The Real Cost of SMS Grey Routes

If you send high volume SMS and want to make sure you are getting the best service then book a call with me at calendly.com/martynobrien, email sms@martynobrien or text "SMS" to 66777.

SMS used well is one of the best engagement tools for your business. When you use a reliable supplier such as ClickSend.com, messages are delivered within seconds, your data is kept safe and the fee charged is fair.

Grey Route or Black Market Routes are not reliable and they do all they can to avoid paying the network fees. They send messages around the world using "SIM Farms" which then bounce the message back to the UK. All this to avoid network delivery fees. They then promote SMS at below network price without telling you the risks, which include:

• Data at Risk: SIM Farms can see your recipient numbers and the message. They can sell the data or use it to send spam/scam SMS. This is a major source of fraudulent messages as they can mimic your message and pose as your business in an attempt to defraud your clients.
• High Failure Rates: Around 70% and up to 100% of messages fail as they are blocked by the networks. This is awful for all types of messages. Appointment reminders not seen and so appointments missed, Alert messages not delivered so no action taken, and Sales messages get a low response rate and your hard work getting clients to Opt In has been wasted.
• Delivered Cost Higher than an official route provider.
• Lost Revenue for Sales and Marketing Messages
• Missed Appointments for appointment reminder messages, missed appointments cost time and money.

Most high volume SMS is related to Sales and Marketing. Reputable companies like you spend time and money to get your customers Opted In. So why risk low delivery rates and waste all that effort?

Let's talk about MONEY. The real cost to you when you use a Grey Route can be a lot more than you may realise.

1. You are paying for failed messages, so while the send price looks low, the delivered price is actually often 4x higher than official routes.
2. For marketing and sales, you lose orders for every failed message.

Example Grey Route Sales Campaign: If you send 20k messages and 70% fail, this means that only 6k messages get delivered. You have lost 14k messages! Let's say you would make ￡25 per sale and you convert 15% of SMS to sales, this means that the opportunity cost in lost revenue would be ￡52,500. In addition, you have paid for all the failed messages.

Why do Grey Route messages fail?

Grey Routes fail often for many reasons:

• Networks block their routes as these routes avoid paying network fees.
• They do not always send all the messages.
• Messages are bounced around multiple SIM farms, any one of which can fail.
• Spammers use the same routes which congest them.

How to spot a grey route provider: This is not always easy as they will rarely admit that they use grey or black market routes, but there are a few things to look out for:

• Pricing far lower than ClickSend.com.
• Multiple Route Options, for example, Standard and Premium.
• Poor response rates.
• Slow message delivery - ClickSend average is 4 seconds.

If you send high volume SMS and want to make sure you are getting the best service then book a call with me at calendly.com/martynobrien, email sms@martynobrien or text "SMS" to 66777.