If you have decided to add SMS/MMS text messaging to your marketing & commerce toolbox, one of the first decisions you will need to make is which SMS platform will handle things for you. Here are some things to consider. 

What Is an SMS platform?

An SMS platform is a company that provides the infrastructure to enable a business to send and receive SMS/MMS messages for marketing, commerce, and support. Here, we are not talking about a mobile network provider. In this case, the SMS platform allows their clients to create and manage all outbound SMS marketing messages as well as respond to all incoming messages, both automatically as well as with the help of a live agent. 

How to Evaluate an SMS Platform

SMS platforms are not created equal. It’s not just about price; it’s about reliability, ROI, the types of functionality you want to provide, long-term strategic plans, and delivering the best customer experience. So here are some things to consider …

First, Know What You Will Use it For

Why are you considering SMS? What do you hope to accomplish? Spend some time brainstorming about the goals of adding SMS, what type of business you have and how it can benefit from adding SMS/MMS. 

If you’re new to SMS marketing, check out our Generating ROI with SMS: A Beginner’s Guide

Find Out About Platform Features 

The system should be flexible enough to provide customers with a complete experience quickly, and without friction. But it’s not enough to send the messages, you need tools to evaluate ROI, the campaign’s success, and have the ability to pivot or adapt the message to different audiences. 

Here are just some of the things you might need in an SMS platform: 

1. Building a contact list: Consider how you will build your list -- will it be website pop-ups, order confirmations, email creation, QR codes or and social media posts? Maybe you want to create a poll, contest or survey instead to attract new customers.
2. Automation: Find out if the platform automates things like scheduling text message delivery, including reminding and/or notifying customers of upcoming appointments, product restocks, sales or promotions, sending MMS and automated responses, including opt-in/opt-out confirmations and welcoming new customers.
3. Customization: Does the SMS platform offer personalization for your brand, including custom look, workflows and integration with the customer account information so it can identify who it is speaking to with little effort from the user?
4. Segmentation: Inquire about the ability to segment your audience. You want to be able to send personalized messages tailored specifically to interests, abandoned cart reminders, to new customers or frequent buyers.
5. Campaign management: This can include the ability to create sequenced or standalone campaigns to promote customer engagement. For example a welcome series, new product launches, customer preference quizzes, referral marketing drives and message testing.
6. Analytics: You need to get access to data on campaign success across various channels, determine which messages resonate with your customer base, refine your conversational bot based on conversational analytics and measure and improve engagement strategies by user group.

Not all platforms are created equal, and you need a platform that will adapt to your needs, rather than adapting your needs to the platform. Some other questions to ask:

• Is the platform flexible, and can it be customized for workflows? 
• Can it be integrated with other tools or platforms that are used to drive opt-ins?
• Does it include any pre-built tools or services for Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) compliance, such as sending an opt-in confirmation, automatically processing an opt-out request and tracking whether opt-in has been received?
• Does it help you manage how many times you can send a message?

An SMS platform can help evaluate your needs and design an SMS program that meets your unique situation.

Ask About Integrations 

You should be able to seamlessly integrate your existing systems and ecommerce with the SMS platform. 

For example, a retailer on Magento decides to move to Shopify. A good SMS platform should be able to support the integration without data loss or compromising customer service. 

Or another scenario: You send an email campaign and include a button in the email that will transfer a customer to an SMS message window. Will the platform support that? 

Or, say someone is on Facebook Messenger and wants to continue the conversation via SMS. The platform must be able to manage a graceful transfer of the information without the customers having to restart the conversation.

Other integrations to ask about include:

• E-commerce integrations 
• Email integrations 
• Payments integrations 
• Customer support integrations
• Loyalty integrations 
• Shipping integrations 
• Any other integrations that are essential to the shopping process for customers

Understand If It Supports the Entire Customer Journey Through Conversational Commerce

Conversational commerce is the ability to communicate with customers using SMS/MMS or chat functionality through messaging apps (usually bots but sometimes live agents). It allows your customers to research and purchase products without having to leave the app. 

Here are just some of the ways you might support your customers’ shopping journey via SMS:

• Shopper can request details about a product and place an order
• Shopper can cancel an order without a live agent
• Shopper can update payment information, exchange products, update account info like shipping address and other preferences without a live agent
• Shopper can book or cancel an appointment via SMS

If you want to know more about conversational commerce, check out “What is Conversational Commerce” 

Know the Technology 

Natural language understanding (NLU) allows chatbots to process the context and intent of the customer and guide the direction of the conversation appropriately. Another advantage is the bot will “learn” and retain information from other similar interactions, which allows it to provide more robust responses sooner. 

Find out if the SMS platform offers technology such as this. Platforms like Radiance Commerce will offer a library of templates and conversations to get you started quickly, for example, or you can fully customize your own. 

Make sure the SMS platform always gives the option to ask for human assistance, and can enable a seamless handover from your automated bot to a human agent. Machine learning should detect the need for human assistance based on natural language signals.

Next Steps

SMS marketing grew 8.5% from February to March 2020 and by another 20% in April 2020. What’s more, 69% of consumers are ready and willing to communicate by text with businesses, and with those kinds of numbers, adding SMS marketing to your business strategy makes sense.

What should you do next, now that you have a better understanding? Here are a few takeaways:

• Understand what you need now. Will the platform scale with you? Can you start out slow and have the ability to scale, or is it intended as a small business product that you will outgrow, requiring you to move to another solution later?
• Can the platform offer complete personalization for your brand, such as a custom look, tone, workflows and integration with the customer account information so it can identify who it is speaking to with little effort from the user? 
• Does it use NLU or machine learning? Customers who run into a bad experience or the inability to get their questions answered are likely not to return. One of the reasons to add SMS is to deliver a positive customer experience, after all. 

Before you sign up for the cheapest platform, take the time to consider things like your overall objectives, type of business, what you need the SMS platform to do and what kind of customizations you need.