While text messaging may no longer be the first choice for person-to-person (P2P) messaging; in the corporate sector the use of SMS from application to person (A2P) is skyrocketing. In fact, Ovum predicts that by 2019, businesses will send 1.28 trillion messages per year, up from 1.16 trillion in 2016.
So what are the key factors driving this growth?
In addition to mapping the future of emerging enterprise messaging formats like RCS and chat bots; our recent Enterprise Messaging Survey 2017, published in collaboration with Ovum, interacts with organizations from seven countries and more verticals; to explore key trends in A2P SMS.
Here are the 10 key A2P takeaways from the report:
- Messages are becoming more usable; with the 23% of respondents increasing their use of two-way SMS in the previous 12 months to allow consumers to reschedule an appointment or have a messaging-based conversation with a contact center agent, for example.
- Innovation is driving growth; with companies continually discovering new and innovative use cases for A2P. They cover the range of transactional and promotional objectives; including appointment reminders, two-factor authentication, text donations, advertising and marketing; good to win and mobile.
- SMS is still one of the most reliable channels for sending marketing and promotional messages; why respondents' 42% and 35%, respectively, have increased their use of messaging for these purposes over the past year.
- Ease of access is key; with the 48% of companies sending more SMS messages than 12 months ago. This is due to the increasing availability of API (Application Programming Interfaces); to easily connect their customer engagement platforms directly to those of their SMS provider.
- Price elasticity continues to play a role in the A2P SMS ecosystem, with the 54% of respondents saying it would send more A2P SMS traffic if the price per message of an A2P SMS were reduced.
- Businesses are ready for an SMS update, as Google will soon launch RCS (Rich Communications Service) Business Messaging, with the 37% claiming that new features such as personalized branding, enriched content delivery and read receipts would encourage them to send multiple SMS.
THE chat bot will play a significant role in increasing A2P message traffic, with 37% of respondents stating that more sophisticated and intelligent chat-bot platforms would increase their SMS traffic. This shows that companies are already recognizing the role SMS-based chat robots play in enabling two-way SMS.
- SMS is set to play an increasing role both as a fallback for OTT-based chat robots, and as a trusted channel for organizations to send consumer links to their chat robots, to start a conversation.
Price elasticity in SMS is alive and well, with the highest percentage of respondents, the 35%, indicating that their monthly SMS traffic would increase between two and four times if an unlimited fixed price SMS option was available . - Messages continue to persist as a key channel of mobile interaction between businesses and their customers. The fact that SMS is a universally available service on mobile devices, with global reach and interoperability, makes it attractive to companies looking for a simple, affordable and reliable way to realize multiple use cases within their businesses.
