Why use SMS rather than email?

You could email your customers

But that's probably suboptimal, summed up by this pic I saw on Twitter yesterday:

• How many people (or companies) emailed you today?
• And how many sent you text messages?

There's no comparison between your email inbox and your cellphone. Emails are so easy and cheap to send, so every company piles into your customers' inboxes on a daily basis. What you want is an edge on the competition, and SMS delivers that!

How many cell numbers have you had? How many email addresses?
Personal cell numbers stay constant, so when you have a customer's phone number it'll still work five years later. Let others send emails to long-forgotten addresses, you can be sure your customer is getting your messages.

Why not just call them?

Have you ever played phone-tag? The fun game where you call each other, leaving voicemails which your customer might only listen to hours or days later? Then you know why. A text message is much easier to respond to when you're in a meeting or in the bathroom. It's also shorter, so your customer needs less time and energy to respond to it - "Yes please, that would be great!"

Done. Customer service win!

What about Facebook Messenger? Whatsapp?

Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger are excellent, but there's no guarantee that your customer has either of those. Who doesn't have a cell number? And customers are far more likely to share it with you than their Facebook profile. If you need certainty, text messaging wins.

So...Why SMS?

If you need to

• know your customer is there
• get a message to them
• and know they've received it
• know they can respond immediately...

...there is no substitute for a text message. They've been around 20 years. They work.

And we make them work even better.