regulatory landscapes to help ensure local compliance. More information on the global regulatory environment can be found here: 2

3 BEGINNING 5 THINKING THAT SENDING INTERNATIONAL SMS IS TOO EXPENSIVE 7 BELIEVING THAT SENDING TEXT MESSAGES OUTSIDE OF THE US IS UNRELIABLE 6 While companies pay more to send a text message internationally, most international locations can be reached from between 3 to 10 cents. Companies pay slightly more to send messages internationally because international carriers only receive revenue from brands on a per message basis. In the United States, carriers charge consumers up to 25 cents to receive a text message. This receiver pays model is exclusive to the US, and therefore, companies are able to send text messages to consumers in international markets at no cost to the consumer. Taking into consideration that the consumer pays nothing, and the return on investment that most services provide, SMS is still one of the most cost effective communication channels in the world today. BELIEVING THAT TWO WAY IS DIFFICULT BECAUSE YOU NEED UNIQUE SHORT CODES The majority of application-to-person SMS international traffic is sent via MT (i.e. from a machine to a person). Using a long number SenderID to send international traffic allows you to get MO (person to machine) messaging up and running quickly. Long numbers are significantly more cost effective, usually don t require pre-registration or campaign approval. 8 Sending SMS outside the US is just as reliable as sending text messages within the US when sent through a Tier One aggregator with a combination of direct carrier connections, SS7 capabilities and in-country partners. In rare situations (e.g. China) messages may be blocked due to local country or carrier filtering. Also in some places in Latin America and Africa, some operators infrastructure may be unreliable, but this is the exception to the norm. Tier One aggregators are also fully able to ensure that ported numbers are taken into consideration and routed correctly. NOT FULL UTILIZING THE FULL FLEXIBILITY OF SMS FEATURES OUTSIDE OF THE US Companies have much more flexibility in setting up messaging campaigns outside the US. In the United States, for applicationto-person messaging, companies are forced to send messages from an approved short code address. However, in many international markets, you have full flexibility with your originating address. Alphanumeric sender ID technology allows businesses to send messages from any combination of alphanumeric characters. This enables businesses to send from their company name, for example Yahoo or Coke. Many providers will recommend avoiding Alphanumeric Sender ID s to bypass filtering, although it is true that some operators do not permit Alphanumeric Sender ID s this statement usually imply that provider is using multi-hop unreliable routes. 3

4 BEGINNING A DIRECT CARRIER CONNECTION MEANS MORE RELIABILITY AND LESS COMPLEXITY WHEN TROUBLESHOOTING DUE TO THE NEED TO ONLY DEAL WITH ONE SUPPORT TEAM GOING WITH THE WRONG MESSAGING PROVIDER When selecting an SMS aggregator, it is important to understand the difference between a Tier One and Tier Two aggregator. Sometimes Tier One aggregators are called 1-hop providers. Unlike Tier Two aggregators, Tier One aggregators have direct connections to mobile carriers. A direct carrier connection means more reliability and less complexity when troubleshooting due to the need to only deal with one support team. It s important to make certain to choose a provider with market longevity, a true international presence and local market knowledge. A good messaging provider will have a local in-house carrier management, support and compliance team that will be able to guide you through the unique demands and regulations of large-scale international messaging programs. NOTE: many messaging providers will claim they are a Tier 1 providers, ask them the number of commercial contract they have directly with operators, and whether they are able to provider references. ONLY ENGLISH IS SUPPORTED Support for plain text characters is limited to the Latin-1 character set, which is sufficient for messaging in most European countries. Local characters outside of the Latin alphabet, for example, Chinese or Arabic, may fail if not supported by the local SMSC or the receiving phone. It is possible to use a wide character set by sending and encoding the message as Unicode. Ensure your provider also support concatenation (the ability to link multi-part messages) as Unicode messages contain fewer characters. Therefore in order to send messages to all international locations, it is important to select a vendor that not only supports Unicode, but also takes additional measures to make sure the Unicode is encoded correctly. 4

5 ABOUT MBLOX Mblox is the largest independent application-to-person (A2P) mobile messaging provider in the world, trusted by more companies to carry their mission-critical traffic than any other service. As the industry s most experienced Tier One SMS aggregator, Mblox specializes in the unique demands of large-scale mobile messaging programs and are known for providing reliable, uncompromising connections. By creating positive brand experiences, Mblox helps clients build profitable relationships with their customers. For more information, please visit: Follow us on 5