Benefits of Receiving SMS Alerts from Temperature Sensors

The widespread use of technology has led to different kinds of innovative applications in almost all domains. One amongst these advancements is temperature sensors that determine the degree of hotness or coolness and convert it into a readable unit, which can be further sent to interested recipients via SMS to help in malfunction monitoring or early alarming.

Medical applications, food monitoring, packaging, petrochemical handling, automotive monitoring, biological research, geological studies, HVAC systems and consumer electronics, temperature sensors play a crucial role in all these fields.

Apart from measuring optimal heat and humidity levels, many temperature sensors act as preventative warning systems that determine whether there are impending risks or malfunction. Overheating detection plays crucial role in those systems, thus protecting from major disasters like fire. Temperature sensors which are now affordable and easy to use may prove very effective in early alarming and prevention.

There are many temperature sensors, but they are commonly categorized as contact and non-contact temperature sensors.

Contact sensors are those in direct contact with the object they are to measure and include thermocouples thermistors, thermostats, thermistors, Resistive Temperature Detectors (RTD), and Thermocouples sensors. Semiconductor-Based sensors also fall under this category.

The non-contact temperature sensors measure thermal radiation. They are often used in hazardous environments like nuclear power plants or thermal power plants. Some examples: Optical pyrometers, radiation thermometers, thermal imagers, and fiber optic sensors

These sensors combined with external systems that warn of impeding threshold levels can send alerts via for examples SMS texts to the connected devices about temperature levels. Any untoward activity can thus be easily caught via these messages.

Automatic Alerts:

These messages can detect unusually high and low temperatures via these message alerts. This can keep track of the proper functioning of the devices. Any slight change in temperature sets off a notification about the rise or drop in temperature. One can take appropriate action by lowering or raising the temperature through remote control or informing the relevant offices.

Regular monitoring:

Regular monitoring can help to detect irregularities and easily map usage patterns. It takes out the manual aspect of checking on the temperature in a facility, unit, or device as regular updates are received.

Conclusion

Temperature sensors help improve productivity and safety by monitoring and tracking temperature levels across many industries. Combined with fast alarms and notifications, sensors are lifesavers in hazardous environments. They also help in the effective maintenance of devices and facilities.

SMSEagle NXS-line devices can be easily equipped with external temperature sensors, allowing you to take leverage their advantages in the rapid notification of problems via SMS. SMSEagle application allows to setup automatic alerts for the sensors and provides regular monitoring of the ambient temperature via historic temperature chart.

Create the right solution for your operation

Your obstacles are unique, and the solutions for them should be too. The functions of SMSEagle allow companies to incorporate SMS alerts and notifications into their systems in a way that makes sense to them. To find out how SMSEagle will allow you to create the solution you need, get in touch with our team.

Daily SMS Mobile Usage Statistics 2021

With the growing popularity of communicative services like social media, FaceTime, and now VR, it is perhaps surprising to see that the numbers tell a different story. As popular as the aforementioned may be, none seems to come close to SMS in the realm of marketing.

Featured below are some of the statistics that spell out that your customers want you to contact them via SMS. Not email, not ads on other mobile apps. And definitely not social media DMs!

Let’s take a deeper dive into some of the most intriguing data on mobile usage and SMS out there –

This might be no shocker to a lot of people. 83.96% of the total population of Earth owns a smartphone. That is 6.64 Billion users with active SMS services.

For businesses that have been hesitant to use text message marketing, never has been a better time to launch your SMS campaign. The number of people you can reach via this communication method is simply gigantic.

Texts intended for marketing are just not perceived as spam. Perhaps it has something to do with just how old SMS is as a service. Perhaps it is about how well the text is written.
Regardless, with an open rate of 98%, there is no excuse to not employ text messaging in your marketing campaign.

This is one of those facts that reflects just how much the world has changed. According to this survey, 48% of people felt like smartphones are now a part of their lives that they just couldn’t make do without it in 2021.

SMS marketing’s biggest benefit has been agreed upon by the majority of marketers to be its speed – followed by heightened customer engagement and cost-effectiveness. The same survey also revealed that 50% of respondents said that flash sales and time-sensitive promotions would encourage them to opt into a business’s text messages.

Most of the participants of this survey were also open to receiving text notifications about the following:

  • Shipment tracking (75%)
  • Order status/confirmation (65%)
  • Scheduling reminders/alerts (46.3%)

For whatever reason, the newer generations are expected to be more in-touch with portals like SnapChat or Facebook. However, this report found that users preferred communicating with businesses via SMS, Baby Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y, and Gen Z alike.

Expanding upon the previous finding, millennials claim that they are more likely to open/respond to marketing texts.

  • 83% of millennials would rather text your business than call a customer service helpline.
  • They prefer not being contacted via social media channels like Twitter or Facebook.
  • Texting is the most preferred channel for notifications.
  • A fifth of respondents had never received a text from a business.

This brings us one step closer to uncovering the mystery of SMS marketing’s efficiency. 59% of people want their communications to be built into their phones and don’t prefer using a separate app for the same.

As opposed to the 49.7% of marketing emails being marked as spam, SMS is only viewed by a selected few to be undesirable.

This is yet another step forward into understanding why there is no generational gap when it comes to the preference of SMS as a means of communication with businesses. With over 56% finding SMS to be faster and 74% of users feeling no difficulty with the mode, a text marketing campaign just cannot go wrong.

In Conclusion

These findings clarify one thing – mobile phones and SMS marketing are thriving right now. Text marketing is changing the way companies communicate securely with customers and should be on the campaign bucket list of every business.

Create the right solution for your operation

Your obstacles are unique, and the solutions for them should be too. The functions of SMSEagle allow companies to incorporate SMS alerts and notifications into their systems in a way that makes sense to them. To find out how SMSEagle will allow you to create the solution you need, get in touch with our team.

Why SMS is so Effective at Prompting Action

The masses view texting as a trusted means of communication. Probably due to its lack of connection with the internet. SMS campaigns can prompt action because of their closeness to the user.

And due to this very reason, SMS marketing campaigns have been utilized by companies for years before Email marketing, or Instagram Ads were a thing. In this article, we will be going over why SMS is so effective at prompting action and how you, as a business owner, can leverage the power of SMS marketing.

