Are your SMS messages reaching customers? Don’t take it for granted

In the days of flip phones, pay-as-you-go messaging, and standing in a chair to get a signal, texting was the place for person-to-person (P2P) conversations.

However, over the past 15 years, messages from friends and family have slowly disappeared from the channel to join WhatsApp, Messenger and other social media platforms.

In a difficult situation, mobile operators experienced a sharp drop in usage and, like on a Saharan road, traffic only spread across their vast network infrastructures.

Their solution? Application-to-person (A2P) messaging marketing to businesses – and it worked.

The growth of the US SMS marketing market is one example, as shown in the following graph from Grand View Research.

Such growth comes as brands realize several benefits of using automated SMS messages in their customer communications strategies.

As a Mitto report reveals, companies that adopt a “mature omnichannel approach” including SMS have achieved the following results:

• 2x more likely to respond to customers in real time or within an hour
• 3 times more likely to report extreme income growth in the past year
• 4 times more likely to increase customer loyalty

Of course, not all companies have achieved these results, and limited omnichannel maturity is likely one reason. However, another barrier to broader success is the complexity of how these messages travel from a business to their ultimate recipient. Things get pretty complex in the wild world of A2P connectivity.

Undelivered Messages: A Bigger Problem Than You Think

Even though optimized SMS routing is performed every second across the globe, there are still several reasons why a business’s messages might not reach customers’ phones.

Perhaps the SMS platform used does not provide features such as resolving invalid phone numbers? Or maybe a customer’s number isn’t allowed by their network to receive text messages (for whatever reason). Many companies are aware of these problems.

Yet issues with carriers’ vast connectivity ecosystem sometimes go unnoticed – and these issues can be critical. Using multiple aggregators and lower quality routes in certain regions will in turn lead to lower delivery and engagement rates.

After all, because these messages go through intermediaries, communications take longer as they travel between multiple networks, with interruptions along the way.

These issues often slip through the cracks and – even when the SMS provider detects the problem – it takes longer to resolve due to the layers between the provider and the intermediary.

Of course, outages can sometimes occur on any network. However, businesses can improve their delivery rates by working with a supplier that offers direct connections to trusted carrier partners.

Additionally, ensuring reliable message delivery can improve customer experience and streamline operations.

Look for a provider that makes direct connections to MNOs.

Selecting an SMS API provider that lists the number of direct in-country connections and the exclusivities it has with globally managed network operators (MNOs) is critical to mitigating the risk of delays and disruptions. abandonments.

After all, direct connections guarantee the shortest path to the mobile user. This means that content typically reaches customers in just one to three seconds: the shortest possible time.

Additionally, direct connections are often less expensive, with no risk of manipulation throughout the delivery chain. Indeed, the connection is always available, except in the unlikely event that a mobile network is down.

Dive deeper, Luca Sacanna, transport operations manager at Mittosaid: “Besides ensuring the fastest delivery, another advantage of using a direct connection is that you do not risk your content or sender ID being changed during the delivery process. »

Simply put, a business can ensure that messages reach the mobile network that is supposed to receive them. Sacanna further explained:

“It is very important that if no middlemen are involved, no bad actors will be able to profit from the inflation of SMS traffic. This means there is no risk of a fraudster hacking into a company’s portal or app to try to boost artificial SMS traffic.

What else should businesses pay attention to?

It is essential to verify that the SMS provider works with multiple carriers in key business regions. This will ensure that the company can continue to operate in each essential region, even in the event of an error or outage.

Some SMS providers go further and work directly with the MNOs connecting to their networks – for ongoing route testing and quality feedback – to ensure A2P communications are successfully delivered.

Consider Mitto. In addition to its growing list of direct connections across the globe, its routing platform includes monitoring tools that use AI to proactively analyze its message delivery on A2P routes in real time.

By monitoring its direct connections, Mitto can evaluate optimal A2P routes and present the best path for each message sent through its platform.

As such, it enhances the complete A2P messaging experience, maintains service integrity and ensures cost effectiveness. But that’s not all…

Mitto: a trusted A2P SMS messaging provider

As A2P SMS messaging gains momentum, it is quickly becoming the default channel for marketing communications, customer authentication, and notification delivery.

Leveraging its direct connect partnerships in over 100 countries, Mitto continuously monitors its traffic to highlight any trends potentially related to artificial traffic – a growing problem for high-volume SMS senders. From there, the provider reports the issue to customers for an immediate, proactive solution.

Additionally, Sacanna noted:

“We also give our customers the ability to choose which countries should/should not be enabled on our platform for their traffic, further limiting the space for fraud.”

As such, Mitto enables optimal delivery rates while keeping networks free of potential issues. Its content filtering feature also helps here, monitoring SMS message peak rates against expected levels, message type and content length.

With features like this, Mitto protects brands and their customers from virtually every potential pitfall along the SMS journey…

The result? Businesses benefit from greater security while leveraging better overall communications strategies that drive increased revenue.

Eager to learn more ? Book a consultation with the Mitto team and improve your SMS strategy.