A Bit of SMS History

On July 23rd 2010, SMS will reach adulthood when it celebrates its 18th birthday. Yes, a full 18 years since the very first SMS message was transmitted by engineer Neil Papworth. It read “MERRY CHRISTMAS” and was delivered to his colleagues at Vodafone.

Still, it was only about 7 years after that that SMS really took off – the SMS gateway and other related technologies had yet to evolve sufficiently to allow for cross-network messaging.

But they did, and SMS evolved to be an important method of P2P (Person-to-Person) and A2P (Application-to-Person). But just how important has SMS become?

SMS Statistics

Of all SMS messages sent, 94% are read. Of that 94%, 75% of SMS messages are read immediately. Naturally this doesn’t mean anything until you take into account that there are, at the time of this writing, more than 4.6 billion mobile subscriptions on this planet – a number expected to rise to 5 billion by the end of the year.

But, to be fair, it does not quite reflect on the number of mobile devices and, subsequently, SMS messages sent through the SMS gateway (one mobile device can have more than one subscription; a mobile device needn’t be a handset).

There are in fact approximately 3.9 billion mobile devices in use on earth – probably a little bit more at the time of this writing. As the number of mobile subscriptions increase, so will the number of mobile devices.

The Importance of an SMS Gateway

The function of an SMS gateway is to translate messages from one protocol format into another. This becomes applicable when messages are sent form one network, or SMSC, that uses its own proprietary protocol to another network, or SMSC, that also uses its own proprietary protocol.

Therefore, once network interoperability was accomplished (with the aid of the SMS gateway), SMS messaging took off and grew to such an extent that 2009 Q4 statistics now indicate a daily 256 million SMS message volume in the UK alone. This amounts to 1,792,000,000 SMS messages a week and around 77 billion messages a month, up 31% from 2008 figures. Mobile penetration rates for the UK (as well as the EU) have already surpassed the 100% mark some time ago.

In the United States of America the same figure was at more than 4 billion in 2009 and, as expected, is rising even as you read this.

Not Willing To go the SMS Route?

In a number of instances companies are unwilling to adopt communication via the SMS gateway as a B2C communication vehicles, with one of the primary reasons that they might be invading their customers’ privacy and, subsequently, scare them off.

A study by 1020 Placecast however revealed that 26% of mobile owning adults are willing to receive “location-based mobile advertising specials”, with the only condition being that they (the receiver of such advertising materials) have the option to opt both in and out at their own convenience. Granted, the above reflect U.S. trends but does have some indication of an increasing global trend in the acceptance of mobile marketing.

How does this relate to you and the SMS gateway?

Use The SMS Gateway to Your Advantage

To put it in simple terms, forcing SMS down your customers’ collective throat will probably scare them off. However even here in the United Kingdom regulations exist that prohibit such actions by companies and organisations.

In the same breath it has to be said that one half of a successful SMS campaign, is a clever opt-in strategy – getting current and prospective customers the option to opt-in on your SMS campaigns, thereby enabling you to get in touch with them through the SMS gateway. Remember, if they opt-in, then they are most probably interested in what you have to offer, giving you the benefit of targeted messaging.

For more information on how you can get your business SMS-connected, read more on the SMS gateway page.

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Go Bulk SMS Legal

Before we start off with some powerful text marketing, we’d like to draw your attention to the United Kingdom regulations regarding the use of bulk SMS for the purposes of text marketing.

A simple explanation as well as a link to the proper governmental page can be found in the “Bulk SMS Regulations in the United Kingdom” post.

Energise Your Marketing: Powerful Bulk SMS

Bulk SMS, as the name suggests, refers to the transmission of SMS messages of a commercial nature to a number of recipients. While the number of recipients can be limited to a handful, bulk SMS refers more to the number of messages sent over a predefined period of time, for instance a month.

The benefits of using bulk SMS include:

• using an ‘always on’ and ‘always carried’ technology.
• communicating using a ubiquitous medium
• enjoying increased response rates, and thereby possibly more sales

Bulk SMS also helps fuel customer retention rates. This is of increased importance, especially since the recession helped change consumer behaviour – no longer is being the closest or the biggest enough; consumers are increasingly hunting for the best deals.

While getting in on the bulk SMS action is easy, it does help to take some ‘best practice’ guidelines into consideration to not only ensure that you play by the rules, but also that your customers remain happy and, very important, loyal.