Time & Cost Effective

SMS marketing is extremely beneficial for starting campaigns almost instantaneously. SMS campaigns are time efficient because there are only two things that need to be decided on before commencing it: the message and the senders’ list.

On the other hand, for things like offering customers information about deals and discounts, and responding to company information. It was found that 90% of most messages are read between 3 minutes of them being sent. This makes the click through rate of SMS much more effective than most channels.

The time efficiency of SMS campaigns comes from it being a two-step process. This also means that most SMS campaigns are highly cost effective too. SMS marketing can amount to significant savings in time and finances with a high click-through rate. This is what makes SMS such a high ROI channel.

Text Messages Are Direct

While channels like email have entire sections dedicated to spam messages, it is found that only 1% of receivers consider their text messages spam. SMS is especially more effective because it arrives directly in the recipient’s inbox. Moreover, these SMS notifications will often  remain as an alert on the receiver’s device until it is opened and/or responded to.

The reason SMS works has to do with it being a direct feature of cell phones. Users don’t need to login or open any apps as they would with other channels.

There is an overwhelming amount of content created each day. Users are, therefore, much more wary of where they invest their attention. However, SMS overrides this challenge by dropping right into a person’s phone.

SMS Can Be Used As Appointment Reminders

At the event of your company organizing a fundraiser, seminar, or just a simple exhibit, attendance is key. And there’s only one thing worse than low sign-up rates, people who sign-up but don’t show up.

While trying to theorize the reasons behind their absences goes nowhere, we can theorize possible solutions. And arguably, the most effective of them is SMS reminders.

SMS services, if used as reminders, can do wonders for this problem. A simple text reminding each employee about an oncoming appointment significantly improves attendances and can be the way out for many companies going through a rut.

Call-to-Action Text

Incorporating call-to-action (CTA) text can increase customer engagement by a great margin. When customers have a clear idea of what their next step should be to consume your product, they are much more likely to click through. Some of the best ways to include CTA in your SMS campaigns are as follows:

  • Attention-grabber texts followed by “Click here” are very likely to get receivers signed up for your events.
  • Asking customers to enter “Text-to-Win” contests can highly increase customers’ engagement. Even when huge events are not in your schedule, Text-to-Win campaigns can remind customers of your existence and continue to increase traffic and sales.
  • Ending your targeted messages with “Buy now” can drive sales on products that your regular customers might be unaware of. A text promoting that product with a “Buy now” button makes it easier for routine customers to make purchases.

Conclusion

With millions of SMS getting sent every day, it isn’t even a huge challenge to incorporate SMS messages into your marketing strategy. Oftentimes businesses reap more benefits by complementing an email marketing strategy with SMS. Craft effective messages, analyze your buyer demographics, and invest in SMS-specific sales marketing to explore the true potential of your SMS campaigns.

SMS Gateways: Alarms and Notifications for Offline Environments

As the news of 5G towers are surfacing, we are leaving old technology like pagers and SMS far behind in the past. But with these rapid developments rise concerns about privacy and security. And surprisingly, the answer to these concerns sometimes is not more advanced tech, but a return to our technological roots with intention.

In this piece, we shall look at the need for notification systems in High Availability Offline Environments and why SMS Gateway services can be the answer.

Monitoring High Availability Offline Environments

High-Availability (HA) environments are well-tested and strongly equipped systems that are dependable enough to operate continuously without failing. These environments focus on avoiding single points of failure and ensure that their application continues to process requests.

In these high availability systems, effective monitoring and notification systems can make huge differences. For example, during situations of connective scarcity, effective management of notifications is crucial, as these alerts can often be the difference between solving the crisis and suffering extreme losses. Or during unforeseen malfunctions that run the risk of interrupting the business-critical application processes, notifications and alerts become extremely important as a lack of rapid recovery will lead to a snowball effect and harm the HA environment.

These notifications and alerts are usually in the form of push notifications, that is, notifications via mobile app, phone call, email, and SMS.

But for offline environments, the narrative is a little different. Offline environments may develop due to different causes, the most common ones being cutting off the internet due to security measures or internet inaccessibility due to the nature of the location.

Despite the offline nature of said systems, aiming to keep a High Availability environment is often the priority. As discussed earlier, notification and alert systems in high availability systems play a significant role. Most of these push notification features get bottlenecked when the systems are offline, except for two – Calls, and SMS.

What are Hardware SMS Gateways and How Do They Work?

When all the other ways of communicating effectively among peers are blocked in Offline Environments, only SMS and phone calls remain. And this is where hardware SMS gateway devices come in.

An SMS gateway is an interface that allows users to send SMS without phones. Hardware SMS gateways offer a direct connection to 3G/4G cellular operators, without Internet.

How it works? To send and receive text messages, hardware SMS gateway must obtain a connection to a short message service centre (SMSC) which is a special server inside a cellular network. In 4G LTE (packet-based all-IP) network SMS is encapsulated in a SIP message and carried over IMS core network to SMSC. In 3G UMTS network SMS is sent using the SRB (Signaling Radio Bearers). In both cases these are internal connections only within a cellular network. When a text message is received in short message service centre (SMSC) it is forwarded to its intended address via cellular network core. SMSCs are responsible for routing text messages and regulating the messaging process. If the recipient is unavailable (for example, when the mobile phone does not have network access), the SMSC stores the SMS message and then forwards it when the receiver is available.

Hardware SMS Gateways As The Solution

Hardware SMS Gateways are the most opted-for solution in High Availability Offline Environments as a communication system. Here are some of the reasons why:

  • communication access via a cellular network (WITHOUT the Internet),
  • on-premise installation that allows complete data confidentiality
  • high reliability,
  • remote accessibility

Hardware SMS gateway devices continue to be a feasible and secure solution to offline workplace disruptions.

SMSEagle provides world-proven and dependable devices as hardware SMS/MMS Gateway manufacturer. SMSEagle devices are easily configured and managed via a web browser, are easily integrated via integration plugins or API . SMSEagle’s Network Monitoring feature may be also used to you conserve your high availability in a small scale.

