“If there is someone in your circle of acquaintances who needs to refine his/her marketing activities with an effective, fast, and still-fashionable communication channel such as SMS, you should recommend CSC Telecom.”
Keitija Krastiņa, kursors.lv
“…Studies have shown that young people under the age of 24 tend not to check their e-mail regularly, as they tend to receive news in the form of eye-catching notifications. .”
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Nowadays, when there are so many communication opportunities, the company needs to carefully consider which ones to use to gain customer attention, increase trust, and facilitate purchases. One of the communication channels that has been used in marketing campaigns for many years is SMS. It is an interesting fact that the very first text message, sent via computer, was received in 1992. Since then, SMS has gradually become an increasingly stable solution in both daily communication and marketing activities. Although text messaging was only approved as a marketing tool in 2000, marketers quickly realized how a single SMS could be an effective part of an advertising campaign. Even after 20 years, when mobile devices have become an integral part of a person’s daily life, the text message has not lost its relevance and attractiveness in the eyes of both the company and the customer — quite the contrary.
An attractive communication tool that reaches 98% of customers
Even if just a few-words- or several-sentences-long text message, one of the goals — to draw the customer’s attention to the offer — most likely will be achieved. An example could be offered of a situation regarding different age groups. Studies have shown that young people under the age of 24 tend not to check their e-mail regularly, as they tend to receive news in the form of eye-catching notifications. As a result, there is a possibility that e-mails will have lost their freshness and relevance as soon as they are read. This is the reason why SMS is a more successful communication channel in communication with customers in this age group. At the same time, it has been observed that customers over the age of 25 tend to check their e-mail more often.
What is important for a large number of customers regardless of age is the ability to communicate with the company in a convenient way; this increasingly means written communication rather than calls. There are several reasons why the option to receive an SMS seems much more attractive than a phone call. One of them is the time spent. This is particularly relevant for companies that can save significant time by trying to reach their customers not with individual calls, but instead with personalized messages where the customer’s name appears in the first line. Not to mention SMS achieves the same efficiency. The fact is that we can open a received text message at any time and place convenient for us, but it may not always be possible to answer a call.
The benefits are seen by both institutions and companies
When looking extensively at the benefits of SMS marketing for a company and a customer, one should not only talk the talk, but also walk the walk, by learning how such communication opportunities are used in practice. In Latvia, a number of companies as well as institutions use the benefits of SMS services to their advantage, thus speeding up processes and serving a huge customer base in a short time. Considering the fact that speed is important for young people in receiving services, the University of Latvia and Riga Technical University now inform students about changes in the study process, and provide other important information that the student should know, by SMS. The opportunity to reach students in this way has been used for 10 years already by RTU; the university recognizes it is a simple and effective solution that ensures the convenient and efficient receipt of information. Inbox.lv also likes to use SMS in its daily communication, giving the customer the opportunity to quickly and easily pay for the bonuses offered by the product Inbox Games. The insurance company BTA uses SMS marketing in communication with its customers, saving both its own and the customers’ time. Customer benefits include the convenient and prompt receipt of information; at the same time, BTA gets the opportunity to automate its processes and serve a large number of customers simultaneously.
SMS marketing is a good option for companies that operate in fields such as medicine and beauty care. With the help of SMS, these companies can easily and conveniently reach the customer and, for example, remind them about an upcoming visit.
I examined the situation from a more-practical point of view,
in order to understand how a service such as SMS marketing works and see with my own eyes what benefits it brings to both a company and its customers: I decided to try the opportunities SMS offers in practice. For this purpose I used the SMS marketing tool sms.csc.lv offered by CSC Telecom, the leading company in the Baltics. With this solution for sending bulk messages, the user has the ability to create recipient lists, write individual messages, create marketing campaigns, and make the necessary changes at any time. Instead of the sender’s name, the SMS recipient sees the sender’s company name and any other information of the sender’s choice.
Opening the system control panel, the first that can be seen is a large SMS text window with additional options on the left side, which allows to both prepare text messages and view statistics.
You will probably not miss the big green button on the left labelled “Scheduler”, which offers a choice of two options — schedule SMS sending to a certain time without repetition, or schedule regular sending that repeats periodically. “Scheduler” is quite useful when working with different customer bases.
On the left side there are many different options for making SMS sending more convenient. In the bright area, the user can choose the type of text message — SMS or VIBER — mark the sender of the message, and whether or not to use a previously saved message sample. Below is a place for the name of the SMS and the option to choose the duration of sending attempts.
The dark menu offers to view incoming messages, schedule the next to be sent, and view the statistics of sent SMS; it also informs about the balance and payments and allows you to make changes to the settings.
How it all works in practice
After all the options and functions were reviewed and understood, I then wanted to understand how the CSC Telecom SMS marketing service tool works in practice — how quickly and easily it is possible to send a small text message and how long I should wait for the SMS to reach the recipient. As part of the experiment, I sent an SMS to my smartphone with text including a link about the opportunity to participate in the Kursors.lv competition.
I must admit, I couldn’t make it happen the first time — no SMS was sent. The fault was that I hadn’t added the code 371 in front of the number to which I wanted to send this message (the system does not accept the “+” symbol). When I realized the error and corrected it, it worked. The SMS arrived after 10 seconds. It was very quick.
I did this little experiment with two different phones, and in both cases the SMS arrived within 10 seconds. As statistics and data analysis are quite close to my heart, I wanted to see if it is possible to obtain any graphs or other data of any kind from my research. Yes, indeed! CSC Telecom allows the customer to view in detail both the overall statistics and the history of sent messages, plus more detailed data about each sent SMS.
Total statistics and…
…statistics for each sent SMS separately.
It seems very convenient and transparent that there are so many options for analysing the overall statistics – you can select the period of time, sender, country, and SMS name, and find out how many messages were sent successfully, how many SMS were not received, how many messages could not be delivered, and how many for which the status is not available. Similar filters can also be used to analyse each sent SMS individually; you can obtain detailed statistics.
Costs
There are a couple more features in the top right corner of the page that I also wanted to check. One of them I paid more attention to was the price list, which shows how much it will cost to send an SMS to various networks. Prices slightly differ in each of the Baltic countries. Although the sending of a mass SMS will sum up in a certain amount of money, the abovementioned approach should be emphasized once again: you should pay attention not only to the company’s costs, but also to the benefits and results when choosing SMS marketing.
One of the leading companies in providing SMS marketing services – CSC Telecom
As I pointed out in the article above, this relatively simple but functional SMS marketing tool is offered by CSC Telecom – one of the largest and best-known companies in Latvia and the Baltics offering SMS services and providing the opportunity to try out the benefits of SMS marketing. The company has been providing telecommunications services and solutions to corporate customers for more than 17 years.
If there is someone in your circle of acquaintances who needs to refine his/her marketing activities with an effective, fast, and still-fashionable communication channel such as SMS, you should recommend CSC Telecom. The company will both provide consulting and suggest the most appropriate solutions – not only in SMS marketing, but also in other areas.
kursors.lv author: Keitija Krastiņa -12.08.2020