SMS Business Benefits

The rise of business text messaging

Latest MDA figures show that a few million text messages are sent everyday, three times the levels reached two years ago. The reason behind this staggering growth is that text messaging has moved beyond a 'teenage fad' to become an essential business tool. The first step taken into the mobile office arena, text messaging enables SMEs to conveniently and cost-effectively manage the mobile workforce and replicate the office on the move.

The business benefits of text messaging.

An accurate, versatile, active and easily updateable tool, text messaging has numerous business advantages.

1. As a discreet tool, incoming text alerts can be received silently in business environments when you would not wish to be disturbed. Additionally, as you are reading, rather than listening to the information, text messaging does not suffer from any form of distortion in a noisy environment. There is also the additional functionality of being able to save, or call telephone phone numbers sent in the body of the text message.

2. Text messaging also enables information to be sent to groups of people quickly, for example sales engineers on the road receiving 'offers of the day' by text, making it a more cost-effective solution to disperse information than 1st class post.

3. In the same respect, jobs can be posted via text message to service engineers, roadside breakdown assistance vehicles or lorry drivers making collections and deliveries, while on the road. The added convenience of reply offered by text messaging enables a job's current status and employees location to be clarified, enabling efficient job scheduling leading to improved customer relations.

4. Finally, eliminating the temptation to chat, text messaging is an efficient way to conduct business. Additionally, it proves to be cost-effective when needing to stay in touch with colleagues travelling internationally.

5. SMS media has a successful history of generating high response rates. Large volume on-pack promotions have produced response rates ranging from 8%-20%. Responses from 'opted-in' mobile number databases have averaged at 15%.