Get Your Bulk SMS Timing Right

Due to the fact that mobile phones are often carried just about everywhere (yes, even the loo and to bed), it makes it possible to get in touch with your customers whenever you want.

But you might want to hold off on the 1 AM messaging – not only will your client be slightly annoyed at being awoken from that Ibiza dream, but you won’t have their full attention.

Instead, get in touch with them when you know they’ll be wide awake but won’t be doing anything that requires their concentration, such as lunch time or when everyone’s on their way home.

Add Product Relevance to Your Bulk SMS

Let’s say Joe owns a hardware shop selling all kinds of goods; from nails to hammers to hammocks and much, much more. If you previously bought a garden hose and a couple of loose lawn sprinkler heads, would an SMS from Joe about a circular saw pique your interest? Probably not.

When offering discounts or running special promotions on certain products, ensure that they are related to some of the previously purchased items. This will not only increase your chances of making a sale, but could stimulate your customer retention rates.

Campaign Planning

Whether you sell industrial rat poison or baby rattles and teethers, you need a plan for your bulk SMS marketing campaigns.

Start with your initial offer and plan out your whole campaign down to the very last message. This will make it easier to tweak your campaign and make the necessary adjustments to ensure optimal efficacy.

Always Test!

The great thing about bulk SMS is that it’s easy to do a bit of split testing to test the actual efficacy of your campaign and iron out the creases where necessary.

This means taking a small portion of your contact list and getting them started on your campaign, just to test the waters. If any last-minute changes need to be made, this is the time to do so before going ahead with a full roll-out.

That being said, are you ready to market? To learn more, just navigate to the bulk SMS page.

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Analysing Your SMS Service Requirements

Determining how you will apply your SMS service is a big part of the equation, as this will influence your business directly. Fictional business ABZ Shoe Retailer’s owner, John Savage, will help you ask the right questions to illustrate how the purpose of an SMS service can be determined. Let’s see which questions are considered to be important…

Q: Why use an SMS service instead of, for instance, email?

John Savage (JS): I used email for a number of years. While it is relatively easy to use and virtually free to send, it just didn’t provide the required results. With an SMS service penetration rates are higher, response rates are climbing way beyond that generally achievable with email and I am able to implement detailed tracking, which gives me a good idea of how my campaign is doing.

Q: What will my clients gain from my SMS service?

JS: Current information on all the hottest and newest brands and designs in footwear. Some of my competitors sell certain items at prices below mine, but an SMS service will be the Ace up my sleeve.

Q: If I was my client, what would I expect?

Well, I like it when businesses put in that extra little effort, especially when it is something in which I take a special interest. Take for instance the SMS service offered by my bank: every time my account is accessed or when a change occurs, I get an SMS. This makes me feel safer about my money and more confident in my choice of bank.

Q: How can I use it to get more business?

Hmmm, well I’ve got a couple of ideas. Aside from the already mentioned communication of new products, I’ve heard that offering incentives will not only fuel client participation, but can help to stimulate customer numbers – people who like shoes must obviously have friends and family that like shoes.

Q: How can it be used to drive customer loyalty?

I know for a fact that my competitors aren’t making use of an SMS service. Establishing a mobile relationship with current and prospective customers now could supply me with an audience for future mobile communication/technologies.

Getting Your SMS Service Up and Running

The tools to use to get your SMS service up and running are pretty much wide and varied. Your business size and messaging requirements will determine the tools being used to accommodate and effectively run your SMS service.

The list below will give a brief explanation of the SMS service tools available and the business-sizes they apply to. Note that, should your business have the relevant development skills, then the tools specified can be used regardless of business size with the only criteria being that the minimum messaging requirements will have to be adhered to.

SMS Applications

Communicator II

• Suitable for small & medium businesses
• Pre-designed web interface – ready to use
• Provides API functionality: reporting & logs
• Two-way messaging functionality
• Use from anywhere in the world

Messenger PRO

• Suitable for small & medium businesses
• Pre-designed desktop interface – ready to use
• Provides API functionality: reporting & logs
• Two-way messaging functionality
• Installed locally on computer – OS dependent

Application Programming Interfaces

SMPP API – Min: 5000 credits/month

• Suitable for medium to large businesses and organisations
• Flexible
• Requires software development
• Language- and environment independent
• Software environment-independent
• Two-way messaging functionality

.COM API

• Suitable for small, medium and large businesses and organisations
• Requires software development
• Perfect for MS Windows and ASP environments

