Medication Delays and Forgetfulness

The National Library of Medicine reported that up to 50% of patients taking medications struggle to maintain their physician’s recommendations. One of the top factors contributing to nonadherence is a lack of social support and overconfidence in patients’ memory. Thankfully, messaging can aid in both areas.

According to Science Direct, short and simple SMS messaging has proven to reduce medication delays from 85% to 19% after adding a text messaging solution in a clinical trial. The study found that personalized and timely reminders through SMS can improve medication adherence, saving medication costs and leading to substantial improvements in health and disease management.

Reducing No-Shows with SMS Messages

Missing appointments can wreak havoc on patient health as well as office efficiency, creating longer wait times and inefficient use of resources. Research shows that the primary reason patients miss appointments is forgetfulness, and sending a simple text message reminder can help keep them on track.

Messaging not only reduces patient no-shows to appointments. Simple texts can also ensure they arrive on time. The domino effect of late arrivals can disrupt the flow of the entire day. Reminding them of the date and time via messaging days before, 24 hours prior, and the day of the appointment can help ensure patients arrive on time.

Use SMS Messaging to Engage Patients

You can also use messaging to check in with your patients between appointments, keeping them engaged in their health and with your office. Creating automated messages using your database (CRM) and a messaging platform like SMS-Magic can save your office time. By creating segmented lists based on various factors in your database, you can send personalized and relevant messages to their phone screen.

Asking questions is a fantastic way to prompt engagement, like “Have you gotten your 30 minutes of exercise for your heart health today?” or “Meditation is a great way to reduce anxiety. Here’s a FREE 5-minute session [Link].” These interactive check-ins will keep your patients engaged with helpful information and can help keep your services in mind.

Sending Helpful Healthcare and Program Information

Absorbing healthcare information can be overwhelming for patients at times. You can help them understand their medical plan, prescriptions, and diagnosis by sending messages with links to more information that can supplement office visits and phone calls.

In addition, healthcare providers often recommend non-pharmaceutical interventions like meditation, mindfulness exercises, mental healthcare, or smoking cessation programs, and messages are crucial to keeping them on track. These program messages can be inspirational and motivating, provide links to assignments or videos, or be informational with recent statistics and research. Regardless of the information sent, messaging can send it all to their phones, keeping your patients committed, informed, and up to date.

Use Surveys to See How You’re Doing

While adding messaging as a communication channel will help your patients stay on top of their health and keep your office efficient, there are always ways to improve. Surveys help you gather information to improve your processes, and you can obtain this valuable feedback quickly with messaging. The text message survey can be a poll, text-to-vote, or net promoter score, or you can also include a link to a web-based survey. Keyword triggers can help gather even more data you need with a back-and-forth flow of questions and answers.

The Bottom Line

Although your patients may be busy, most of them check their phones more than 90 times a day, and you can use this to your advantage by sending vital medical information and reminders directly to their phones with messaging.

Ready to get messaging working for your staff and your patients? To get started with SMS-Magic, contact our customer support team for a demo or a free trial!

Getting your tech innovations into the world rests on capturing your audience’s interest. Here are 5 of the hottest marketing trends we see coming in 2023.

The 2022 Marketing Star — Short-form Video

Short-form video vaulted into the top marketing strategy slot last year with strong evidence that these videos increase engagement and lead generation. In 2023, all signs point to this  short-but-mighty-trend remaining a favorite in marketing departments across the board. In fact, the video production company Wyzowl’s 2022 report found that 73% of customers prefer to watch a short video to learn about a product or service, compared to 11% who like to read text, while only 4% lean towards infographics. Most notable for your IT industry is that of the 98% of respondents who watched an explainer video, 78% of consumers credited the video for their software download or purchase.

If you’re ready to add short-form videos to your plan this year, here are a couple of tips:

• The average video view durations on social media platforms range from 15 to 26 seconds.
• Most customers look for value in the first 3 seconds.
• Once your videos are ready, send the video links via email and text messaging campaigns to increase viewership.

Use DMs for to Grow Your Marketing and Customer Service Messaging Opt-ins

Direct messages (DMs) through your social media platforms can help you start a personal conversation and connection with a new lead or customer. DMs are a perfect pathway for gaining text messaging opt-ins and sending links to your newsletter or other materials.

After you have their permission to send texts, you can start campaigns through a messaging platform like SMS-Magic to boost your 2023 marketing game plan. One excellent approach to your DM marketing journey is to use DMs for giving, not asking. You can start by providing a little love to your followers, thanking them for their support with a special reward or discount.

