Send SMS / Text Messages Online: 3 Things You Must Know

Did you know that you can send SMS / text messages to mulitple contacts through our online service? Just login to your secure control panel, select your list of contacts, type your message and…

BINGO!

Within seconds,your text message is arriving on your customers and propects mobile phones all across the country.

However, there’s a 3 things you absolutely MUST know if you’re looking to send a text online…

1) Using the internet to send sms messages does not mean you are immune from regulatory fines or civil suits for spamming, or that you can bypass existing spam laws. Both countries that we service (Canada and the U.S.) have made major revisions to their existing regulations regarding the sending of text messages over the last year or so (in the United States the TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act) was updated in October 2013, and Canada’s new spam law went into effect July 1, 2014). In the U.S. fines can be as high as $1,500 per single unauthorized message. Canadian regulator fines can be as much as $1,000,000. Although our system implements a double opt in service, you still incur legal and civil liabilities for connecting with contacts who have not provided express written consent.

2) You still need a database of opted-in subscribers whom you may contact. These can be people who have opted in to receive text messages from you, usually in exchange for some sort of incentive. Most of the time, opt ins are a result of a text-based call to action that looks something like this…

“Text SHOES to 6137078978 to get a 20% off your next purchase and receive occasional exclusive offers direct to your cell phone!”

However, if you have signed documentation from your customers, you can also import their mobile numbers into an online service or platform so you may contact them.

You must not consider, for instance, buying a bulk list of cell phone numbers and blast out a spam message. This may get you into big trouble because if you think people hate email spam, you can multiply this by 10X for text messages. That’s because text messages are conversational, and violations feel much more personal.

And, since both short codes and long codes need to be registered to someone, somewhere, usually in the same country where the messages are sent, it’s easy to trace the steps backwards to you. No genuine business person would ever consider doing this, because all it accomplishes is to damage your brand.

3) There’s the proper way to send sms online, and then there’s the less than ideal way to do it. The proper way is to send them through carrier registered short codes (5 or 6 digit numbers designed specifically to send a mass volume of texts quickly and efficiently). In fact, all our messages are sent via the Short Message Peer-to-Peer Protocol (SMPP), which is the accepted industry protocol for sending SMS or text messages.

On the other hand, text messages can also be sent online via SMTP, (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) which is an email protocol, and a web to phone technology. While delivering texts via SMTP is almost always cheaper (even free) than SMPP, this difference is that the failure rates are high and there’s no way to confirm delivery.

If you want to send a few sms messages from your PC through the Internet to a couple of friends, this will probably be “good enough.”

However, if you’re a professional business person or a business owner looking to implement some sort of SMS mobile marketing technology, you’ll want to use a professional, ethical and credible service like ours to send sms online. The costs associated are minimal, you know your audience is actually receiving the messages you are sending, and there’s no danger of unintentionally violating spam laws and getting yourself into a mess of trouble with federal regulatory agenices and / civil litigations and suits, because our service protects against that.

There is good reason for wanting to log in and send a text message from your computer – 91% of Americans have their phones within arm’s length 14 hours out of every day, and between 95-99% of text messages are read… the majority within a couple of minutes. In short, your customers and prospects are most engaged on their cell phones. If you want to connect with them, this is where to do it.

Still thinking of email marketing or Facebook?

Forget it.

Industry average open rates for email newsletters is 27% and FaceBook’s oraganic reach keeps dropping and dropping and dropping (did you know that as of mid-2014, between 2-6% of your business’ fans will actually see any posts or update you make? That means between 94%-98% of your fans are not seeing your updates. The only effective way to connect with your audience is via mobile devices, and sms/text messages.

A Bain and Co study showed that a 5% increase in customer retention can result in a 25-95% increase in revenue. If your business wants to stay connected to your customers and bring them back to spend more with you more often, there’s no better channel to do it with than the mobile channel.

Seriously.

And to prove it, we’d like to give you the opption to try our mass texting service for free, so you can experience this opportunity for yourself!

Click here to learn more about our service and the free trial offer!