SOAP API

• Suitable for small, medium and large businesses and organisations
• Requires software development
• Language- and environment independent but uses XML
• Easy to implement
• Two-way messaging functionality

HTTP/S API

• Suitable for small, medium and large businesses and organisations
• Requires software development
• Easy to implement
• Language- and environment independent
• Two-way messaging functionality

XML API

• Suitable for small, medium and large businesses and organisations
• Requires software development
• Easy to implement
• Uses XML

FTP API

• Suitable for small, medium and large businesses and organisations
• Optional software development – existing application also suitable
• Easy to implement
• Language- and environment independent

SMTP API

• Suitable for small, medium and large businesses and organisations
• Optional software development – existing application also suitable
• Easy to implement
• Language- and environment independent

For more information on getting your business SMS enabled, follow the link to our SMS service page.

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So you’ve heard a bit about using text as a super-duper method of communication and have now taken the next step: reading up on it. Congratulations. But as you may (or may not) know, there exist a range of API’s (Application Programming Interfaces) that allow you to get in touch with your clients. So why should you choose email to SMS?

There’s one very important reason: email to SMS is a high-calibre API that can be used by, well, everyone.

Email to SMS, in technical terms, is known as the SMTP API and relies on the SMTP protocol to get the job done. Now while SMTP might perhaps sound like something technical and that you may not have heard of before, rest assured that you’re probably using it every day. Most mail clients (such as Outlook, Thunderbird, Eudora, etc.) rely on SMTP to deliver your email messages to the intended destination or recipient.

About Email to SMS

The SMTP API, or email to SMS, has its own range of attributes that make it suitable for certain types of
environment. These include:

• Ease of use: all it takes is a plain-text email
• One-way messaging: perfect for notifications, updates, alerts, system messages, etc.
• Bulk support: email to SMS can be used to send out a couple of messages, a couple of thousand, or even a couple of million. It’ll do this without blinking an eye.

Should You Use Email to SMS?

Now this is where the checking starts. Whether we’re talking about email to SMS or the HTTP/S API, how do you know which to use? Well, there are a couple of things you should take into account before finally deciding. Here are a couple of questions you should ask yourself:

“What are my texting purposes?”

Identifying the purpose will automatically identify the requirements. As mentioned before, email to SMS is most efficiently employed in situations where one-way communication, in the form of alerts and notifications, are most applicable. These alerts and notifications can either be automatically generated (systems alerts, network alerts, weather alerts, etc.), or they can be typed (promotional alerts, sale notifications, etc.).
Answering this question requires a bit of future planning. If your requirements for two-way communication are low to moderate, then email to SMS can be used in conjunction with the HTTP/S API to make bidirectional communication a possibility whilst still drawing on the strengths of the SMTP API.

“What could my future software infrastructure look like?
It’s hard to predict the future, but in business it’s the one thing that will help you keep your head above water. If you’re intending on expanding, and need a sure-fire method of communication, then the SMTP API could well be the solution for you – easy to use ‘out of the box’ and comes with super scalability.

And that’s the basic API checklist. Think this is something you can use? Follow the link to our email to SMS page now…

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If you’re a small business with only a few clients, then one of the pre-designed SMS interfaces will suffice to get your business enabled for international SMS. But times change and with it, technology. It’s all about convenience – being able to do more, with less – which is why businesses prefer to integrate their systems directly with the SMS gateway.

If you don’t or can’t code your own scripts to integrate with any of the available application programming interfaces, then there exist a couple of scripts that can help you get the job done, easily and effortlessly. Let’s have a look…

About The API

Below you’ll find links to a number of scripts in different languages that can be used to connect a website, database or software module to the HTTP/S API. In most cases the HTTP/S API is used because it is one of the easiest to implement and it is best used in situation where firewall policies come into play. It is also one of the most widely understood protocols, which makes it perfect for international SMS.

The HTTP/S API starts with a base URL, which is: http://api.clickatell.com/http/sendmsg

A number of additional parameters are added to the above URL which will pass bits of relevant information to the SMS server to get those international SMS messages sent off. These include:

Here’s an example of a completed string:

http://api.clickatell.com/http/sendmsg?user=xxxxx&password=xxxxx&api_id=xxxxx&to=448311234567
&text=Meet+me+at+home

If you’ve registered for an API account, you simply need to replace all the appropriate variables in the script with your own, after which you’ll be able to start sending local and international SMS messages. (Tip: registering for any API account is free and will supply you with 10 free test credits. Note that free messages are pre-populated).

