still crazy after all these years about texting - aerialink · silverpop/ibm marketing cloud, 8.6...

Still Crazy After All These Years… About Texting

Texting remains a preferred channel over other direct

messaging options. A look into why.

Whitepaper: Aerialink Messaging – © 2018

Businesses are faced with the challenge of selecting and supporting multiple

customer engagement channels with an ever-increasing number of mediums,

platforms, and apps. Between SMS text messaging, email, voice calls, social

media, and mobile apps, it can be daunting for a business to determine an

engagement rollout plan, especially when varying customer demographics,

markets and languages compound the complexities.

With a finite budget and resource pool, and so many options, it is important

for a business to develop a communications plan that maps out the adoption

schedule and supporting solutions for customer engagement. Customer

Engagement leaders responsible for communications-enabled messaging

solutions should understand the capabilities of texting and its role in the rising

use of B2C communications.


Ultimately, it is important to allow customers to choose the types of messages

they want to receive through various channels. Many customers prefer to

receive certain messaging through specific channels, such as notifications

and alerts via SMS and monthly newsletters via email. The reality is that

most businesses don’t have the resources to adopt every engagement option,

and therefore need be selective about how they roll this out.

Many leading businesses are already addressing the engagement

channel challenge by focusing on ‘direct messaging’ (DM).

Direct messaging channels give a business and their customer the ability to

message one-on-one, with relevant conversations and convenience. This

paper is focused on comparing texting with other direct messaging options

and presenting the compelling reasons to include texting early on in your

adoption plan.

Why Direct Messaging?

It is a well-known fact that retaining a customer is much cheaper and

beneficial for an organization rather than finding new customers. This has

paved the way for organizations to remain in constant touch with customers.

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) applications have been a staple

to track interactions, and to send outbound push campaigns to nurture

prospects through the use of marketing automation. However, the majority of

CRM applications are simply not good at creating and managing direct, two-

way customer communications.


Today’s connected consumers fully expect personalized and contextual

communications when they need and want them. Brands can use direct

messaging in a variety of ways, from customer service, to sales outreach. DM

allows a brand to communicate in a private message, which gives users

greater security if they need to share sensitive information to help resolve an

issue as opposed to putting a message out there in a public channel such as

“tweet” on Twitter.

According to a Facebook 2017 study, people increased their use of direct

messaging by 67% in the past two years.

Direct Messaging is more discreet than a phone conversation, making it the

ideal form for communicating when you don't want to be overheard, or

interrupted. It is often less time-consuming to send a message than to make a

phone call or send an e-mail.

Consider using a DM channel if you want to:

• Send or request sensitive information

• Troubleshoot an issue

• Change channels to email or phone


• Gather private feedback on customer service interactions. (Protecting

your customers’ information should always be a priority in customer

care).

• Personalize interactions

• Address inventory and availability inquiries, ordering, and reservations

• Ask customers for feedback on a product they bought, or a service

they received.

Direct Messaging Options

By far, the most popular and widely used direct messaging channel is texting

(aka SMS & MMS). It helps you reach a very wide demographic and texting

is application-agnostic, which is one of the primary reasons why it is so widely

used. For these reasons alone, brands can take advantage of this channel

by adopting it early in their communications plan.

There are many direct messaging applications, but some of the biggest

include WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Viber, WeChat and LINE.

Other popular DM apps include Snapchat, Apple Messages, Google


Hangouts, Twitter DMs, GroupMe, HipChat, Skype, Pinger, and even

Instagram supports direct messaging. These messaging apps require both

parties in the conversation to download and use the same mobile app.

On the plus side, many messaging apps offer features such as stickers, group

chats, and an easy exchange and manipulation of photos and video, and

even the ability to send and receive money with friends and family. Since

most app messaging is delivered over IP, it typically is not transactional

based, and therefore is free. However, app messaging requires a strong data

connection, or WiFi, as well as a smartphone. In addition, if you are requiring

customers to download, install, update and find your specific mobile app in

their “haystack” of barely-used apps, you might find yourself in the 95% of

apps that never gets used. Spending a large chunk of your customer

engagement budget on a sleek Instagram or Snapchat campaign can be

incredibly effective – but not if the bulk of your target market is over 50. Read

on to learn more compelling reasons to deploy texting as a direct messaging

strategy.

Why We Are All Still Crazy About Texting

Texting is one of the earliest and most successful direct messaging solutions.

Its adoption and impact can be found pretty much everywhere in daily life.

The statistics of SMS are staggering. According to a report from

Silverpop/IBM Marketing Cloud, 8.6 trillion text messages are sent every year

on average, including 6 billion per day in the United States alone. With 90

percent-plus open rates on SMS and engagement rates of up to eight times

higher than email, SMS presents a huge opportunity for businesses. In fact,

most email response rates rarely rise above 1%. This type of unreliability just

doesn’t exist with SMS, as text messages are much harder to ignore.


It is also a class of technology that uses standardized communication

protocols and is a built-in service component of telephone, internet, and

mobile-device systems. An SMS can reach any network globally and is

supported by all mobile handsets across all operating systems.

It’s one of the easiest and most attractive forms of mobile communication as

most people and businesses are familiar with texting. Comparing texting to

web chat direct messaging, chatting with an agent has time limitations, and

requires a website visitor to remain on the site through resolution, while a text

conversation allows a consumer to go about their day as their issue is being

solved. For example, a consumer may get up in the morning and text an

inquiry to customer service, but then they get in their car and drive to work

and may not be able to continue the conversation until they get back home.

This form of asynchronous communication allows the consumer to engage in

the conversation when it is convenient. In addition, most web chat solutions

require a customer to register with their email, whereas, with texting, they can

simply initiate a conversation without registering.


