SMS notifications are the heart of business communication. From sending customer service updates, appointment reminders, order confirmations, event reminders, and marketing campaigns, to billing alerts, SMS notifications play a vital role in your communications strategy.
With an average click-through rate of 20%-35%, and open rates averaging around 95% (compared to email’s 21%), it’s no surprise why more teams prefer SMS as a channel to communicate and engage with their customers.
This guide will walk you through how SMS notification services work, their benefits for your business, and how to find the best SMS notification service for your business.
What is an SMS notification service?
An SMS notification service is a platform that lets you send text messages to your customers instantly. Depending on the customer’s mobile device settings, they’ll receive this SMS text message notification on their cell phone’s messaging app, lock screen, or home screen.
Here’s how it works:
- Integrate an SMS API (Application Programming Interface) into your existing systems.
- When a trigger event occurs (like a new order or an appointment reminder), the system communicates with the SMS gateway.
- The gateway then processes and sends the message to the customer's mobile network within seconds.
{{cta-style-1}}
4 key benefits of an SMS notification system
Sending text messages to your customers helps you build meaningful connections and communities with your customers. It adds a useful dimension to your overall communications strategy. With SMS, you can reach customers where they’re most likely to engage (their phones), in ways that they want to connect (concisely and creatively).
An SMS notification system makes sending text messages to your customers easier and faster — without exorbitant costs or development hassle.
Let’s take a look at the core benefits of using an SMS notification system.
- Instant communication with customers: A reliable SMS notification system allows you to send messages quickly and at scale helping you reach thousands of recipients at a relatively low cost.
- High open and response rates: Do you have an exciting offer you want your customers to see as soon as possible? SMS is the best way to reach your audience in seconds.
- Cost-effective method of communication: SMS is a cost-effective way to reach customers at scale. Generally, the price of an SMS notification system depends on two factors: the tool's price and the number of messages sent per campaign. Many tools have fixed costs, although Plivo offers a pay-as-you-go pricing model. This option is great for small-to-medium businesses to connect with their customers affordably.
- Improved customer engagement and satisfaction: SMS notification systems allow you to deliver personalized text messages. Segment your audience based on who they are, what drives them, and how and why they shop. A dedicated SMS notification system can automate some of these complex backend functions.
Why should you choose Plivo as your SMS notification system?
Sending SMS is simple and affordable with Plivo. We’re trusted by thousands of businesses including IBM, Workday, Deckers, Greyhound, and Wix. Our SMS API platform programmatically sends and receives text messages to customers worldwide easily and efficiently. We support over 220 countries and territories, and let you customize your sender ID in 100 countries outside of the US and Canada.
Plivo offers a number of powerful features out of the box:
- Long message concatenation
- Support for any character set
- Default message body purging
- Message feedback API
- Handle opt-out intent
- Message queueing
- Number pooling
- Sticky sender
- Smart queuing
- Message redaction
All of these features are designed to make it easier to create, manage, and optimize SMS with your audiences. See why Plivo outranks other SMS notification systems.
1. Scalable solutions for businesses of all sizes
It shouldn’t be hard to connect with your customers as your business grows. Plivo is designed to meet your scaling needs, both from a cost and ease-of-use perspective.
With Plivo, you can programmatically create personalized SMS alerts and notifications for any type of activity on customers’ accounts. Plivo’s RESTful API is easy to work with, and its syntax is familiar to developers who have experience with Twilio’s API.
The SMS notification system doubles down on ease of use by offering Plivo High-Level Objects (PHLO). PHLO is a visual design studio that lets you build customized communication workflows for both SMS and voice with zero coding.
The studio uses pre-built templates for tasks like IVR, voicemail, alerting, and surveys, so your development team isn’t bogged down with complicated technical details and is focused more on delivering the project at hand.
Plivo offers flexible pricing plans and volume discounts, making SMS notification an extremely affordable option.
2. Easy integration with existing systems
Plivo's SMS API is designed to integrate seamlessly into your existing applications. Whether you're using Java, C#, Python, PHP, Ruby, Node.js, or Golang, Plivo provides comprehensive server-side SDKs and detailed documentation to help you get started quickly.
The API uses consistent interfaces for creating, retrieving, updating, deleting, and listing resources. This consistency makes it easier to build and manage applications, with the ability to handle multiple SMS messages in a single API request.
Built-in support for GSM and Unicode character sets allows you to communicate in any language, including emojis and special characters. This feature ensures that your messages are correctly displayed to recipients globally.
3. Comprehensive analytics and reporting
When it comes to analytics, two things matter the most: what kind of data your tool collects and how well it distills that data so you can truly collect useful insights and make data-driven decisions.
Plivo provides access to detailed SMS analytics for all your inbound and outbound messages including:
- Date: The time at which the message was queued in Plivo.
- From: The source number of the text message.
- To: The destination number of the text message.
- To country: Country ISO of the destination country.
- Direction: Message direction — Inbound or Outbound.
- Status: The current status of the message.
Statuses for Outbound messages aresome text- Queued
- Failed
- Send
- Delivered
- Undelivered
- Statuses for Inbound messages aresome text
- Received
- Delivered
- Undelivered
- Error reason: The reason for failure in cases where message status is Undelivered or Failed
- Total amount ($): Total amount charged for this message. This includes the carrier pass-through fees.
Using a combination of these filters, you can narrow your search to relevant messages. You can also download the message details as a CSV file to export to a third-party analytics tool.
4. Optimize message delivery
If you want to send your messages across a group of phone numbers (long code and short code), you can use Plivo’s powerpack for SMS. Powerpack lets you create number pools that can be used to improve message delivery and boost open rates of your SMS and MMS campaigns.
Plus, it uses a sticky sender for a consistent experience. Engage with your customers using a recognizable phone number to deliver a personalized experience that integrates information from the customer’s history with your brand.
Features like automatic smart queuing along with source number-based rate limiting keep you compliant with country-specific volume restrictions and related rate limits. It also lets you use local phone numbers because when you send messages from a local number, customers are more likely to open and respond to messages.
How businesses use Plivo’s SMS notification services
Companies at different stages of growth use Plivo to build deeper relationships with customers. Our SMS platform gathers customer insights while empowering communication campaigns that boost customer acquisition and build customer loyalty.
Here are some of the most common ways companies use Plivo:
- Customer service updates: Companies use Plivo to send instant updates to customers about their service requests, ensuring they stay informed about the status of their queries or issues.
- Appointment reminders: Plivo helps businesses reduce no-shows by sending automated reminders to customers about their upcoming appointments, enhancing overall efficiency and customer satisfaction.
- Marketing campaigns: Businesses use Plivo to run marketing campaigns, sending promotional messages, discounts, and special offers directly to customers’ mobile phones, driving engagement and sales.
- Emergency notifications: In urgent situations, organizations rely on Plivo to send emergency alerts to employees or customers, ensuring timely and reliable communication during critical times.
Ready to get started with SMS notifications for your business? Request a trial with Plivo.