SMS Scripts

These are the SMS scripts available for the following languages:

PHP
VB.Net
VBScript
Cold Fusion
C#
Oracle

You can access the appropriate script by clicking on the link. But, for your own benefit, it is recommended that you also have a look at the appropriate  API documentation as there are more variables that you can use to get ultimate flexibility in terms of international SMS messaging.

For more information about all the various products that will get you messaging across the world, just navigate to the international SMS page.

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• only 3% of mobile users currently receive SMS reminders
• 67% of mobile users want SMS alerts (bill payments, medical appointments, etc.)
• The United Kingdom is a world leader in SMS messaging (83 billion SMS messages per annum – US: 830 billion per annum)
• 60% of participants would opt in for a reminder service
• 80% of participants would also like a “customer service text call-back request capability”

(Full report available at Dialogue)

What does this tell you? If you’re not connected to SMS gateways for all your messaging needs, then now is the time to do so. And if you’re still unsure, then here are a couple of reasons why you should – and it has everything to do with the money in your bank account.

1. SMS is Cheaper & Greener than Post

   Add together the potential cost of the following items:

   • Paper
   • Printer Ink (Cost of cartridge divided by total amount of printouts)
   • Envelope
   • Stamps
   • Man hours*
   • Potential cost of undelivered / unopened letters

   * if your letters are printed, folded and stamped by machine, add machine maintenance costs

   One SMS message to a destination number within the UK clocks in at about GBP 0.057 (it’s a rough average and might change in accordance with exchange rates)

2. SMS is More Rewarding than Email

   It has been proven time and time again that messages distributed via SMS gateways to the mobile phone handsets of your contacts are capable of getting higher response rates than, say, email. There are essentially three reasons for this:

   1. Your contacts are getting too much email
   2. Email takes long to read. More often than not there are quite a number of unwanted emails
   3. SMS messages are received on a device personal and pretty much unique to the individual. In other words, communication via SMS is much more personal.

3. SMS Gateways Deliver Instantly

While there is no definite time frame according to which messages are sent through and delivered by SMS gateways, it doesn’t take more than a few seconds. Contrast this to the average delivery times of snail mail, or even the delay between the sending of an email and the recipient (hopefully) reading it. And then, of course, you’ll also have to keep in mind that SMS messages are delivered to a mobile phone, which is always carried and pretty much always on.

So if you had to choose between snail mail, email and SMS gateways for your messaging needs, which one would you choose to look after your messaging and financial interests?

Get Messaging!

That being said, let’s look at how you can start employing the SMS gateway at virtually cut-throat prices to get in touch with your customers and clients – the people who WANT you to contact them via SMS messaging.

Small & Medium Businesses: If you have less than 10,000 clients, then I’d recommend you use either Messenger PRO or Communicator, the former being a client you can install on your desktop and the latter being a web-based application with the advantage that you’ll be able to log on anywhere in the world and get those messages fired through the applicable SMS gateways.

Large Businesses, Corporations & Organisations: If you need to get in touch with more than 10,000 contacts or if you want to arm your current native software infrastructure with some serious messaging potential via SMS gateways, then choosing the most appropriate developer API (Application Programming Interface) or a combination of them suitable to your business would be the best move.

For more information and to kick-start your business with some serious short message potential, read more about SMS gateways.

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The United Kingdom is now officially out of recession and could have been for a couple of months already. But don’t get your party hat on just yet, save the bubbly for later: the consumer landscape has changed and could have a significant impact on businesses throughout the United Kingdom. Now is the time to deploy your weapons of customer confidence, because your business will need it in the months to come – we’re just barely out of the recession and, as analysts predict, there’s a bumpy ride ahead. The SMS gateway can be used to help you not only acquire new customers but, perhaps more importantly, help you retain existing customers.

“We can believe that we know where the world should go. But unless we’re in touch with our customers, our model of the world can diverge from reality. There’s no substitute for innovation, of course, but innovation is no substitute for being in touch, either.” – Steve Ballmer

Why You Should Employ the SMS Gateway

Perhaps one of the biggest effects of the recession is the fact that it forced consumers to watch what they spend. This means that traditional methods of marketing and customer interaction may prove insufficient in terms of generating and keeping customer interest.

