How to Use SMS Notification and SMS Alert in Your Business to Promptly Contact with Your Customer Database

SMS Notifications & SMS Alerts as a Tool for Instant Contact with Customers

Multi SMS notifications are becoming increasingly popular. There are many software programs and different web services for sending short messages to a huge amount of recipients.

Experts say that the phone slowly but surely loses the relevance of its main function, which is “calling” or “making calls”. This type of communication becomes uncomfortable for business people, by breaking the well-structured order of their lives with annoying calls. That is the reason SMS still has its future.

SMS trend has spread to all areas of our work and life. The reason for this is that bulk SMS messaging is gaining popularity and becoming a necessity. As a result, there are many software services, online web platforms, bulk SMS applications, as well as various services, which provide you with the tool to automate the process of subscribers’ notification of the events.

We can divide the present services of SMS-informing or SMS notifications into SMS reminders (SMS alerts) and SMS notifications.

What is an SMS reminder or SMS alert?

SMS alerts are automated text messages, which are used in cases when it is needed to notify the customer about the event, and the fastest way to do this is without doubts using SMS notification. Let’s review some occasions for SMS alert sending, and, maybe here you will find one more reason to contact your customers by SMS.

  1. Service status updates by SMS reminders. Such SMS alerts may be sent because of the necessity of renewal of the insurance policy or paying off the loan.
  2. News SMS. Often SMS alerts are used as an additional service for customers of online stores, in which the customer can subscribe to receive notification of the goods availability, order status changes, new arrivals and many other occasions connected with the E-commerce shop activities and services provided.
  3. Caution SMS alerts are alerts sent by service providers to caution the huge amount of people, who use the service about any emergency, for example, the software update necessity. Pay attention, the occasion of such SMS are not connected with the events that threaten people’s lives, as such occasions require fast reaction, while reading SMS may take some time.

What are SMS notifications?

SMS Notifications are out-of-band text messages transferred for acknowledgment about situations or transactions which happen somewhere else. Bulk SMS text notifications are often applied as an advertising tool to increase the rate of repeating visits. Besides, SMS notifications are very helpful for society and public safety purposes.

How SMS notifications can be applied?

Bulk SMS text notifications can support different purposes – both technical and advertising. For example, in bulk SMS, banks notify customers about the debt on the loan or the transfer of a certain amount to the account. The retail shops notify their customers about the arrival of the goods to the warehouse, the status of the order, or new arrivals at the shop. The governmental authorities notify citizens about the date and time of their reception by officials. Companies can notify their employees about news or changes in the work schedule.

With bulk SMS notifications you can significantly optimize your business processes. For example, an employee of the company can receive a message about the client’s request. That is, he does not need to monitor his email all day waiting for a customer’s order or letter. Naturally, this kind of bulk SMS texting services are in demand – it is more convenient, faster, and cheaper than sending messages manually.

SMS notification is widely used by banking, financial, credit, and other organizations to confirm an action performed by the user or client. Here we can also point our several businesses that apply SMS notifications in their services more often:

  1. We are sure, almost any of you faced with this service SMS notifications, most often in the banking sector, when you receive an SMS notification on your phone notifying you about credit card payment or receipt of funds to a Bank account.
  2. Personalized information via SMS notifications is one of the most effective CRM tools. Many companies use SMS to communicate with their customers, and the text of the message is maximally personalized not only by targeting its own database of contacts, time, and geolocation but also by including the name of the recipient of the SMS alert in the text.

How to set up broadcasting SMS notifications?

There are special software programs that allow sending bulk SMS. Usually, this software is installed on the client’s computer and can be integrated with any corporate program or website. In this case, you can manage the SMS distribution only from a computer.

Sending SMS in bulk can be attached to some events. For example, when a customer’s order is ready or arrived at the point of sales, or when the customer’s order amount has reached a certain threshold and a discount has been accumulated. This option saves a lot of resources. The larger is the company, the more profitable is to use such bulk SMS text messenger.

Those companies that are engaged in small-scale activities, there are online services for SMS notifications. Such services are represented by the online platforms which are available by the Internet online, providing the customer personal account to manage SMS notification campaigns. One of them is SMS-Smart. You don’t need anything to be installed at your PC, to access SMS-Smart you need the only Internet connection at your PC or a laptop. just create an account at SMS-Smart and proceed to set the SMS campaign. It may also be special software to send bulk SMS from PC, or bulk SMS through a mobile phone.

What are the basic functions of the bulk SMS sending portal?

Its functionality may vary, but basically, all of them provide the following basic features:

  • create a database of subscribers – phone numbers, to the personal account (to drive manually or upload from a file);
  • set up the name of the sender – Sender ID (instead of a phone number);
  • schedule your bulk SMS texts sending time;
  • use built-in templates for messages;
  • personalize the notification (for example, to address by name);
  • obtain a delivery status report with the ability to export it to Excel for further analysis.

How to choose an SMS service?

Despite the similar operation principle, the capabilities and cost of various online services that provide bulk SMS notifications sending services are very different. You can choose the appropriate company or service based on the prices and bandwidth (how many SMS can be sent per hour) specified on the website.

Solid services provide a free opportunity or a credit to test the service, thus making a judgment about the speed of SMS delivery, delivery rate, or whether the interface of the program is convenient.

The SMS delivery speed (which means the capacity of the company’s SMS center) is extremely important if you are planning a large SMS broadcasting. If you decide to send an SMS with a promotional offer, focusing on the occasion or a special offer (for example, you have been waiting and invite visitors to the cafe, promising them a good discount on some music band show), then you need to have them delivered as soon as possible, and not the next day, when the offer is over.

Why is SMS-Smart web service worth trying?

Now you can easily set up and run your individual (personalized and based on your corporate infrastructure) SMS alerting \ SMS notification services for your customers using SMS-Smart service. SMS-Smart platform has all the necessary characteristics of a modern service SMS alerts: online access to the platform, flexible and convenient configuration of your own service SMS-informing, as well as connecting to your corporate environment through SMS API.

  • API that allows you to integrate SMS notification service with your systems and software, including the bulk SMS via HTTP and SMPP protocols. Simple and competent API is a necessary condition when choosing an SMS service for your website.
  • You can easily personalize SMS notifications by using information that is different for all recipients, such as names, dates, amounts, other tags to divide your customer database into segments.
  • The possibility to add URL (website links) to a message is also available.

If you have other unique needs, which are the distinguishing characteristics of your business, please contact us to describe your needs in bulks SMS and we will prepare a bulk SMS offer for you.

Let’s summarize the advantages of SMS alerts for a business:

  • Communication with the client via SMS alerts is a must-have condition for doing business in almost any industry. Maintaining a customer contact database is the first step in customer relationship creation. The second is the choice of the SMS service provider.
  • SMS alerts can be called a tool with the highest degree of reliability, which is incomparable in the efficiency of information delivery. Since their inception, SMS services do not lose their popularity.
  • The beneficial difference of informing customers by SMS from sending emails and calls is that the SMS message is delivered as soon as the subscriber turns on his mobile phone and connects to the network.
  • All incoming messages are free, which is especially important for subscribers who receive SMS alerts in roaming.
  • Besides, SMS is characterized by a high degree of probability to be read by the user.

SMS-informing services are widely used today by government agencies, financial institutions, IT companies, transport or logistics companies, postal services, and many other organizations.

SMS notification is the basis of communication with customers for any modern company. To use this channel, you must use a reliable service to send bulk SMS – try SMS-Smart!

Try SMS-Smart