Network Security Essentials: A Checklist for your Business

I hardly need to labour the point that network security is essential in an age where companies of all sizes are hacked. Hardly a week goes by without data breach headlines in the mainstream media. 2021 is so exception so far, with high-profile hacks including LinkedIn, Parler (an almost complete website scraping in this case), Mimecast, U.S. Cellular and many more. The reasons for these successful breaches, which compromised the data and privacy of clients, ranged from targeted attacked, exploits on misconfigured cloud services and unsecured data to malware injection and scamming. Many of these data breaches could have been prevented. It makes you wonder why, in 2021, companies (large and small) are still so careless and cavalier with important client data, especially when you consider that lack of IT personnel or funds is not an issue for the global giants. Didn’t these companies have a simple checklist or basic code of practice for network security? Remember to protect all client data as if it were your own data by using encryption, authenticated access and any other precaution possible. Consider the following an overview or starting point for creating your own checklist.

The Basics

Let’s assume, as many do, that larger companies have a handle on the basic elements of network security. Firewalls are configured correctly. Administrators have a full list of their hardware and software and all security updates and patches are installed promptly. They have a robust backup procedure that ensures prompt restoration of company data even after a ransomware attack. Brilliant! Now what?

Despite the naysayers, password management is still an issue and not due to password length, authentication method or complexity but instead due to longevity i.e., passwords are in use too long without being changed.

Employees will also log into personal solutions during office hours and if part of a BYOD policy, ALL will have devices approved and with OS versions approved by IT? Again, let’s assume enterprises have no flaws in all these areas, despite almost daily reports of data breaches. Enterprise-level solutions seek to address more advanced problems…

SIEM, NGF and User Error Prevention

Modern network security is aimed at identifying emerging threats and reducing the impact of human error (which is still the biggest threat to your data). In fact, a recent joint study from Stanford University and Tessian indicates that 88% of all data breaches are caused by employee error. The Blame Game is not the solution here as the study also points out that “Your employees are focused on the job you hired them to do and when faced with to-do lists, distractions, and pressure to get things done quickly, cognitive loads become overwhelming and mistakes can happen.”

Therefore, recognising that security awareness training is not the entire solution and that employees are not cybersecurity experts, companies must use technology to help with the problem. While classified as enterprise solutions, most of them are available to smaller companies, whether it’s next-generation firewalls (NGFWs), analytics-driven security information and event management (SIEM) or remote solutions offered as-a-service. All companies should perform a risk assessment and identify their greatest threats to network and data security, then and then arranging a trial of available solutions.

Even a brief look at NGFWs will confirm they are a key step in enhancing cybersecurity, including basic firewall function with several additional benefits. These include intrusion detection systems (IDS), intrusion prevention systems (IPS), application awareness from Layer 2 to 7, reduced infrastructure footprint, and antivirus and malware protection. Finally, NGFWs do not affect your network speed. Surely, a worthy purchase that can help reduce user errors by blocking threats?

Email & Internet

Your anti-malware solution (if not part of a NGFW) must scan incoming emails and monitor internet traffic. Companies need to decide if they prefer to only allow certain websites (based on a whitelist) or block some (based on another list). Whatever you decide, security (and perhaps productivity is the primary consideration). Different companies will have different ideas on this and are free to do so, since company-owned equipment is involved. However, I’d advise against keyloggers, surveillance cameras and the like as they can affect employee morale.

Ransomware and Backups

There is always the possibility of an emerging threat penetrating your firewall and ransomware is the worst of these, requiring that a ransom is paid (and that we ‘trust’ the cybercriminal to act ethically?) or full restoration from clean backups. Therefore, your backup and disaster recovery plans must be fully tested and verified as working before the worst happens. It’s obviously too late when it’s discovered the backup is worthless. Industry practice is to have at least three backups with at least one air-gapped (drives or tapes stored in a fireproof safe, for example). Backup verification is worth emphasising… Ever heard of bit rot? It’s the death of hard drives, SSDs and tapes (all magnetic media, in fact) over time and underlines the need for regular backup or archive verification.

In conclusion, all the above and any additional technological solutions you wish to make to mitigate identified risks should be part of an overall IT policy, outlining security goals with examples and user scenarios where possible. Security is an ongoing task and is constantly evolving as new threats emerge. That is the reason for data backups, penetration tests, encryption and other processes. If BYOD is present, do you have a mobile device management (MDM) solution? An employee has left the company. How long do you wait before disabling the user account and all LAN credentials? How about DHCP? These and other questions are yours to answer when ensuring maximum LAN protection. How will you proceed, or do you already include all these recommendations in your security posture? If so, well done, you’re immediately ahead of many global companies…

Use Hybrid IT To Maximise Remote Working Benefits

At its simplest and according to industry insiders, the term ‘hybrid IT’ is used almost exclusively to describe a combination of on-premise and cloud-based services. In my opinion, it could also be used to describe the IT infrastructure and processes necessary to allow office-based employees to work from home when necessary. For many companies and indeed governments, it became necessary during the current Covid-19 pandemic and unfortunately, they soon discovered that their business continuity/emergency response plans failed in many areas.

Allowing Working from Home

The decision to allow working from home (WFH) is never taken lightly by company management as many believe that employees require supervision, direction, or management and that a lack of these leads to a lack of productivity. Among professional employees, the reverse is often true. Business or organisational stakeholders must embrace the concept of remote working, especially true during a pandemic. However, they don’t have to blindly accept it and will follow a logical process before rolling out a remote working solution that minimises risk and secures data.

As Przemysław Jarmużek, IT Administrator at SMSEagle, is quick to point out,” From an operational perspective, it’s essential that IT and all department heads perform a brainstorming exercise to not only define all remote requirements and offer some proposed solutions but also to identify the potential risks involved. The ideal solution will maximise efficiency and minimise risk to your organisation’s digital assets.”

Is Remote Working Viable?

Remote working is only a viable solution for your organisation if it allows business continuity, even if solutions are provided in a reduced manner. Not all companies or industries benefit from it. Anything requiring hands-on interaction with the public is impossible during pandemic lockdowns, for example. This can include barbers, brick-and-mortar retail outlets or indeed hotels, restaurants or trade services such as plumbing, electrical or construction. “To benefit from remote working, your organisation is comprised of an office-based environment, where the fixed office setting is duplicated at home and allows the completion of tasks normally performed while connected to the company LAN,” said Radosław Janowski, Product Manager at SMSEagle.

