The Role of A2P Messages in Enhancing Customer Engagement
Businesses today must guarantee the continual presence and engagement of their potential client base through all the social media platforms as well as their website. Investment in enhanced business communication has become primary for businesses to successfully sell their products and services. However, social media promotions are no more enough to engage the customers as they are constantly flooded with content. There is a high chance that your posts get overlooked.
Concise language and accurate platform are crucial for a business while communicating important information to their clients. One of the reliable ways is A2P messaging. Business entities across different domains are employing A2P SMS as a default channel for marketing communications, employee engagement, sending notifications, alert, and reminders.
What is A2P messaging?
The process of sending a text message from an application to a subscribed mobile user, typically by means of an SMS sending service is Application-to-Person messaging. Unlike Person-to-Person (P2P) SMS, all engagement messages are initiated by an SMS sender online through an app, and not the sender’s mobile phone. The A2P messages can also be sent from a mobile subscriber to a web-based application, allowing the customers to easily respond and share queries with the business.
A2P messaging can be considered as a better option to reach out to the customers as compared to e-mails as the efficacy of e-mails has substantially declined over the years. As per research by Gartner, SMS messages have an open rate of 98%, while emails are only opened 20% of the times, thus, businesses that use SMS over e-mail will see higher ROI and engagement.
Top 5 Tips to Follow While Sending A2P Messages
With entities investing increasingly in their online presence, having an A2P SMS messaging service has become inevitable. However, it is crucial for businesses to understand how to effectively utilize the service to increase customer engagement and generate more revenue. Following are the top 5 tips to keep in mind while utilizing your enterprise messaging solution.
Add Additional Links
To add more information to the text, links can be added at the end, thus limiting the length of the text sent. This will allow the user to choose whether he wants to read the additional information or not. By using link shortening apps that offer you unique UTMs (a unique code in your link), you can track how much of your traffic is coming from your SMS campaign specifically.
Through links, you can also save your customers’ time. For instance, if you are sending a text to inform of an ongoing sale, your link should refer to the e-commerce section of your website or to a way for customers to find the nearest physical store.
Utilize A2P SMS to Increase Engagement on Your Product/Service
Further, application to person messaging lets you utilize links and increase the interest of your customer base in your product/service. You can provide links to the following –
- Track orders
- Claim a voucher
- Respond to a survey
- View a video
- Open a PDF or email about a new launch
If you have an international customer base A2P international SMS hubbing services allow you to reach out to them for any marketing or authentication purposes.
Make Sure It is a Two-Way Communication
Your text message to the customers should be to converse and not inform. This allows you to understand your customers better and encourages them to start a dialogue with you by adding something like: Have any questions? Reply to this message. You can also simplify it by providing keywords. For instance, if a customer needs to alter the time a company agent visits them, your message can be: ‘Need to change your appointment time? Reply CHANGE with your convenient time to XXXX.’
Give Them the Option to Opt-Out
Having a captive audience is not worth your while. It is crucial for you to provide an opt-out option in the body of the message while sending them marketing updates. This will allow you to make your ROI richer by removing the audience that is not interested in listening from you. Provide for space in your text message for opt-out such as: Optout? Text STOP to XXXX.
Don’t Get too Informal
Though text messages are mostly utilized for informal conversations, for A2P messages there is a line that should not be crossed when it comes to contractions and abbreviations. You may most certainly use ‘you’re’ and ‘thanks’ instead of ‘you are’ and ‘thank you’, but ‘ur’ and ‘thnx’ is inappropriate while conversing with your clientele. In scenarios where you know your customer base well, you may use for instance LDN as an abbreviation for London or ASAP for as soon as possible, but be mindful of your customer’s understanding when it comes to these, and any jargon.
A2P SMS Services Continue to be Significant for Businesses
Though P2P messaging services are no longer utilized as much due to the penetration of OTT platforms, A2P messages and SMS hubbing will be utilized for a long time given they reach and the customer engagement they provide. SMS proves itself to be the true ruler of customer communication, that is if you want to guarantee that your customers are getting the message.
A2P messaging service by Broadband Telecom delivers a highly customizable, cost-effective, reliable yet fast plug-and-play system. It offers A2P Messaging on the widely used SMPP protocol to send messages anywhere around the globe, providing 0Hop, Direct and Marketing Routes. A2P Messaging platform by Broadband Telecom works in real time and is backed up with accurate reports to help you track your development and use the data to formulate future plans and covers extensions like M2M, M2P, P2M and more.
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Harshita Kapoor
