SMS Software or Gateway Integration? IT’s a Question of Resources

Should you use SMS software to send your bulk SMS messages or should you rather invest in-house?

It’s a simple question with an ostensibly easy answer. But the wrong choice could unnecessarily cost the business thousands of Rands. How do you decide between application programming interface (API) integration and 3^rd party software? Here’s a simple procedure to determine which one is right for you…

Step 1: Determine Your Messaging Needs

We’ve blogged about this extensively, but it always remains important: who will you message and why? Here’s are two examples to illustrate the importance of determining this requirement:

Monique’s Art Store: An antique art store periodically receives antique paintings worth quite a bit. To ensure that the paintings have the best chance of being sold they would like to get in touch with customers who’ve previously bought similar paintings.

Official Savings & Loans: To keep up with the times, this private bank would like to offer its customers more in terms of security and customer service. After a number of meetings, it was decided that a solution needs to be implemented that will inform customers when their accounts are accessed and also ensure that regular reminders are sent that will ensure that all instalment dates are adhered to.

In one of the above examples SMS software will work, in the other one it won’t.

Step 2: Do the Math

Of the two examples above, it’s obvious that one will send less messages than the other. Which solution will work out better for  the Art Store? Which solution for the bank?

Should the bank choose to go the SMS software route to save money on implementation, they might be faced with a situation where they need to employ someone on a full-time basis to watch the account logs to ensure that messages are sent as customers access their accounts. In this instance the answer is obvious – but in many instances the reality is a bit more complex, making the decision-making process a bit more difficult. That’s why it’s best to work out the costs before making that decision.

The same goes for the Monique’s – seeing as they probably don’t have a large customer base and might not get any new paintings in for a while, it seems unnecessary that they should suddenly spend money on API integration when a simple software download will do.

Step 3: Make the Decision

When you’ve finally done the math, take the time to figure out how SMS text messaging will fit into the businesses as a whole. Monique’s Art Store can obviously use text messaging in future marketing campaigns when they decide to branch out and sell other antiques that past and current clients might have an interest in.

Official Savings and Loans, on the other hand, can ensure that clients receive targeted messages based on the products they currently use or have shown an interest in.

From the examples above, it’s obvious that Monique’s will fare better with SMS software, while Official Savings and Loans will be able to enjoy the benefit of seamless integration with the SMS gateway. This is not only attributable to how SMS will be used, but also to which IT resources are available – Monique’s being smaller, will probably have to rely on an external software developer whereas Official Savings and Loands will have recourse to an internal development department.

However, regardless of whether they make use of software or it’s gateway counterpart, both these businesses are able to ensure that they gain a steady return on their investment by contacting customers with targeted information.

Read more about the various solutions available to businesses of all sizes. Go to our SMS software page now.

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