Routing Profiles: Saving Money on International SMS

International SMS’ routing profiles will help preserve those precious budget Rands before, during and after 2010. Here’s what you need to know.

The main event of 2010 is approaching quickly and many businesses, hopefully yours included, will use international SMS to foster global relationships forged during this sporty period. But as we all know, it helps to look after the money we spend. Routing profiles are there to help you choose the destinations you want to send to based on cost.

The Default Routing Profile Settings

Routing profiles are intended for those international SMS messages sent to destinations that cost more than one message credit. When you log into your application or interface that you use to send SMS messages, such as Communicator, Messenger PRO, etc., one of the most common default settings is the active state of all routing profiles.

So what do you do now?

This is where it gets a bit more involved. Let’s say you’ve got a list of clients, some of whom are in 1-credit destination countries, some in 2-credit destination countries and the rest in 3-credit destination countries. A single active routing profile has to be ticked at all times, which means that you’ll have to make a choice as to who you want to send your international SMS messages to. If you examine the image, you’ll note that both (A) and (B) are ticked by default and as such will result in the automatic delivery of messages to 0.8 and 1-credit destinations. This means your choice will have to be between those destinations that cost more than 1 credit to send to.

How do you know what the credit cost per destination is? Simply navigate to your provider’s coverage page.

It’s in The Lists

Making the choice shouldn’t be such a difficult task. One way to choose an international SMS provider is to look at your own reports (when available) and see which countries will help you achieve a greater measure of success. This can be based on previous response rates or sales, and will mean that you’ll have to employ targeted messaging, which includes message personalisation and perhaps analysing the destination number’s (or rather, the individual connected to that number) purchase history. This can improve your chances of success with international SMS.

But it’s not always so easy, is it?

Here’s another example: Let’s say you have one address book with contacts in different countries and you’d like to target those individuals who’ve recently invested in what you have to offer. They’re not all in the same country, which means that you’re now left with two choices to achieve your international SMS messaging aims:

1. Send the messages individually,

or, much more preferred,

2. Create lists containing the individual contacts you want to get in touch with.

Quite naturally the key lies in doing regular maintenance on your contact lists to ensure that you have flexibility when it comes to international SMS. Also remember to keep track of your marketing campaign results on a per destination number basis, so that you’ll always be able to carry out targeted international SMS campaigns.

Want to know more about global short message communication? Read more on the international SMS page.

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