A2P Bulk Messaging. The Marketer's point of view.

With 98% of messages being opened within the first three minutes of delivery, bulk SMS marketing is a crucial component of any effective marketing strategy. For businesses, this is the most efficient and cost-effective way to communicate with clients.

While brands continue to spend large percentages of their budgets on email automation and earlier-generation marketing techniques, research shows that the A2P market will be worth $60.55 billion by 2025.

This article will explore the benefits of A2P messaging, how it works, and why, ultimately, it is the future of marketing.

What is A2P Messaging?

A2P, also known as application-to-person messaging, is a distinct type of communication. In contrast with standard texts (person-to-person texting), A2P users do not anticipate a response from the recipient. Therefore, marketers can use this technology to send clients and customers personalized messages.

How does A2P messaging work?

A2P messaging, as opposed to P2P (person-to-person) messaging, enables organizations to automate text messages for a variety of purposes, including appointment reminders, banking pins, text notifications, text-based sales offers, and more.

Today's A2P messaging technology has capabilities that let businesses customize their text messages, manage who receives what, and send messages via secure channels. This allows businesses to send consistent and timely text messages worldwide to their entire client base, providing fast service delivery times, ensuring proactive fraud prevention systems, and enabling reporting capabilities.

The foundation of the A2P messaging system is the Short Message Peer-to-Peer Protocol (SMPP), which serves as a communication relay between two entities. The SMPP controls how the entities interact when sending or receiving messages. 

One party will initiate an SMPP connection and choose where to send the message using SMPP. The communication is subsequently forwarded to the other entity through a Short Message Service Center (SMSC), which either accepts it or rejects it. 

Applying A2P messaging

Choosing the right approach for using A2P messaging in your company is key. To start, ensure you are aware of the areas in which the A2P solution would help your company. How could you leverage a constant instant communication channel with your customers to provide them with useful information that enhances their lives and their experience with your brand?

Put yourself in your customers’ position. What limitations, restrictions, or issues do they have with your service? A2P will only help increase value to the customer if you can address their issues by sending a message to their mobile device.

Here are some ways you can ensure your A2P messages get your point across and are appreciated by your customers:

Build your Opt-in Customer Database

You'll receive the best response from all marketing channels when using bulk SMS, along with permission-based marketing. You can increase the number of opt-in customers you have by using a variety of strategies, including mobile keywords, in-store competitions, and point-of-sale inquiries. The most important factor is that your clients are aware they will receive communications from you in the future.

Content

Before sending an A2P message, ask yourself this: Is this offer interesting enough to warrant interrupting my customer's day in order to receive it? Make sure the content in your messages is accurate, up-to-date, and enticing to your clients.

Personalize it

Ask for your customer's first name while creating your opt-in customer database. This will enable you to add a brief custom field that will personalize the message. The success percentage of your campaign will be substantially higher if you include customers’ names in your messages.

Don't include long, ugly URLs

Don't forget to abbreviate any links you want to share. In addition to wasting important character space, a lengthy link presents a very unprofessional image and runs the risk of being interpreted as spam by the recipient. Some of the best URL shortening services include Bitly, Goo.gl, and Ow.ly, where you can also track clicks on your links. 

Do not bombard customers with messages

It’s crucial to strike the correct balance while sending an SMS online. Think about how many text messages you’ve sent over the last month. Don’t overdo it; moderation is the key to success with this. 

Get creative with your sender ID

By changing your sender ID, you can give your SMS marketing campaign some personality and make your customers smile. After all, the days of businesses sticking to formal campaign formats are quickly disappearing because everyone enjoys a good laugh, which helps customers feel less intimidated by your brand.

Keep SMS campaigns short

Short and sweet is the key to success whether you're sending out a Black Friday deal, delivery update, or booking reminder. Within the confines of 160 characters, create something brief and concise. As a general guideline, 100 characters is the ideal number.

SMS is only the app on every phone

Text messaging is an established and incredibly dependable technology that has been used for more than 20 years and is still going strong. SMS is the only messaging program that comes pre-installed on every mobile phone globally, unlike WhatsApp, Viber, and other similar services.

Read rates are astonishing

Prepare for some mind-blowing statistics. 98% of bulk texts get read. 90% of communications are read within three minutes of delivery. The proof of how much customers love bulk text is in the statistics, which beat all other marketing channels.

Lots of choices

There are many bulk SMS suppliers on the market, and like any service, their quality varies. As a data controller, you must ensure that the vendors you communicate with are aware of data protection laws.

Marketing Benefits of A2P Messaging

The popularity of bulk A2P marketing among businesses can be attributed to a variety of factors. Here are some of the top benefits of an A2P marketing campaign:

1. A2P streamlines appointments

A2P marketing allows business owners to quickly and easily remind clients of scheduled appointments. This entire procedure is automated by A2P, meaning no human interaction is needed. The outcome is that people quickly get information regarding upcoming appointments.

The type of appointment, the time of the appointment, and other details can be customised in A2P messages so that recipients receive them immediately on their smartphones.

2. A2P is more effective than email

For years, businesses have used email to communicate important information to their clients. The issue with this is that emails have a notoriously low open rate, with most messages ending up in the Trash folder. Text messages, on the other hand, are less likely to be ignored by recipients. While most emails are sent from businesses looking to sell you something, most texts are sent from friends and family. If marketers use A2P, they could reach customers who no longer engage with emails.

3. A2P delivers messages quickly

Another advantage of A2P marketing is how quickly businesses can provide vital information to clients and customers. 90% of text messages are read within the first three minutes of receipt, according to research. Emails, however, can stay unopened in inboxes for a lot longer. 

Although marketers may have more room via mail and email to convey information, A2P messages are straightforward and brief. As a result, marketers can quickly deliver important information.

4. A2P is cheap

A business’s marketing efforts can be costly. However, brands will see a return on their investment if they invest in A2P. With this solution, they will not only save on their mail expenses but also avoid postal delays and lost letters. All in all, it’s safe to say that A2P is a low-cost marketing channel that companies can use to build and engage their customer base.

How our customers use Mobius Software's A2P messaging solutions

If you’ve been reading this and wondering which service to use for your A2P needs, you’re in luck! Mobius has the solution for you.

Designed for A2P SaaS solutions and high-traffic message-based interaction for any industry, Mobius A2P Gateway offers unsurpassed messaging performance with extreme flexibility and incredible performance due to the attached MongoDB servers. Based on configuration parameters, a single server can transmit up to 5,000 messages per second.

Mobius Software’s A2P solution offers:

• A service-ready solution
• Flexible message filtering
• Comprehensive message routing

Conclusion

As this article has demonstrated, bulk SMS messaging has taken a new direction. A2P messaging can undoubtedly offer marketers a quick and safe solution if they want to streamline appointments, increase open rates, send messages quickly, and save money. Additionally, A2P messaging is useful for increasing brand engagement and is widely used by enterprises for building strong customer relations and leveraging customer loyalty. 

To find out more about how to get started with A2P messaging with Mobius, click here.