The Home or Remote Office

Have your employees the space or equipment necessary for a home office? Most will agree that access to high-speed broadband is essential. If your employee is in an area that does not support it, then remote working is doomed to failure unless a solution is found. Should your employee invest in broadband (unlimited 4G, for example) and office equipment such as a printer without compensation? I don’t think so and good companies will ensure that at least a percentage of any additional setup costs are reimbursed.

While it’s certainly true that most households will have a family computer or two, it’s unreasonable (and poor security practice) to expect employees to use these workstations for work. IT need access to all systems used for work and unless a BYOD policy is in play, it’s best to avoid using an employee’s own equipment. Why? Because IT will need to audit the device before remote working takes place. They will need to install additional security software as users no longer have the protection of company firewalls, endpoint protection etc. In additional, IT must ensure that the device is ‘clean’ before allowing remote connection to the company LAN or related services. They must install a secure VPN to ensure permission-based access only – secure user authentication is often a problem for a variety of reasons. The list goes on, suffice to say that any devices used remotely must be as secure as any on the company network.

Collaboration and Interaction

Once the overall IT security strategy for remote working is decided on, it’s up to each department to recommend their chosen solutions for remote connection to the network (document access, for example) and any tools they need for effective collaboration with clients, suppliers and colleagues. You are effectively replacing onsite processes and operations with virtual ones over a remote connection.

To give one example, your company may have weekly, biweekly or daily internal meetings. When working from home, if you do not have a VoIP solution in place, what will you choose? Zoom got a new lease of life during the pandemic, but many companies use Skype or WebEx. There are many other options to choose from.

How about document management and sharing? Will you choose cloud solutions such as OneDrive or Google Drive? Perhaps you use a lot of cloud-based solutions such as Office 365, Salesforce. OR you prefer to access an internal document management system with full tracking, versioning etc. Whatever you decide, data security is a must as governing laws, privacy regulations and compliance requirements remain unchanged. You can use any combination of private, public or hybrid cloud solutions in addition to remote connection to the company LAN for internally managed data.

In conclusion, the main thing to remember is that remote working has its place, even without a pandemic, and once set up correctly by IT, poses few security risks. The process of extending the security perimeter to include remote workers is quite painless, should involve company-owned and monitored equipment (using approved software and services) and compensate employees for any expenses in initial setup and ongoing costs. Uptime is even more critical and network monitoring and alerts should be considered on the company LAN.

Remote working is possible for all companies who can benefit from it and as someone who’s worked remotely for more than ten years, I can state that morale is not an issue. In addition, productivity is higher as there are no distractions or conversations around the water cooler.

SMS Usage Statistics in 2019. Market Predictions for 2020-2023 and Beyond

It was December 3, 1992. That’s the date that Neil Papworth sent the world’s first text message. More than 26 years later, SMS has grown into a powerful marketing and communication tool.

Today, trillions of SMS text messages connect billions of people and benefits millions of businesses and marketers immensely. SMS helps businesses generate outsized positive ROI.

In this article, we’ll review the most recent SMS usage statistics. Be warned! These stats might compel you to take your SMS marketing seriously.

Global SMS and Usage Statistics


Image Credit: GSMA Intelligence

The number of mobile users is increasing and will continue to soar. In a GSMA report, mobile users will go from five billion users in 2019 to 5.7 billion in 2020. This growth will increase market penetration of mobile phones from 67 percent to 72 percent in that period. Hence, an increase in the use of SMS.

The GSMA statistics support Statista’s predictions that smartphone users will grow from 3.2 billion to 3.8 billion from 2019 to 2021. Another Statista report posits the number of mobile subscribers globally will reach 7.33 billion in 2023.


Screenshot from Statista

The growing number of mobile devices means SMS remains a viable communication platform.

In America, over 272 million people own smartphones. And they collectively check their phones tens of billions of times every day; an average person picks up their phone 58 times a day.

Let us look at some of the global SMS and usage statistics.

  •  In 2024, the global application to person (A2P) SMS API market will reach $245.9 million based on a CAGR of 4.1 percent from 2017 to 2024. However, the A2P SMS market will grow at a CAGR of 4.2 to reach a valuation of $86.53 billion in 2025.
  • The A2P SMS market is stronger in the USA, growing at 6.2 percent to reach a valuation of $31.7 billion in 2022.
  • Phone users read over 90 percent of text messages within three minutes of receipt.

SMS Marketing Statistics for Businesses


Screenshot from Ericsson

According to Ericsson, the number of mobile subscriptions in 2020 will exceed eight billion. Smartphones and feature phones will contribute to 73 percent and 23.4 percent of that growth, respectively.

Let’s explore the conversion and response rates of SMS.


Screenshot from Finances Online

  • Retailers that use promotional SMS for their CRM initiatives enjoy a 23.3 percent conversion rate.
  • Compared to calls, 64 percent of customers prefer using two-way text messages when interacting with customer service. Most of these customers are younger people and they cite efficiency and convenience as their top reasons for preferring text messages.
  • About 75 percent of customers enjoy receiving special offers by text message. Messages sent this way convert at 9.18 percent, which is several times higher than the 0.9 percent and 1.91 percent of Facebook and Google Ads, respectively.


Image Created by Nicholas Godwin for SMSEagle.eu

  • The fastest growing marketing channel is customers opting in to receive business text messaging services. In 2016, 37.2 million customers used this channel,  in 2020 48.7 million customers in the US are choosing the channel.
  • In 2019, businesses spent $165.7 billion on mobile ads. In that year, 90 percent of US consumers indicated that they prefer to receive text ads.
  • In 2019, the conversion rate of SMS campaigns stand at 45 percent.


Screenshot from Finances Online

  • Eighty-five percent of consumers and buyers want to go beyond receiving just information from businesses, they want to hold text conversions with these businesses.
  • SMS open rate stands at 98 percent because receivers must read them before they delete them. Whereas, open rates for Facebook posts, email messages, and Tweets stand at 12 percent, 20 percent, and 29 percent, respectively.
  • HubSpot reports that the average click through rate of URLs in text messages is 19 percent, meanwhile, email stands at 4.2 percent.

Marketing SMS Usage Statistics


Screenshot from GlobalWebIndex

  • According to a 2019 Social Flagship report by GlobalWebIndex, 48 percent of internet users share content with their peers through text messages. Only 37 percent of users share information via email.