You may also find that your direct message mailbox contains customer questions about an order or feedback about your IT product or services. Use your responses to provide excellent customer service and incentivize your followers. Thank them for their input or help them solve an issue followed by a discount on an upgrade or future downloads.

Digging Deeper with Data

In 2023, how well you know your audience should go beyond simple demographic data. It’s also essential to understand your audience’s interests and passions. Where do they stand on issues, and what difficulties do they face? What IT software are they currently using, and what groups are they a part of?

You can use this data wisely with targeted campaigns to specific groups through email and messaging campaigns. Showing your audience that you get them and want to solve problems for them with your product that suits their challenges can give your brand value. And since this data is ever-evolving and trends are changing quickly, your marketing team’s plan may need to change course during the year.

 Making Real Connections by Humanizing Your Brand

The trend of knowing more about your customers also has a flipside — your customer wants to learn more about you, too. Creating marketing content that reflects your brand’s values can help you connect to your audience in a raw, human way. Where does your IT company stand on certain issues? What role are you playing in the world? Reflect the human side of your brand in your content to leap ahead of the competition this year.

Automations Keep Pulling Their Weight in 2023

Humanizing your brand doesn’t mean you won’t use AI assistance to snag your audience’s attention in 2023. Instead, the trend to use AI to start, continue and maintain marketing conversations through automated text messaging flows or a website chat box is trending upward.

While your customers might be searching for products and watching short-form videos about your app or software in the middle of the night, you don’t have to lose a potential lead if you aren’t available in real-time. And even though you’re automating these conversations, they’ll have a significant impact when you craft with a personal touch. That way, even though you aren’t answering them at the time, it can certainly feel that way with real conversational responses.

Your marketing journey is kicking off this year in the IT industry, and SMS-Magic is here to help you reach your audience with messaging. Ready to get started? Contact our SMS-Magic team for a demo or a free trial today!

Offering your marketing digitally can also give your leads and clients access to resources and information about your products and services. If this seems overwhelming, don’t worry. With some front-end work and a reliable messaging partner, automations can make your digital marketing more manageable — and cost-effective.

1. Automate marketing messages to improve your customer’s experiences

It’s likely that your potential customers are looking for financial information at all hours of the day, and you can greet them each time with personalized messaging automation. Your first step in creating this positive experience is to ensure you aren’t sending any messages, directly or with automations, without their express written consent. Giving your leads and customers the ability to opt in to messaging can be painless when you add opt-in and compliance language to your digital and printed marketing materials or with a button on your website. Once you have the tools to capture consent, you can automate with a little upfront content creation.

One of the easiest ways to start your customer off with a positive experience with your company is by sending an automated welcome message. When a lead submits a form from your website or asks for more information and agrees to opt in to your messages, your preset welcoming message automation can send them an instant response. 

Filling out the form and submitting it triggers this message, and it doesn’t have to stop there. Your welcome message can also lead to an automated message flow that can gather information about your lead’s user metrics, like their financial goals and knowledge level. These messaging flows might ask your lead questions and ask them to reply using a keyword. Each keyword response triggers another automated message that may provide them with links to resources or applications, or it can trigger a response that explains when you will contact them.

These flows and automations improve the customer’s experience from the initial interaction and can keep it going throughout their journey with your company.

2. Increase profitable hours without sacrificing personalized interactions

With marketing automations in place, you and your team won’t have to spend their profit-making hours responding to each customer request personally. Your automated marketing responders can handle many tasks on your behalf, whether an initial welcoming message or one aimed at nurturing clients with links to educational posts or newsletters catered to their interests. 

Remember that data collecting flow mentioned above? This crucial data, combined with your CRM database, can help you personalize each automated marketing campaign. You’ll save time without sacrificing the quality of each interaction when you add personalized touches to each automated message.

Automated marketing doesn’t mean you’ll relinquish complete control of your marketing and communications to automations. With messaging services like SMS-Magic, you can easily switch from automated to personal conversations. Plus, your automations should be reviewed and adjusted regularly based on your read and response rates to your automated marketing campaigns. This will require updated content creation and adjustments to your keyword triggers and flows to keep automation marketing working its best for you.

3. Promote efficiency and reduce event no-shows with automations

Reminders about upcoming meetings or seminars or gentle nudges to download or read marketing content are other benefits that make adding marketing automation a priority. Once a client agrees to a set appointment date and time, it, unfortunately, isn’t set in stone. You can reduce no-shows by setting up automations to send reminders days and hours before the meeting. Add in the ability for clients to reschedule, and you’ll have time to slide another client into a vacant slot — keeping you on track and increasing your productivity.

