Top 10 things to consider when considering adding direct to mobile SMS and MMS messaging into your communications channel mix.
John Stuckey, Managing Director – MobileDigital P/L - and the home of SNIPER*
We live in a mobile centric age of impatience and convenience where for many instant gratification is not enough and immediacy is the currency.
Consumer journeys are becoming increasingly inconsistent across the multiple channels that make up current communication choices for consumers. Organisations may find that some consumers love your emails and another group don’t read them, some may want daily reminders by text, some may want to store a membership or loyalty card on their phone for easy access. Others just may be content to only look at email when there is absolutely nothing else to do, and another group want to be kept informed when a special offer is running they can benefit from – and others just don’t care if you try and contact them by text, email, direct mail or carrier pigeon. Nothing about organisations communicating to their stakeholders is simple.
Increasingly it is the pressure of changing consumer expectations and their behaviours that will determine how organisations best engage with their stakeholders. In an increasingly mobile world, all organizations, large, small, enterprise, regulated and government will need to adapt to meet their stakeholders, and meet them where they want to be met. The future is in empowering all related parties with the opportunity to select and leverage where, and how they want to engage.
According to GSMA 89% of consumers prefer to interact with an organization by text in preference to a phone call or an email, and according to Sweedish messaging company Sinch, 88% of people would find it useful for all mobile chats to occur within a phone text/SMS App. The fact that you are reading this indicates that you already do, or are considering entering into direct to mobile engagement through messaging.
Your interest illustrates your understanding of the needs, preferences and expectations of your mobile centric clients are changing.
Direct to mobile messaging is not a replacement to email and existing platforms, it is a supplemental channel. The incorporation of a direct to mobile engagement messaging strategy should complement all existing communication channels.
Implementing a mobile messaging option will enable your mobile preferred clients to choose the most appropriate channel to your value proposition that best suits them, whilst at the same time offering your organisation new flexible, trusted and immediate client access opportunities.
Later on down the track you might also look at direct to mobile as offering the potential to engage your customers using messaging to support a potential conversational commerce proposition. So anything you do with messaging now, should be looked at as a first step, and not limit your next steps after that.
We are no strangers to SMS messaging. SMS messaging has been a powerful transaction tool that supports two factor authentication, confirms and keep you updated with deliveries or told you when a Pizza house are running specials – Going forward, with email open rates continuing to drop, text and visual messaging will have to do a lot of marketing heavy lifting going forward.
So what are that Top 10 Questions you should ask of a messaging supplier and why ?
1. How much should I be paying for SMS messages
Great place to start. As someone is going to have to spend an already allocated budget. Or, if you are already using messaging and paying too much - this is also a great place to start.
In Australia, if you are paying more that 5c for an SMS message, you are being ripped off. If you are being asked to pay up front, you are just helping your supplier with their cash flow. At a maximum you should be paying 5c, and if your company sends a lot, you should be able reduce that by over 1c per message. So, if you send say 100,000 SMS a month, you should be paying around 4c per message delivered - that is $4,000 to touch at least 98,000 people with a message.
2. Do I have genuine legal access to the people I am sending messages to, and what are the penalties.
Another great question, and it also should be considered seriously along with the big fines issued if an organisation SPAMS a consumer without suitable and acceptable access permissions. Organisations need to consider the financial and reputational impact of non-compliance with the Australian Communications Authority rules.
In the last 18 months Australian businesses have paid $1,127,200 in infringement notices to ACMA for breaches in SPAM and Telemarketing laws. Breaches of Australia’s spam rules can result in the ACMA seeking a civil penalty and/or injunction from the Federal Court, giving an infringement notice, accepting a court enforceable undertaking or issuing a formal warning. Repeat corporate offenders may face penalties of up to $2.1 million a day.
The anti-SPAM rules in Australia at this time are at best “a little loose” and there is some risk in that the definitions of what is legal are wide open to interpretation. Historically industry “self-regulation“ has been to the benefit of the marketers and text messaging suppliers not the consumer. Informed expectation is that in the near term regulation in regard consent and access to data will shift dramatically in favour of the consumer and we will see implementation of requirements consistent with Europe’s GDPR and the USA’s CPAA requirements.
Current requirements for consent can be found: www.acma.gov.au/avoid-sending-spam.
Our recommendation is look at your current practices, and ensure you are GDPR compliant today. If not compliant today put a plan in place to become GDPR compliant - whilst GDPR is not enforced in Australia GDPR guidelines represent a standard likely to be very similar to whatever is introduced in Australia, reducing your response time when ACMA does move.
https://dma.org.uk/article/dma-gdpr-guidance-for-marketers
3. Is my customers data secure ? - Can my customer data be exposed to the world ? Does my access supplier handle personal customer data ?
Ok that’s a few questions. All of them talk to the increase public concerns and lack of trust when it comes to the use of our personal data and the security of that data. To quote Fiona Cameron, Authority Member at the ACMA in a paper delivered to The Australian Market and Social Research Society - “As we consume more data we become more valuable as a commodity rather than a consumer. We become more vulnerable to those engaged in crime and deceit. Todays cyber criminal is yesterdays car thief. It is the crime dejour and will only become more prolific”
Again, this is a huge issue and opens your organisation to significant fines, as well as punitive action if your supplier suppliers practices expose client data. Again GDPR compliance guidelines will help here ask your supplier, and where possible you should avoid enabling you messaging supplier access to your confidential data.