Screenshot from eMarketer

  • The US mobile messaging app usage, including SMS app usage, will go from 161.6 million users in 2020 to hit 171.3 million users in 2022. This growth will go from 56.1 percent of the US population to 58.1 percent of US users.
  • SMS Comparison further reveals that SMS has a higher clickthrough rate (CTR) when compared to other marketing like Facebook and Google AdWords. The Click-through rate for SMS stands at 9.18 percent, while Facebook and Google AdWords have a CTR of 0.90 percent and 1.91 percent, respectively.


Screenshot from OpenMarket

Sixty-two percent of buyers are not getting SMS notifications from retailers. In Travel and Hospitality, 75 percent of travellers and vacationers are not receiving any SMS communication from train operators, hotels, and airlines.

  • According to SMS Comparison, nine out of ten customers will prefer to communicate with companies via text message. That stat applies to one-way communication by alerts, reminders, and notifications, or two-way communications.


Screenshot from Finances Online

  • Mobile marketing, including SMS marketing, is driving more purchases for businesses in 2020. Businesses in these three industries are seeing the most increase in sales due to mobile marketing: 54 percent of restaurants, 40 percent of apparels and beauty, and 36 percent of electronics.
  • According to Rebrandly, using branded links on your SMS campaigns will increase clickthrough rate by 39 percent and boost brand visibility.
  • The top four reasons why consumers pay attention to a marketing message in their mobile phone are:  brand familiarly at 54 percent, content that’s interesting and creative at 52 percent, excellent timing at 41 percent, and promotional offers such as coupons at 41 percent.


Screenshot from Finances Online

  • By end-of-year 2019 the mobile phone sales market would witness a 19 percent drop because of longer phone replacement cycles.


Screenshot from Finances Online

  • Researchers expect to see 49 million consumers opting to receive marketing messages from brands in 2020. Following the COVID-19 outbreak, Gartner says that SMS will become vital for businesses that want to keep touch with their audiences and customers at this time.

SMS Statistics from the Financial Service Industry

Mobile SMS banking has become a dominant trend

  • According to the Business Insider Intelligence Mobile Banking Competitive Edge study by Business Insider,  89 percent of customers say they utilize mobile banking services.
  • According to Coherent Marketing Insights, the transactional SMS market share will reach 47.4 percent by 2027.

What Does the Future Hold for SMS and SMS Marketing?

The SMS industry will continue to witness an upward swing. Future projections have shown that recent advancements in technology will shape consumers’ behavior and how businesses utilize SMS.


Screenshot from Juniper Research

Let’s take a look at some of the predictions.

  • According to the Coherent Marketing Insights, the global bulk SMS marketing industry will hit a CAGR of 7.4 percent between 2019-2027.
  • Juniper Research estimated that the number of business text messages in 2020 would reach 3.5 trillion messages from the 2.5 trillion messages in 2019.


Screenshot from Juniper Research

  • Given the high engagement rates of SMS marketing and the intelligent automation capabilities of chatbots, experts expect that SMS chatbots will continue to grow for the foreseeable future.


Screenshot from OpenMarket

  • From 2019 to 2027 the global market for bulk SMS marketing service will grow at a CAGR of 7.2 percent.

Final Words

From the usage statistics we have outlined here, it’s clear that the future of SMS is promising.

SMS remains the most underutilized, yet most engaging marketing and communication channel. And it’ll continue to witness adoption across multiple industries including financial services, healthcare, hospitality, transportation, and more.

With a massive open rate of 98 percent, SMS has the potential to deliver significant value for businesses. As a marketer, SMS communications means your customers will most likely read your message.

Furthermore, SMS marketing can help businesses boost customer reach. They can improve customer engagement and increase revenues. Businesses that engage in SMS marketing will continue to enjoy these enormous benefits if they employ the right strategies.

The beautiful thing about SMS is that it is cost-effective and can form an essential part of your integrated marketing strategy. You should go ahead and invest in SMS. I’m sure you will be glad you did.

Create the right solution for your operation

Your obstacles are unique, and the solutions for them should be too. The functions of SMSEagle allow businesses to incorporate SMS communications into their systems in a way that makes sense to them. To find out how SMSEagle will allow you to create the solution you need, get in touch with our team.

4 User Authentication Issues Developers and Admins Struggle With (Solved)

User authentication is how admins and developers like you and I enforce secure access to user accounts. But in the face of increasing cybersecurity concerns, our challenges have grown taller.

Look at the statistics. In the first three quarters of 2018 alone, attackers launched about 1.4 million phishing URLs. As you know, phishing targets a user’s authentication rights and identity.

Meanwhile, in the real world, most people are not taking precautions to secure their accounts. In a study published in 2019, 67 percent of participants do not use two-factor authentication at all for their accounts. Out of those that use 2FA, 55 percent do not use it at work.

This laxity to security puts admins on edge. So this article identifies and provides solutions to some of the problems you face in implementing user authentication for your apps and websites.

1. Getting Users to Set Strong Passwords

The passwords of nine out of every ten employees can be hacked within six hours. And two-thirds of people use the same password for most of their accounts. So imagine a black hat hacker stealing that one password, and it’s the same password for your online banking.

The Problem with Getting Users to Set Strong Passwords

Users worry that they’ll forget their passwords all the time if they use unique passwords for each online account they set up. This fear deters them from following their admins’ suggestions even if they know better.

Most users don’t know that they can safely store passwords on a password manager. So far, it looks like admins haven’t done much in telling users about password managers.

The Solution for Admins and Developers

Tell your users about the dangers of using a single password or repeating passwords. Let them know that a secure password manager like KeePass, LastPass, or others saves them the stress of remembering passwords. These password managers also help them set strong passwords. Teach them how to use browser extensions for password manager of your choice.

2. Encouraging Users to Implement 2FA for Their Accounts

According to a Google Engineer, Grzegorz Milka, more than 90 percent of Gmail users do not use 2FA in their accounts at all. Understandable because most users see it as an extra huddle to accessing their account.

So they avoid it.

Albeit, users still want security. So they’d rather rely on password managers because they make login automatic and require fewer huddles. While a password manager is good, admins must let users know that the more security layers they use, the less likely they’d be hacked.

The Problem with Implementing 2FA

The problem is that most users are not seeing the risk of leaving their email accounts to one authentication mechanism – passwords or passphrases only. Hackers, on the other hand, are looking for accounts with the least resistance to hacking.