SMS-Magic’s analytics lets you see what marketing messages aren’t read or responded to. This vital data — paired with your CRM database — can fuel your follow-up campaigns, specifically targeting those groups that haven’t taken action. Follow-ups and reminders are crucial to maintaining your customers’ forward momentum so they can experience all you offer. Automating these follow-ups frees you up and keeps you moving toward your business goals. 

The Bottom Line

Engaging in thoughtful marketing tactics means you’re nurturing leads and delighting your existing customers, but that doesn’t mean you’re always doing it from your mobile phone or computer 24/7. With a little up-front message creation, you can set SMS marketing automations to work for you — any time of day.

Ready to get started using messaging automations to work for your wealth management firm? To get started with SMS-Magic, contact our customer support team for a demo or a free trial!

Texting is already part of our daily lives, and it has changed the way in which we communicate, especially during the last 10 years. Recent studies show that approximately 6 out of 10 people would rather text a business than make a phone call or receive an email. It just makes sense for law firms to take advantage of this already-preferred avenue of communication.

Here are 3 ways text messaging can help your firm increase business:

1. Messaging helps you increase leads.

We know that people seeking legal representation often shop around before hiring a law firm. Prospective clients want information without a lot of hassle. They generally don’t want to wait on hold to speak with someone, they don’t want to wait for a return call from a voicemail, and often they don’t want to leave a voicemail at all.

Messaging makes it simple and allows you to engage a prospective client immediately. The client can text a keyword to your law firm to start the process. A personalized automated response can serve as your initial introduction, can help give your client more information and can gather facts from the client about their situation. You can transition from automated messages to a member of your intake team whenever you want.

The faster a firm can respond to an inquiry, the greater the likelihood of turning a prospect into an actual client. Put another way, the first law firm to respond is the law firm that will win the business.

2. Messaging allows you to stand out from your competition.

In a saturated legal market, a law firm needs to stand out from its competitors, and conversational text messaging can serve that purpose by allowing a swift and personalized response to inquiries. Your team can respond to inquiries quickly – putting an end to phone tag, missed emails and slow responses to client questions.

One of our customers, Kwartler Manus, uses Litify, a legal software program that integrates seamlessly with SMS-Magic. Everyone in their firm has a license to use SMS-Magic and because contacts are centralized in one place and easily accessed, all communications by clients are visible to all staff members. This means that anyone in the firm can respond to a message. If an attorney is in court, away from the office or otherwise unavailable, staff members can still keep clients updated about their cases.

3. Messaging allows you to automate routine processes

Your team can respond to queries at all times of the day with automated responses – establishing instant connections with prospective clients. Your first message can introduce the firm, provide links to more information and let a prospective client know someone from your firm will get back with them as quickly as possible.

After the first text, messaging can help streamline the intake process. You can send, receive, and sign documents, as well as set up consultations, appointments and reminders. You can send updates and information on cases or verify that you received requested information. Establishing a relationship early helps build trust and assures your prospects and new clients that you care about them and their cases. 

In certain circumstances, such as in personal injury cases, text messaging allows clients to quickly and easily upload pictures pertinent to their cases.  This saves the firm and the client time and increases the firm’s revenue by freeing up time for staff members to concentrate on other issues.

Of course, not every situation will be appropriate to text messaging, especially for a law firm, but messaging can serve as an easy and convenient entry point to a conversation. With messaging, you can easily transition the conversation to an email or phone call. If your firm wants to grow your clientele and increase your bottom line, adding text-messaging can be your best solution!

Ready to give messaging a try? Contact SMS-Magic for a demo today!

Due to changes this year from carriers in the United States and Canada, you may be at risk of filtered delivery or possible denial of service if:

• your company is sending SMS messages in the U.S. using 10-digit long codes (10DLC), or
• your company is using toll-free numbers in campaigns in the U.S. or Canada

Ensuring delivery requires just a few actions on your part, and SMS-Magic can help you.

To ensure delivery of your messages, major U.S. telecommunications carriers, like Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, US Cellular and others are now requiring companies sending application-to-person (A2P) SMS messages within the U.S. to register their 10DLC. This is in addition to the requirements specified in regulations like GDPR, TCPA and others.

The goal of registration is to protect consumers, improve message deliverability, and to encourage trust within the system while delivering high customer engagement. Registration should also help reduce SMS text spam and fraud.

When you register, carriers want to know two things: who you are and what you’re sending. They ask you to provide:

• Company brand registration – you must identify who you are to carrier networks.
• Standardized campaign use-case registration – you must identify the type of messages you are sending, such as account updates, marketing campaigns, customer service, etc.

To submit your 10DLC registration, please complete this form. We’ll take it from there.

