Consumers often look for convenience and speed when communicating with businesses. While voice service is essential, modern consumers want to text and chat with businesses for a more personalized experience. SMS is a popular way to communicate and can help your organization reduce messaging costs and provide better customer service. According to studies, 98% of text messages are opened, and nearly half of recipients respond to texts from businesses.
An SMS API allows you to integrate messaging into your business or client’s communication strategy seamlessly. Selecting the right text messaging platform for your messaging API is critical in ensuring your company or client has a business-enhancing messaging solution.
The Real Advantages of an SMS API
An application programming interface (API) allows two pieces of software to communicate and share functions and data. It eliminates hours of writing the software from scratch and provides a seamless solution for interfacing with another piece of software.
If you are implementing a messaging service into your client or company’s system, an SMS API can save you time and provide a simplified solution. Instead of spending hours programming from scratch, you can implement an API in just a few lines of code.
Messaging APIs allow your business or client to send and receive messages from software, such as an app or website, customer relationship management (CRM) solution, and automation solutions. Integrating text messaging can reduce the cost of communicating with users and make the customer experience more convenient and personalized.
What Can a Text Messaging API Help Your Business Accomplish?
Easy implementation and cost efficiency are two major appeals of using an SMS API. Customers prefer the option to message businesses, as it can be more convenient than making a phone call and feels more personal than an email. According to PR Newswire, while consumers prefer a phone call while they are driving or at home, 3 out of 4 consumers choose texting with businesses on their lunch break and prefer texts during office hours.
Text messaging APIs can offer an omnichannel approach to your client or business. Organizations use SMS to connect with consumers in the following ways.
Multifactor Authentication
A text messaging API allows your client or business to send a one-time password to authenticate users via SMS. Multifactor or two-factor authentication (2FA) is critical to websites and apps where users access sensitive information. Emails, social media profiles, financial institutions, and other information-sensitive sources provide a layer of security for their users with 2FA. When the user enters their login credentials and password, they receive a temporary code to their registered SMS-capable device, ensuring the login attempt comes from a trusted user.
Related: How SMS Activation Can Boost Local Customer Engagement and Keep Your Business Competitive
When implementing 2FA into an app or website, ensure your SMS provider offers 24/7 uptime and reliable messaging so users can log in at any time and receive quick authentication. Multifactor authentication messages require an application-to-person (A2P) registered number to ensure reliable delivery.
Appointment Reminders
If your company or client schedules clients for a service, appointment reminders can help reduce no-shows and maintain a profitable schedule. You may be designing an appointment reminder system for a healthcare provider, mechanic, contractor, or salon to help them ensure customers or patients keep their appointments.
An appointment reminder sends the recipient a reminder at a preprogrammed time, such as 24 hours before their appointment, to remind them of their schedule. The recipient can reply to the message to confirm their appointment, reschedule, or cancel, allowing the business to fill the appointment with another customer if necessary.
It’s essential to ensure appointment reminders are delivered reliably to keep clients informed and help the business manage its schedule. Poor reliability could result in the recipient getting the reminder late or not at all.
Marketing Campaigns
SMS also has a proven track record as an excellent marketing tool. Your company or client can use an SMS API to send notices, event invitations, and promotional material to potential and existing customers. The high open rates of text messaging ensure more recipients open and respond to the marketing campaign. A study in Forbes found that Americans check their phones 140 times per day or more on average, making messaging an ideal marketing method.
When sending SMS-based marketing materials, it’s a requirement to ensure recipients have signed up to receive messages from the business. The organization should document when and how the recipient signed up and offer a simple method of opting out of further messages. For instance, a company can place an advertisement at a sporting event, asking SMS users to text a keyword to their number for a chance to win a prize. When the SMS user opts in to receive messages from the company, the message should contain instructions on opting out, such as texting a keyword like “STOP.”
Message From Apps or Websites
The modern consumer accesses your organization’s apps and websites from SMS-capable mobile devices more often than non-capable devices. Adding a click-to-message button to the app or website provides a convenient avenue to communicate with users and provide a better customer service experience. Messaging is used by e-commerce websites, delivery companies, ride-sharing platforms, and dating apps to communicate and coordinate with users. The convenience of SMS makes it ideal for quick interactions.
An SMS API offers proxy messages that allow users to hide their phone number and name, avoiding privacy concerns while using dating and ride-sharing apps. A reliable SMS provider ensures drivers can coordinate efficiently with clients to maintain on-time pickup and delivery.
Integrate Messaging into a CRM
In addition to reaching customers, SMS is ideal for offering quick support and answering basic inquiries. If your client or company uses a CRM to manage customer interactions, integrating SMS can improve customer service with a more streamlined and personalized experience. Agents can send and receive messages to communicate with customers who prefer messaging.
Related: Understanding SMS Marketing Pricing: How to Maximize Your Budget
When combined with an MMS API, users can also send photos and videos via SMS/MMS. These types of visual media can help customers show support technicians the issues they are having with a product to ensure they get more exact answers. Support technicians can send step-by-step videos and photos to help resolve issues. Delivery and e-commerce companies can also use MMS to verify receipt of delivery and contents of packages to avoid cancellations and returns.
How to Ensure Seamless Integration of Your Messaging Solution
When integrating messaging into your client or company’s communication strategy, it’s critical to consider the right SMS partner. Ensure the communication platform has an API that can meet your organization’s needs and a messaging network that reliably delivers your business or client’s mission-critical messages. Consider the following factors to select an ideal partner.
Implementation
An SMS API reduces development, configuration, and testing time, ensuring your client or business has a seamless solution without hours of development. Select an API provider that offers documentation to help you implement SMS and the features your client or company desires. An ideal messaging API provider will have software development kits (SDKs), articles, use cases, and quickstarts to help you provide a seamless implementation in the programming language of your choice.
Scalability
Once the API is implemented, your client or company will benefit from a scalable solution to ensure it can grow its messaging campaigns without friction. A cloud-based messaging platform delivers unlimited scalability. With a flexible metered pricing structure, your organization will only pay for the messages it sends and receives within a billing period. The business won’t need to invest in costly equipment and infrastructure to bolster its messaging capabilities for a campaign and can scale back down without financial consequences.
Security
APIs connect your company or client’s software to a third party over the public internet, exposing the system to cyberattacks. It’s essential to find a provider that keeps its APIs up-to-date and secure. Reputable providers ensure you have the latest API and microservices with a version control system like GitHub.
Reliability
Reliability is critical to ensuring your company or client’s messages are received. Vital messages like 2FA require fast and reliable delivery 24/7. Ensuring SMS delivery also requires the correct SMS number and a service that avoids gray routes and aggregators. Keep in mind that applications that send messages in bulk require an A2P number and a 10-digit Long Code (10DLC).
Provide a Seamless Messaging Solution With SMS APIs
SMS APIs are a great solution for meeting your business or client’s messaging demands with seamless integration. The key is finding the right partner who offers support, reliability, security, and more. If your organization is looking to add omnichannel features, Flowroute is your ideal partner for API integration. SMS communications will be routed through our reliable HyperNetwork, avoiding gray routes and aggregators to ensure delivery.
Flowroute offers documentation and SDKs in Ruby, Python, PHP, and other popular languages to simplify integrating the service. We also have a GitHub with quickstarts in Docker containers that allow you to deploy microservices for features like 2FA and proxy messaging. Get started today with seamless business messaging from Flowroute.