The Solution for Admins and Developers

Your job as a developer or admins is to help your users see the risk and understand its costs. So the question comes to “How do I help them see the risk?”

Let them know that attackers might have hacked their accounts already. So having a 2FA in place is a step to stop further compromise even if these hackers compromised their user passwords.

Here’s a case in point. Yahoo had been hacked since 2013 or earlier, but no one noticed until years later in 2017 when the announcement and investigation kicked in. That’s a full four years before people realized they’d been hacked.

Employees need to know that using two-factor authentication puts a demand on the account to notify them, the user, of any unauthorized login attempts.

Secondly, users need to know that they might have been hacked already and may not know it now until later in the future. So setting up a second-factor authentication can help them save their accounts. Security experts say that hackers stole anywhere from 7.5 to 8.5 billion records in 2019 alone.

3. Preventing SMS Spoofing

Hackers understand the power of 2FA, and they’re trying hard to phish their way through that second layer of security. In a study published by Thycotic, 68 percent of black hat hackers said their biggest challenge is multifactor authentication.

Consequently, admins and developers are saddled with the responsibility of helping their users understand and prevent SMS spoofing.

In case SMS spoofing sounds new to you. It’s a phishing technique that hackers use to gain control of their target’s information or devices.

So these hackers would send an SMS message to their targets and making it appear as if the message is coming from a target’s trusted source. A trusted source could be their employer, senior executive, or finance department staff.

For example, a hacker could send SMS messages to your employees that appear to come from you, the admin, asking them to click a link to give some sensitive information. Your employees would click the link, believing the message came from you, and then unknowingly compromise their device, share some sensitive data, or both.

Hackers can use SMS spoofing the same way they use email spoofing,

  1. Collect sensitive information to aid their hacking activities or sell on the dark web
  2. Take control of your device and use that access to perpetuate other hacking or identity theft attacks.

So you want to sensitize your users on how to spot and stop a phishing attempt.

The Problem with Preventing SMS Spoofing

The biggest problem with preventing SMS spoofing is ignorance on the part of system users. Additionally, admins are not investing enough resources in educating their users on how to spot and block these spoofing attempts.

Admin and developers might be underestimating the impact of an attack too, and that’s why they are not investing enough in educating their users about SMS phishing.

The Solution for Admins and Developers

Due to the high-level security that 2FA bestows on users, spoofers are desperate to break that line of defense. As an admin or developer, here are your options for preventing an SMS spoof attack.

Invest in Employee or System User Education

Educate your employees and users to not click on SMS links from unknown sources or that they haven’t verified. Let them take this phishing test.

That spoofing test focuses on email spoofing. But it sensitizes users to pay more attention to the messages they receive. Ultimately, attackers want to deceive you into taking an action that grants them access to your sensitive data or device. Hence you want to train your users on how to spot these deceptions.

Use a Signature Message

Set up a signature that goes with every SMS you send to devalue any phishing attempt immediately. For example, “Prevent SMS spoofing: call the number that sent this SMS.”

This prevention technique works because people who spoof phone numbers don’t own them. Tell your users to hang up and call the number back. When they call, they’ll reach the real holder, not the spoofer.

4. The Social Sign-in Puzzle

In the bid to improve authentication, developers introduced social media sign-in. The idea is that users would sign in to third-party websites and apps using their social media accounts, like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail.

This arrangement is pretty secure. So the problem here isn’t with the security of the process. But the convenience of the user.

The Problem with Social Sign-In

Social sign-in saves users the hassle of creating new passwords. But these users must remember how they signed up for the service. Hence, this authentication often creates issues for users.

Customer Churn Because of Forgotten Authentication Channel

Your users may signup for your service, but since they don’t use it often, they’d forget how they accessed the site. If they have very little to lose, they’d churn and never return to the service.

Loss of Access to User Account After Loss of Social Account

A user may lose access to the social media account they used to sign up. If that happens, they may churn and stop using the service. Even if they don’t churn, users may define this event as a poor customer experience.

Security Concerns

Users may feel unsafe granting third-party apps permissions to their social accounts. This concern may intensify if the app requests access to “control,” “send emails,” or “make posts” on their behalf.

The solution for Admins and Developers

You want to treat the use of social sign-in as an experiment to know how your users find the experience before you discard or adopt it fully. Secondly, admins should provide backup sign-in methods for users in case they lose access to their social accounts.

Developers and admins must provide brief explanations for what they mean when they ask for permission that might deter users from adopting their social sign-in option.

End the Authentication Struggle

Most admins and developers struggle with user authentication because they don’t invest in user security awareness. Users will take more responsibility, the more they understand the risk that comes with being lax with their account security.

In summary, let your users know that

  1. Clicking unfamiliar links or downloading unexpected attachments could expose them to security risks
  2. They shouldn’t take phone calls without confirming the identity of the caller or never give sensitive information over a phone call
  3. If they think their system might be infected or compromised, they should contact an admin

The cost of falling victim to a security exposure outways the cost of preventing it. Hence, you want to invest in prevention, and that includes enforcing 2FA. You also want to test user authentication channels that might improve your security and user authentication experience.


Create the right solution for your operation

Your obstacles are unique, and the solutions for them should be too. The functions of SMSEagle allow businesses to incorporate SMS communications into their systems in a way that makes sense to them. To find out how SMSEagle will allow you to create the solution you need, get in touch with our team.

14 Ways Savvy Brands Use SMS to Earn More Money, Trust, and Referrals

SMS has more reach than other messaging channels because you don’t need a smartphone and an internet connection to access a text message.

But what gives SMS marketing its power is the engagement it generates.

While email has a 20 to 30 percent open rate, SMS has a 98 percent open-rate. And 90 percent of recipients read their text messages within three seconds of receiving them.

More so, SMS has a reply rate as high as 45 percent, and an average person responds to an SMS within 90 seconds.

What’s more?

SMS marketing generates outsized ROI. For example, a British motor racing circuit earned a 680 percent return on their SMS marketing efforts.

How can you benefit from all these goodies?

Let’s explore how you can leverage SMS to boost your profits, earn buyers’ trust, and gain referrals.

Table of Contents: 14 Ways Savvy Brands Use SMS to Earn More Money, Trust, and Referrals

You may skip to any part of this content by clicking any of the items on the list.