Toll-Free Verification

In addition to A2P 10DLC Registration, you must also verify the toll-free numbers you use in the U.S. and Canada. Unverified numbers in Canada can be blocked, and in the U.S., traffic may be subject to increased filtering and daily limits on sending.

To submit your toll-free numbers for verification, please complete this form.

If you have any questions about registration, contact us at care@sms-magic.com.

First, let’s talk about how messaging can help you sell more insurance, serve your customers better and make your work life a little easier. The bottom line is that you can’t serve customers you can’t reach. Emails, phone calls and voice mail are tried-and-true communication channels, but you can spend hours begging your customers and prospective customers to respond to them, instead of spending time selling or serving.

Most of us have smart phones with built-in texting capabilities, and we carry our phones everywhere. Because of the nature of texting, we open 98% of our messages within three minutes of receipt, and we respond to 40% of them. We only open 20% of our emails, and you already know how hard it is to get a customer on the phone. When asked, 90% of us said we’d prefer to communicate with businesses via text.

What those statistics mean to you is that you can send reminders, have one-on-one conversations or schedule automated messages – and your customers will read your messages and respond faster than with any other channel. They get great service, and you have more time to work on your business.

To help you decide if messaging can make a positive impact on your business, here are the top 5 questions insurance agents ask – and the answers:

1.What should I do before I start texting?

You’ve probably heard about the regulations governing messaging. The regulations will apply when you want to send bulk marketing messages, and you’ll need to get permission from your clients or prospects to text them. Asking them to “opt-in” can become part of your emails, awareness and branding campaigns, applications or quotes. Even if you’re only texting one-on-one, it’s best to have written permission, but it’s easy to get. To make record-keeping easier, SMS-Magic keeps track of customers who have opted in to texting, and more importantly, it tracks who has opted out, so you won’t send them any more marketing texts.

2. Can I use my personal mobile phone?

The SMS-Magic mobile app allows you to use your own smart phone but doesn’t require you to use your own phone number. We don’t recommend that you send business texts from a personal phone number. You should set up texting for your office and connect it to your database, especially if you’re using Salesforce or Zoho. SMS-Magic can also connect to many office-management systems. With a mobile app, when you’re not at your desk, you can message your clients as if you were using your laptop, and yet you still maintain your privacy.

3. How can I handle times when I’m out of the office?

If you’re on vacation, sick or out of the area, you probably want some time away from work. Wouldn’t it be great if colleagues could field a client’s question via text and have all your previous conversations at their fingertips? It’s more than possible with messaging platforms like SMS-Magic. Once the messaging system is integrated with your database, texts are routed to the appropriate agent and the conversation is stored in the client’s record. Anyone with access to the system can read the background and respond. Your client gets great service, and you can disconnect from work knowing your colleagues have your back.

4. What types of messages can I send?

Texting gives you and your clients an easy way to share information. One agency serving a high volume of contractors, for example, encourages clients to use text to request COI’s. It’s easy to take a picture of a business card that has all the relevant contact information and text it to the agent. The agent can respond with a text or email containing the COI. Or a client might send a photo of a VIN by text to add a new vehicle to an existing policy. Another company uses texts to check in with prospective clients they’ve quoted but who haven’t responded. Text is a great way to send reminders for almost anything, including auto renewals and appointments.

5. Do I have to send all the texts myself?

Messaging is a great way to connect with clients, but sometimes you need the system to send automated messages immediately. When a client opts in to texting, for example, they need an immediate response to their request. With messaging solutions like SMS-Magic, you can set up pre-written automated messages that are triggered by certain actions like opting in or asking for more information. Your client gets an immediate response, and you don’t have to monitor text traffic 24/7.

Although messaging has been around for a while, it still seems more relevant to today’s consumers than email. Messaging platforms like SMS-Magic make it easier to conduct business by removing the repetitive chores that eat up your day. Messages are personal and relevant. And your customers love them.

SMS-Magic integrates with many office management systems, so ask us about your system. We’d be happy to talk about your needs. If you’re ready to start, set up a demo of SMS-Magic today!

Leveraging that behavior, colleges and universities can use SMS or MMS to capture the attention of incoming and current students in a way students will immediately understand and use. Students read most messages within three minutes, and they respond at a much higher rate to messages than they do to other communication channels. And if that isn’t enough to convince you to incorporate messaging into your digital marketing strategy, here is more information about how messaging can help you reach an audience of digital natives – your students.