It would be more accurate to assume that consumers are now looking for that extra bit of initiative, which could be interpreted as value-added service. This means that retailers should focus on fostering a good relationship with existing customers along with strategies to acquire new clientele, thereby retaining and adding to an established source of income. And that is exactly what the SMS gateway enables businesses to achieve through minimum expenditure.

SMS Gateway for Growth

Whether it’s the simplicity of an SMS or the fact that it’s a technology that integrates seamlessly with our fast-paced lives, perhaps both, it’s one of the favourite forms of communication today. The SMS gateway provides businesses with an ideal way to reach out to customers because:

• it’s a very personal form of communication
• it uses a medium they understand and love
• it allows for message personalisation (speak directly to your clients)
• two-way messaging allows for customer interaction
• allows for real-time communication (reach customers wherever they are without delivery delay)

This allows UK businesses to communicate with existing customers, relaying promotional information based on previous purchases, account information, etc. – as we said, value-added.

If you’ve never even considered using SMS to get in touch with your clients, then now might be a good time to take a deep furtive look at this beneficial technology. For more information, read more about the SMS gateway.

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Bulk SMS is the wholesale sending of SMS messages. This means that during a a certain period, for instance one calendar month, you send off a fair amount of text messages – be it to customers, clients, a target audience or even employees. This is not only limited to local texting, but also applies to messages sent throughout the world.

And even though texting is cheaper than a telephone call, it will still help to save where you can to keep within budgeting limits. After all, as soon as you hit the ‘Send’ button, the cost of each message is deducted from your credit amount, whether it is successful or not. So what can you do to ensure that every message counts?

1. Check Your Numbers

Here’s the scenario: You’ve got a subscriber list of about 10,000 individuals who you want to bulk SMS message to once a month. Of those, about 500 messages return an ‘undelivered’ status message. On a month-to-month basis that might not seem like a lot, but once you add up the numbers, it could add up to 6,000 a year – more than half your entire contact list. How do you ensure that your contact list is current, and that most or all of your contacts are reachable?

When contacts subscribe via a web page, ask them to confirm their mobile numbers – in other words, let them enter it twice. If the numbers match, then you know that there is an increased chance that the number exists.

Additionally, it will help to have an FAQ section on your website where you can identify reasons why your contacts won’t be able to receive your messages. This can include anything from a lack of space on their handset to a faulty handset or even messages moved to a different folder with certain handset models.

Minimising the amount of invalid numbers on your contact lists will help you save on your bulk SMS costs.

2. Play with the Words

Browsed through some of our other posts? If not, now’s a good time to do so – you’ll find plenty of evidence that bulk SMS marketing is downright effective. But then again, it’s only as successful as the content of the message you send.

There are a few ways to compose the right type of bulk SMS message to ensure maximum response, but all of them have somethings in common. Effective messages are:

• To the point
• Memorable for a specific reason
• Contain all the legal requirements (sender identification, opt-out info, etc.)

You might think that it’s a matter of minutes to compose a 160-character bulk SMS message that’ll sell, but it can take quite a while to get the job done.

Tip: Finding it difficult to choose between different messages? Why not test them by segmenting your contact list and sending each message variation to a small group of recipients? The group with the best response will most probably be more successful than the others when sent to the rest of your contact database.

3. Analyse your Campaign Progress

To optimise your bulk SMS campaign, it’ll help to keep a vigilant eye on the results. Check the performances of your messages and look for areas that can be improved upon – if a certain message works for one market segment, it might require a little tweaking to be as effective on a different segment that’s lagging behind. Remember, it is in situations like these where split-testing can be your best friend.

And lest we forget, always ensure that you’re using the right bulk SMS product – businesses with a small contact database might perform better using the online SMS interface, while those with a contact list might just receive better performance and flexibility by using any of the available application programming interfaces (API’s).

If you’re unsure about which bulk SMS product is right for you, visit our bulk SMS page for more information.

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Being a professional blogger, perhaps freelancer, you probably didn’t have much of a holiday this year. The competition is tough and your readers, most of whom were probably on holiday, still expected content from you. Perhaps even more so in light of the sub-zero temperatures – after all the Scrabble anyone can take, there’s one thing left to do: surf the net. Here’s how the SMS gateway can help your blog warm the minds of your readers:

Better than Email?