4. How are opt outs handled by your supplier, are you playing the long game or a short game
How you manage enabling opt out speaks to the respect you have for your client. The Opt-Out process should be as frictionless as you can make it.
If you require your client to jump through a number of steps , if you ask them about opt out, and then require them to remember and opt out number they need to text to – then input that number and then text, or go to a web site to opt out of your communications. That is not making it easy. That is a lot of steps and a lot of friction. Whether you cl;aim to be conscious of it or not - you are intentionally making it hard for them to OPTOUT and your are in fact not showing sincere respect for the receiver
Opting out should be as easy as typing STOP and pushing send. Any more user requirements than that borders on discouraging opt-out, whist this process is not illegal - it shows contempt tor the mobile consumer.
Our view is that our mobile is a very personal device. In the last 5 years we have seen that the greater percentage of people and are open to visual and text messages being sent directly to their phone. There is a smaller section of the community – about 10% - that don’t want to be contacted directly in their message inbox. We took the decision that its best to find that out early, it reduces costs in sending and by enabling those people to easily opt of mobile messaging with minimal friction – your contact is respectful and enables your clients the choice.
5. Is your supplier using approved routing practices
Regrettably, there are suppliers of messaging services who use questionable non-secure practices to deliver and processes messages. Some of these practices include the use of consumer usage tariffs and take anvantage of unlimited data plans, or use SIM farms or routing traffic through remote international locations like Afganistan or The Solomon Islands to take advantage of carrier roaming and interconnection loopholes. This is known as Grey Routing.
There are significant risks associated with Grey Routes. The first exposure is that the message content and recipient details could be intercepted and copied, secondly delivery is cannot be guaranteed, and may be stopped, or interrupted at any time – and this is happening increasingly as carriers increase their diligence and enforcement practices.
The first thing that should alert you to the potential use of grey routes is very cheap pricing for SMS and MMS and the supplier being unable to commit to throughput rates, as the consumer plans being used deliver messages very slowly – and your supplier will have issue with timing and volumes.
6. How often should I send a direct to mobile message ?
How long is a piece of string, what business are you in, and at what point do you think you could be over messaging and doing harm to the relationship. Our mobiles are ours, and they are personal devices. The right message at the right time, has to be balanced to ensure that the message adds value to the receiver, and in saying that, making sure that your message is not a useless or worthless intrusion.
We know that 98% of SMS and MMS messages are seen, so if your messaging is not valuable to the receiver, you have wasted their time, your time and most likley done harm. Mobile direct to text inbox communications must be contextual, personal, valuable contectual and authentic.
https://www.sniper.digital/personal-valuable-contextual-authentic.php
7. What is phishing, what are the risks of using alpha headed emails.
The word phishing was coined around 1996 by hackers stealing America Online accounts and passwords. By analogy with the sport of angling, these Internet scammers were using e-mail lures, setting out hooks to "fish" for passwords and financial data from the "sea" of Internet users.
Phishing in the messaging world refers to the fraudulent practice of sending SMS’s messaging using Alpha Headers on the message purporting to be from a reputable company in order to induce individuals to reveal personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers.
Simply, phishing is identity fraud, where a fraudster can write a few lines of code to mask their identity SMS send identity, and pretend to be a brand, by using an alpha header in their message.
Many marketers new to SMS and MMS marketing initially their SMS and MMS messages headed with their brand. Alpha headers expose a brand more easily to phishing than using a dedicated 2way mobile number to send from, and leaves the brand very open phishing fraud.
8. Can clients respond directly by text and can the system establish keyword automated responses
The advantage of MMS and SMS as a communications protocol is that the connections that are made when an MMS or SMS is are routed directly to the mobile telephone number, from a dedicated mobile phone number. This means that point to point text messaging has a dedicated start and termination, using the mobile number as the 2way address.
Using a dedicated number for your marketing messaging enables your customers to text back, store your number in the phone contacts and always be able to instantly contact you.
9. Should we have to pay upfront to get a competitive price
SMS is usually sold by an MVNO, (Mobile Virtual Network Operator), who buys SMS capacity in bulk from MNO’s (Mobile Network Operators). Your supplier (MVNO) has already locked in their wholesale price, so If you are being asked to pay up front to get pricing discounts, you are being asked to help with the suppliers cash flow.
Reputable suppliers may ask you to commit to an annual volume, and set your purchase rate based on that commitment. These supppliers will set you up in the system, and invoice your company based on when you draw down those SMS's hence giving you the benefit of volume comitments without having to pay up front.
Finally - number 10. What about support –
Because it’s not about when it goes right - it’s about when things go wrong
Can your supplier enable you with an easy to use full function, self service dashboard to build, test and manage your own campaigns. Does the dashboard just enable you to send SMS messages, or can you do a lot more,
Can you send MMS messages as well from the dashboard.
Can you personalise every message with unique codes and personalisation, can you send unique imagery to every MMS client, with a full 2way, no friction response capability.
However, most importantly -given the penalties mentioned in Point 2, are you on your own, Does your messaging supplier have a human check every campaign to make sure you have remembered to insert the opt out, or that the codes being used are using in the send are active and working, or that the pages the campaigns linking the message to, and the links, are working.