    1. Build a Loyalty Program by Leveraging SMS
    2. Build Referrals from Loyal Buyers
    3. Boost Your Subscriber Base by Targeting In-Store Shoppers
    4. Track and Measure Your Customer Engagement Levels
    5. Use SMS for Call to Action
    6. Manage Your Product Recalls and Returns
    7. Use SMS to Boost Your Email Open-Rate
    8. Offer Discounts and Build Top-of-the-Mind Awareness
    9. Boost Your Revenues By Getting Instant Buyer-Feedback
    10. Abandoned Cart Notification
    11. Delivery Alert and Customer Service
    12. Product Launch, New Stock, and Product Updates
    13. Manager Your Customer Appointments
    14. Distribute Your Coupon to More People

1. Build a Loyalty Program by Leveraging SMS

More businesses are favoring customer retention over acquisition. Specifically, businesses favoring customer retention over acquisition moved from 70 percent to 80 percent in one year.

One study showed that 82 percent of shoppers choose businesses that have loyalty programs over others. And loyalty programs guarantee customer retention.

Fortunately, raising your customer retention rate by five percent is a big deal. It could earn your business up to 125 percent more profit.


Image Credit: TechnologyAdvice

So it only makes sense for businesses to gravitate towards customer loyalty strategies. But some businesses are better at using potent tactics than others.

Savvy brands understand the power of SMS, and they’re using it to drive their customer loyalty growth at the speed of thought.


Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

When shoppers buy from them, they seize that moment. These brands would send buyers an SMS invite to join their loyalty programs in exchange for intelligently structured benefits.

2. Build Referrals from Loyal Buyers

Loyal customers are happy to introduce you to new customers, or they’re willing to introduce new people to your business.

Your customers’ willingness to introduce their friends to your business is a Net Promoter Score (NPS) booster.

If the term is new to you, your business’s NPS shows you the level of loyalty your customers have for the business. It shows you how likely they’ll recommend your product or service to their friends or colleagues.

On a scale of one to ten:

  • 9 – 10 are loyal, would recommend you to others, and would keep buying
  • 7 – 8 are indifferent and can move to other brands if they want
  • 0 – 6 are unhappy and can soil your reputation with negative comments

In a Bain and Company study, shoppers who’ve bought ten or more times from you refer 50 percent more buyers than one-time shoppers.

So the best audience to target for your referral programs is frequent buyers.

Regular shoppers are more likely to refer people to your business. And they send significantly more leads your way than anyone else.

Using SMS, which almost guarantees high open rates, ask your loyal buyers to refer people to your business. You may decide to incentivize this request for referrals too.

3. Boost Your Subscriber Base by Targeting In-Store Shoppers

Boost Your Subscriber Base by Targeting In-Store Shoppers

The line separating the online and offline world is quickly blurring out. And this isn’t only about virtual or augmented reality. Even the simple mobile phone has become instrumental in bringing your local store online.

Use attractive offers in your retail shops to ask your in-store shoppers to subscribe via SMS in exchange for incentives. You can offer different discount types, depending on your strategy. For instance, asking your customers to subscribe using a short code by SMS for a credit card.

4. Track and Measure Your Customer Engagement

SMS marketing is a business growth strategy that helps you engage your customers. As you might imagine, engaged customers buy more from you.

Hence, you can measure the success rate of your marketing campaign by sending messages with trackable links. These types of messages make it easy to track your customers’ engagement with your marketing messages.

Return to the Table Of Contents

5. Use SMS for Call to Action

Since the click-through rate (CTR) is high with SMS, leverage it to deliver timely messages to your audience.

However, not all Call to Action (CTA) is appropriate for SMS. With a maximum of 160 characters, your SMS can’t have lengthy texts that end with “Read More,” or pitches that end with “Buy Now” or “Sign Up.”

However, your timely messages can use:

  • Click the link
  • Call us
  • Text back
  • Visit us

Yes, that sort of thing. You want them to act.

6. Manage Your Product Recalls and Returns

Defective products can impact your reputation negatively. Hence, as an obligation, you must recall hazardous products that result from design and production errors.


Image Credit: GS1 New Zealand

You want to act speedily when notifications of product defects reach you. And an SMS platform can help. You can use text messages to manage single product defects to mass defects.

Leveraging SMS, you can quickly reach your customers with information on the status of your product, and guide them on the next course of action.


Image Credit: Lontae

For mass defects, your first call would be to stop all distribution of the product, then send recall notification to your customers through SMS.

7. Use SMS to Boost Your Email Open-Rate

Some businesses either use Email or SMS in their marketing campaign, but savvy ones use both channels strategically.

Since emails convey detailed messages well, you can use it for lengthy conversations that require explanations. Furthermore, an email allows attachments like brochures and downloadable documents. But the chances are that most of your customers won’t see the email.

Hence, you want to leverage the higher open rate of text messaging to boost your email open-rate.

In one Smart Insights report, SMS helped businesses experience a 20 to 30 percent boost in their email open. A simple message that asked eads, “have you read our email?” did the magic.

8. Offer Discounts and Build Top-of-the-Mind Awareness

Building your brand takes more than having a catchphrase, brilliant logo designs, and brand colors. You want your customers to remember you.

To stay top-of-the-mind, you can use SMS strategies like

  • Keeping track of and sending anniversary messages to your customers
  • Sending them tips and helpful information on using your product or service
  • Offering discounts and promotions
  • Giving them party invites
  • Sharing news headlines if appropriate

And more. Here are some examples.

A local Domino’s Pizza stays top-of-the-mind by offering discounts via text messages.


Another brand, ARM, also uses discounts sent via SMS to invite their leads to sign up for their program.


You may also use trackable URLs in your SMS to uncover the best send times for your messages. And then take advantage of the timing when running your campaign.

Up to 90 percent of your customers would read your message. So if you’re offering discounts, you want to be ready for the rush. For example, make sure your staff can fulfill your offers on time.

9. Boost Your Revenues By Getting Instant Buyer-Feedback

Sending your buyers a survey immediately they leave your store can help you get a sense of how satisfied they feel about your food or their shopping experience at your place.

This point can also be helpful for an event if you host online or offline events. When a session ends, get a quick sense of what your attendees enjoyed and what they didn’t like. And then, use that feedback to improve on your coming event sessions.

