Is Bulk SMS the communication medium for Africa?
With over 20 million South Africans (approximately 68% of our adult population) using cellphones, bulk SMS is a fantastic tool for any business or organisation to expand their reach. Throughout South Africa and the entire African continent, cellphones are linking consumers to services, information, banking opportunities and the mobile internet; and bulk SMS is of direct benefit to organisations who want to send high volumes of messages to clients at the same time, regardless of their location.
Cellphones have become the most utilised communication device throughout the continent because of cost and accessibility factors that prevent the majority of African people from attaining fixed-line telephones or internet access. Following this trend, Google recently announced the launch of SMS services in Uganda as part of their research to determine the search engine needs of sub-Saharan African people. The pilot project, conducted last year, assessed the feasibility of mobile information delivery in Uganda by examining the kind of information requested. The Google research team offered Ugandans the chance to SMS any question they wanted answered in the language of their choice. In sub-Saharan Africa, both health questions around malaria and requests for information about HIV and AIDs were common. These SMS messages were then sent to the Google team, who responded instantly with the answer. During this pilot process, the team assessed how people phrased their queries and noted the kinds of questions being asked, in order to formulate the best way to structure their mobile search engine. Ultimately, however, the Google team will be replaced with a search engine tailored to respond from a bulk SMS platform.
The Google research project is just one example of how bulk SMS can empower people, reaching them almost instantaneously, wherever they are. Another instance in which SMS messaging improves lives in Africa is through health NGOs (non-government organisations). Because SMS messages can be automated to send a response in reply to an SMS containing a trigger word, a person can SMS their health or medicine query (for example: “Malaria”) to an NGO database and receive a triggered response to their question (such as a list of symptoms) via a bulk SMS platform. SMS messages can further be personalised with the recipient’s name, ID number or other defining characteristics.
Bulk SMS is also great for SMS marketing campaigns, SMS promotions, SMS competitions, SMS sales and SMS alert notifications, amongst other things. The fantastic strength of SMS messaging as a marketing device is that it is accepted and understood by everyone who owns a cellphone; and in Africa that is pretty much everyone.
Enable the spread of your South African business or organisation into the rest of the African continent with reliable bulk SMS solutions.
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