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SMS marketing is a powerful tool in the hands of skilled marketers. It helps to build personal relationships with customers and increase conversion. However, SMS marketing success depends on dozens of factors, including the technical qualities of SMS routes.
SMS route testing will help you to detect the best SMS strategies, and we will explain how.
How Does SMS Marketing Work?
SMS marketing implies that a business or other organization promotes its products or services through SMS messages. Bulk text messaging allows reaching dozens of customers at once, and with a high open rate (around 98%) inherent to this channel, you will be able to deliver your offer to the maximum audience possible.
The most common SMS campaigns are used to increase sales, collect and nurture leads, retain old customers, and boost trust in the brand.
What Is SMS Route Testing and Why is It Important?
The SMS ecosystem includes dozens of players, besides the mobile network operators or companies that use SMS marketing. SMS messaging for business purposes is built around the A2P (application-to-person) concept, which differs significantly from P2P (person-to-person).
Carriers don’t provide A2P service directly to businesses, they work with SMS aggregators that in turn cater to enterprises of different industries and niches.
When a third party appears in the chain, there is always a chance of violations and manipulations with profits and quality. A2P messaging, unfortunately, isn’t an exception. Unreliable providers might use unlicensed routes to deliver your messages. As a result, some of them won’t reach the end-point recipient, you might get a fake delivery report and you will still be obliged to pay for them.
Testing text messaging will help you detect such untrustworthy providers and give up partnerships with them. Regular SMS delivery testing with an SMS testing tool like Testelium will be able to create an inner base of reliable SMS aggregators that are worth cooperating with.
5 Effective Strategies to Improve Your SMS Campaign with SMS Testing
So, how can SMS route testing improve your SMS campaign results? Here are a few actions you can implement into your operations.
Work with Deeper Insights
Data that you get from testing brings a big layer of valuable information. You access the info not only about whether your messages are delivered or not but also about route characteristics.
Hence, you will be able to set up your campaign more precisely and efficiently, as well as you will be able to get to a higher level of understanding of how the A2P environment is working and what providers can be trusted.
Choose Routes with High Delivery Rates
A high delivery rate is a result every marketer is fighting for along with other important parameters. If the majority of your messages are delivered to recipients, then, more people will actually read and interact with your offer.
Automated SMS delivery testing will allow you to sort your routes by their delivery rates, give up those that are performing badly and focus on those with great results. This way, you will be able to direct your efforts to the channels that will bring the most profit for your business.
Lower the Amount of Fake Delivery Reports
Fake delivery reports bring a lot of issues, as you suffer from unreliable statistics on your SMS marketing performance. Moreover, fake reports also mean that you are paying for the messages that weren’t actually delivered and won’t ever be.
Through testing, you will be able to detect whether your partners are sharing fake data with you. Again, you will be able to cut off routes with many fake delivery reports and optimize your resource spending.
Check Every New SMS Provider
You should run SMS delivery tests when starting cooperation with a new provider. It will help you understand the quality they can give you and what expectations you can build on their capacities.
Evaluate the Behavior of Routes Already in Use
Regular monitoring of old routes is also important, as their characteristics may change over time. It might be more useful to see the changes before any disappointing results.
Summing Up
Route testing is a great way to boost your SMS marketing campaign. Implement a testing tool and enjoy the results!
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