The key driving factors for the growth of direct messaging via texting

include: • The ubiquitous nature of SMS resulting in direct reach to the end

customer.

• Increase in the number of mobile phone subscribers globally.

• Rise in mobile based banking, healthcare services, retail & e-

commerce transactional services.

• Platforms ensuring reliable, high-quality message delivery

• Utilization of business texting software to manage customer and / or

internal communication as opposed to employees using their personal

phones for business.

• Expansion through diversification of use cases

• It’s easy to add texting into operations. You don’t have to build a

mobile app or support a dozen third-party apps to reach customers

• The ease of keeping messages short, and to the point.

o Short messages increase opportunities to engage more often

with on-going personalized conversations, as opposed to

individual transactions

o Short messages empower a business to serve customers with

incredibly quick response times.

According to a benchmark report conducted by INSIDESALES.COM, up to

50% of sales go to the vendor who responds first. Setting up an initial,

immediate text auto-reply, followed up with a live agent who can continue the

conversation can be a real key differentiator.


How Texting Works

With texting, a mobile end user (the customer) simply uses their built-in

(native) messaging app on their mobile device to text to a businesses’

landline or toll-free number. The business receives the text and replies to it in

a messaging application. A messaging partner with a cloud communications

platform acts as the bridge between the texting application and mobile

network operators for two-way message delivery.

In the earlier days of business texting, the delivery of SMS was limited to

outbound-only, system-generated (Application to Person) messages primarily

related to promotional coupons, ringtone downloads, and pushed content

subscriptions. The delivery of these messages often came across to the

consumer with an unrecognizable number. Then a move to informative,

notification messaging providing live updates about the location of a package,

credit and debit messages from bank accounts, healthcare related alerts, and

live status updates about the current locations of vehicles in a fleet for

example, are just a few use cases that have witnessed exponential increase


in SMS.

Today, brands now have the ability to text-enable their long-standing,

recognizable business landline and toll-free numbers. Enabling an existing

business number with texting services has carved a path for direct messaging

via SMS/MMS, giving a customer the choice to either call or text a business

using the same number. Text-enabling business numbers has also paved the

way for brands performing a lot of CRM activities so that they can remain

engaged with the customers in a timely fashion related to the entire customer

experience. MMS messaging offers an easy way for a business to incorporate

image, audio and video into their communication channel to add more

context, appeal, and value to the conversation.

Texting also offers a seamless transition from notification messaging to

conversational messaging for frequently used value-added capabilities such

as authentication, reminders, and alerts. For example, a consumer may

receive a threshold alert from their bank which could prompt a fraud inquiry

via a reply on the same number which starts a conversation with a live bank

representative. A shipment summary generated by an ordering system may

prompt the consumer to reply to the text with an order inquiry to customer

service.

Rolling out Texting

Text messaging is one key way to improve customer service efficiency.

However, it is only a tool and the success of it depends on how well customer

service agents utilize the tool to serve customers. Implementing texting

involves investing in a strategic and high-value platform that can be tailored to

your workflows and team structures. Engaging with an experienced


messaging partner provides the insights for communications regulations and

the acceptable usage related to the different SMS route and number types

which will be critical to the success your implementation. Next, it is important

to get alignment with your leadership team on tasking your staff to operate

and interact with customers in new ways.

Consider scoping the roll out of texting in stages. Create a pilot and

implementation plan to help you execute, monitor and evaluate results. For

example, start with one functional area or business location, and then adjust

the plan for any problems or learnings that occurred during the pilot and

review stakeholder feedback. Also adjust for the difference in the scale of the

roll out. If you have a centralized call center, consider starting off your

implementation with that area, and then expand out to your remote locations.

It’s also important to point out that there are certain content categories of

messaging that run over landline and toll-free numbers that do not require the

user to opt-in. For example:

§ Conversational, two-way texting initiated by the consumer

§ Non-solicitation messages that are informational in nature

§ Customer service messages such as an appointment update.

However, it is recommended that a business consult with an attorney before

launching text messaging with any questions or advice pertaining to the

Telephone Consumer Protection Act.

The Next Step Is Yours Companies of all shapes and sizes are successfully engaging in texting today

with their customers, vendors and employees. Empowering your staff and

management to optimize customer service and sales through texting is an

exciting opportunity. CTIA, the U.S. wireless industry association, released


their latest research in July of 2018 on U.S. mobile usage trends, and some of

the numbers are staggering. U.S. mobile usage includes 1.5 trillion text

messages and 273 million active smartphones in use at the end of 2017.

With these statistics a business cannot afford to

ignore customers who want to text.

When selecting the communications channels to engage with your customers

and prospects, there are trade-offs to be made, but the old adage, “keep it

simple”, makes sense when determining which direct messaging service to

deploy first. Texting is the simplest of all DM options. It also makes sense to

adopt the most widely used DM in the world. Even the plain text format of

SMS has proven to be been an acceptable limitation in exchange for a

ubiquitous channel with maximum reach. Overall, app notifications make it

easy to connect to mobile users. But in terms of person-to-person

communication, texting still remains champion.


About Aerialink

Aerialink™ LLC provides a robust cloud communications platform enabling global

delivery of SMS, and MMS messaging. From small to large enterprises, businesses

rely on Aerialink for fast and reliable message delivery to any of our supported 1,200

mobile networks in 220 countries. Aerialink serves as a trusted advisor to customers,

leveraging industry knowledge in communications best practices, assisting in service

selection and implementation, and delivering superior technical support.

Aerialink, a subsidiary of CSF Corporation, was founded in 2002 and is

headquartered in the U.S. For further information, visit http://www.aerialink.com, text

or call 1-800-449-9477.

still crazy after all these years about texting - aerialink · silverpop/ibm marketing cloud, 8.6...

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