Let’s consider the very nature of SMS: it’s a 160-character text message delivered to a mobile handset – a personalised medium that’s always on, almost always carried. While email provides you with the opportunity to email your entire post to your readers, SMS allows you to notify them almost instantly of your post’s availability. They won’t have to comb through their mail for your blog post notification email; your message won’t be flagged as spam, whether by accident or on purpose.

On-demand Content

An article recently featured on eMarketer discusses the portability of content. In a nutshell, it explores current trends in the demand for content and what the future holds in terms of content portability. The SMS gateway allows you to reach out to your readers instantly, on any device capable of receiving an SMS – thereby furthering their on-demand experience. Whether they own a smart phone or not, it’s about the convenience of being able to access your content, right away. It’s this type of convenience that can supply you with an edge over your competitors.

International Notification

The internet is a global market place with a global audience. While a certain percentage of your reader-base might be located in one country, it’s safe to assume that some of them are distributed around the globe. One great feature of the SMS gateway is that it allows for near-instant message distribution on an international scale – messages which are more likely to be read than email; messages that can be sent at a fraction of the cost of a telephone call. These coverage lists and prices demonstrate just how cost-efficient international SMS can be!

Choosing SMS Recipients

No doubt you’ve used email to do a bit of split-testing to see which posts will be more effective. Well, the same can be done with SMS. Contact lists can be created and maintained according to your own criteria, making messaging through the SMS gateway entirely customisable.

How to SMS-enable Your Blog

Here’s the great thing about the SMS gateway: it provides you with a multitude of interfaces that allow bloggers with all levels of technical proficiency to get in touch with their readers. Bloggers with little or no skill regarding programming languages will be able to make use of the web-based messaging application. This provides an easy-to-use interface with features that include two-way messaging (send & receive), address book, reporting and much, much more. Alternatively, those with intermediate to advanced programming skill will be able to make use of any of the available API’s and/or scripts to integrate their blogs with the SMS gateway.

If you think that SMS is something you can use to interact with your readers and benefit your blog, then follow the link to the SMS gateway page now.

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Healthcare

Especially toward the latter half of 2009, reports were almost flooding in about healthcare services making use of SMS gateways to save lives and help educate the public. And 2010 will be no different.

According to an article featured on lep.co.uk, national charity Meningitis Research Foundation (MRF) is using text as a medium to educate the public about the symptoms of Meningitis – a disease that can lead to severe disability or even death. This will not only help save lives, but arm individuals with critical information that could be of use in the future.

SMS gateways simplify instant communication over a broad geographical area at a fraction of the cost of a telephone call.

Business

A topic that has been covered rather extensively in the past is the use of SMS gateways as a business tool which can be employed to drive up sales and increase customer retention rates in times of economic instability.

Companies, both big and small, have made use of SMS gateways to further their marketing drives and also to increase customer-oriented communication. Could 2010 be the year when SMS becomes a de facto method of B2C communication?

SMS allows businesses to supply customers and clients with account information, notices, specials, coupons and much, much more. View the 101 Business Uses guide for more information about the real world business application of SMS.

Emergency Services

Perhaps one of the most prominent examples of where SMS gateways assist emergency services can be seen in Australia, where bushfires claim both lives and personal property. In southern Australia emergency services have recently deployed a text-based communication system to warn residents of areas that are at risk about fires in the area.

If the severe weather of 2009 was anything to go by, then it would be a good idea to ensure that efficient communication systems are in place in areas where severe weather and other natural disasters may occur.

This could supply residents in potentially dangerous areas with advanced warnings, thereby saving lives and minimising damage.

SMS Gateways allow you to maintain and use your own contact lists to ensure accurate and targeted communication.

Education

While SMS gateways can be employed to supply life-saving information to the public, it can also be used in schools to ensure that children attend class and receive relevant information that will keep them and their parents informed. Instances where SMS can be used in educational situations include:

• Test notifications
• Class attendance
• Class cancellations
• Reminders

If messages are adhered to, then schools may well expect an increase in attendance throughout 2010.

Integrating and customising the SMS gateway into an existing software infrastructure is easy, by using any of the existing Application Programming Interfaces.

Integrating the SMS Gateway

Connecting to the SMS Gateway can be done via any of the available Application Programming Interfaces (API’s). These API’s allow for communication with SMS gateways from a number of native platforms, including email (SMTP to SMS), web (HTTP/S, FTP, XML, .COM to SMS) as well as protocols that allow for specific customisation (SMPP, SOAP).

For more information on how you can SMS-enable your business for 2010, click to read more about SMS gateways.

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