You can send your leads to a page on your website or app to leave a short survey like the one below.


Surveys and feedback can help you discover profitable patterns you can leverage to boost your revenue and customer satisfaction.

10. Abandoned Cart Notification

Trying to recover all abandoned carts is a waste of time because, on average, approximately 70 percent of shopping carts are abandoned. As high as 92 percent of the visitors to a retail website have no intention to buy.

You can automate your SMS such that when a customer adds products to their cart without checking out, they receive notification automatically. But you must have collected their phone numbers to make this possible. You must send the abandoned cart SMS fast and create an easy link for them to get back to the cart.

You can increase your success rate by offering incentives, such as discounts and free deliveries.

11. Delivery Alert and Customer Service

Customers want you to keep them in the loop. So you could send them delivery tracking notifications about their purchases by SMS.


More so, you can use SMS for customer service. This Australian health care service does with their patients, see the message above.


Brands like Amazon and DHL already use this channel because it’s effective. You can copy them safely.

12. Product Launch, New Stock, and Product Updates

Product Launch, New Stock, and Product Updates
Most businesses have come to rely on email for their product launch and for keeping their customers updated about new stocks or improvements. But SMS can offer exciting opportunities too.

You can inform your target audience about new products, discounts, services, and events via text messages. Studies have shown that SMS might even be more potent than email.


SMS messages have a 209 percent higher response rate than messages on apps, email, or Facebook. In one study, sales leads who got a text message during a product launch converted 40 percent higher than those who didn’t get a text message.

Salesforce says that 89 percent of marketers report that SMS marketing commands more results than business websites and display ads. More so, 82 percent of marketers either maintained or increased their investment in SMS marketing.

In short, using SMS to launch your product gets you the types of results you love.

13. Manage Your Customer Appointments

If you offer services, you might want to confirm or remind your customers of an appointment via SMS. You’d reduce the chances of cancellation because 70 percent of respondents agree that using SMS is a good way to get their attention.

Likewise, if you choose to stay open to accommodate late buyers, you can inform your busy customers of extended hours.

14. Distribute Your Coupon to More People


Text messages can create a sense of urgency around your discount, coupon codes, or flash sales. Due to the fast open and response rates of SMS, you can get a response almost instantly.

So you can compile the phone numbers of leads who respond and target them in future campaigns.

Mobile coupons allow you to send your brand codes to customers quickly. You can send them as coupon codes via SMS that they can present at check out.

Get Savvy: Earn More Money, Trust, and Referrals

It’s action time. But you don’t have to act on everything. Take one or a few ideas that resonate with you. And put them to work. That’s what works.

Decide on what goals matter most to your business right now. Is earning more money the most import thing right now? Would earning more trust boost your business value better? Or would you rather get more referrals now?

It’s time to get savvy. Choose a goal and take action today.

More reading proposals:

Create the right solution for your operation

Your obstacles are unique, and the solutions for them should be too. The functions of SMSEagle allow companies to incorporate SMS alerts and notifications into their systems in an easy and affordable way. To find out how SMSEagle will allow you to create the solution you need, get in touch with our team.

How to increase your SMS open rate

With business competition so high these days, companies today must be aggressive in the marketing of their products and services. This means utilizing a variety of traditional and new marketing strategies and tools to engage new customers and manage them once they are acquired.

New marketing tools are the rage today with SEO, social media marketing, websites and blogs, and email marketing now getting the most focus from marketing executives across the world.

Businesses know that people are spending more time online and opportunities for marketing to them there are increasing. As online marketing strategies evolve from simply pushing marketing at consumers to getting them to engage and interact more with the marketing, conversion rates are beginning to rise.

Apart from the online marketing, SMS marketing also plays a major role in developing a relationship with your customers and converting prospects. According to a statistic report 2019, there are 5 billion people sending and receiving SMS messages globally. It is about 65% of the world’s population.

SMS Messaging Was and is Very Effective

As we have moved to mobile phones becoming the center of business marketing efforts, it is easy to forget that what was considered the original mew marketing tool started out on mobile phones even before the internet became a factor. It was SMS or text messaging that got companies to consider mobile phones as a marketing device.

SMS marketing was an immediate hit and has enjoyed during its life a very high open rate. In fact, globally text messaging enjoys an open rate of more than 90%. In a world of two-way communication being a standard, this is an astounding number. It has caused SMS messaging to be a standard tool for many companies to use to engage potential customers or to alert customers to new products, specials, discounts and other promotions.

But not all SMS messages are created equal and many SMS marketing campaigns do not meet their objectives. The first goal of any SMS campaign is to get customers to open the test mail. Here are the proven methods for increasing your SMS open rates.

Perfect Your first Line

You need to be able to capture the attention of your target market with introductions that resonate with them. Look at other successful SMS messages to get some ideas on how to get people to open your text.

Collect Data and Analyze It

You should collect data on every aspect of your SMS marketing campaign, and analyze this data to perfect the campaign. Look at your target market, the actual message, the offer, and the results to determine how you did, and what can be improved. After you have made adjustments, test these changes with new SMS messages. Repeat this process continuously.

Timing is everything

Make sure that you send your SMS messages at the right time. You want to send a message near the time you want the person to take action. If you want to direct them to a sale, do it the night before or morning of the sale. Pope expect an SMS message to be current. So give them what they expect. Make is a last minute call to action.

Use SMS to Enlighten

The best rule for sending SMS is the 80/20 rule where you 80% of the text messages you send to customers are helpful or informative, and only 20% are a sales pitch. The idea here is similar with blogs which is to become a resource for quality information as you present offers.

Coordinate with Email Marketing

It has been shown that SMS marketing works well with email marketing when coordinated properly. Both forms of marketing have their strengths and weaknesses, so you need to understand both intimately in order to get the most out of each. But when executed properly the combination will increase your customer attraction and conversion.

Final Words

All the above strategies are designed to help you improve the open rate for both email and SMS rates. As long as you will keep these tips in mind, you will have nothing to worry about with retention or open rates!

SMS Marketing is also a better and smarter choice than social media (Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin). Because almost 100% of mobile phones are SMS-enabled, it’s the easiest communication channel everyone in the world knows how to use and, above all, because 99% of all SMS messages are opened and read within 5 minutes or less. This is a huge open and read rate!