Cost

Compared to most marketing channels, messaging is one of the most cost-effective methods and has the greatest ROI. While email and text campaigns are both affordable, text messages have a much greater open rate than emails, 98% and 20% respectively. The low per-message cost is an asset for colleges and universities, because text-message marketing is best executed with multi-message campaigns and follow-up messages.

Convenience

Text messaging offers a level of convenience that can not only save your team time but allows students to read and respond to messages with minimal hassle. Most messages are opened within minutes of receipt, which makes SMS and MMS messaging an effective medium for timely communications, offers and reminders. It also means you get real-time alerts about the messages that have been received and opened, so your team can adjust its approach when needed.

Performance

We know texting has an edge with open and response rates, but it is also an effective channel for facilitating sales, event registrations, class enrollments and more. Where emails that try to prompt certain actions can often be mistaken for spam, text messages can move more students through the chosen pipeline.

Interactive

Consider this scenario. Your university wants to send communications about financial aid applications to students who have been accepted but haven’t enrolled yet, and current students who still need to submit applications for the upcoming school year. The goal of this marketing initiative is both to build awareness of the financial aid resources available to students and act as a reminder for the students who are already aware of the resources but have yet to complete their forms.

When you send the information over email, some students may follow the action items all in one sitting: open the email, read the information, click on the links to complete the application, and finish/submit the application. But our paths are rarely that linear. Some student users will read the email one day, Google the information in a separate browser tab (without using the links in the email) and may even fill out the application in-person. That leaves marketing staff with a disjointed view of how their communications are influencing students.

With text messaging, the path is most likely to be linear thanks to short code keyword response options. As students respond “HELP”, “APPLY” or other quick replies, marketing teams gather better insights and engage in more student interactions.

Approachable

While text messaging can be used to achieve many university objectives, it’s the most personal method to connect with students, which is key to building brand loyalty. Giving students the ability to communicate in a convenient and accessible channel helps cultivate trust, break down barriers and maintain personalization with each and every student.

When to Use

Now that you know why to use SMS and MMS messaging, let’s talk about when to use it. The applications are limitless, but here are some ideas to get you rolling:

• Admissions and enrollment
• Financial services
• Retention
• Campus alerts
• Campus events
• Career services
• Alumni relations

Need More Information?

Just take a look at how SMS-Magic client, Northwest University, upped student engagement by 15x with messaging. This case study and others will give you plenty of inspiration on how you can use messaging at your institution. 

Contact us to set up a free demo, or if you prefer to chart your own course, start your free trial today.

If you haven’t already implemented SMS marketing into your business strategy, there couldn’t be a better time. Text messages can help you build and maintain your customer base and stand out from the rest of the pack. What makes this form of marketing so powerful? Read on to find out what SMS marketing can do for your tech company!

Nurture Leads and Customers With High-Value Content

Your leads might be interested in your products, but may not be ready to buy yet. Maybe a customer bought from you several years ago, but they’re due for an upgrade soon. Your challenge is to nurture a relationship between them and your brand, so they’ll stick with you until the right time comes.

SMS marketing offers an organic way to become a valuable source of facts, tips and useful information for your leads. Since text messages have around a 98% open rate, your leads will see your outreach. By sending helpful information that meets their needs, you’ll keep them subscribed to your messaging list, and your brand will add value to their lives. Consider reaching out with:

• Common problems your leads might be facing and explanations of how your product or service can help.
  • “Worried about security on your company’s devices? We can help  . . . “

• Interesting statistics or facts relating to technology in your leads’ specific industries or interests. With advanced SMS marketing solutions, it’s easy to both personalize and automate your outreach.
  • “A federal judge recently ruled against scanning students’ rooms during virtual test proctoring. Does your institution need new remote testing solutions? We’ve got options.”

• Creative shortcuts, tricks and strategies to help your leads solve tech-related headaches
  • “Record podcasts that sound better with these simple tips!”

Remember to keep messages short, to-the-point, and properly spaced (typically, once a week is a good schedule for promotional outreach). You can also use text messages to invite recipients to more in-depth sources of information, like your company’s blogs or how-to web pages.

Keep Customers Excited About New Innovations

Text messaging is a great way to let your customers know when you’ve rolled out a new product or upgrade. Texts are unobtrusive and easy to read, and your customers typically prefer them over any other channel. With multimedia messaging solutions (MMS), you can not only send product stats and information, but also multimedia files, like product images.

To quickly gauge interest in new products, whether you’ve already developed them or they’re still on the drawing board, you can message your customers with a quick survey. Asking for their opinion helps you tailor your offerings to their specific needs, and it also helps them know that you care about them and hear their concerns.

Offer Quick, Seamless, Multichannel Support

In the tech industry, product support and customer service are key. Today’s tech users don’t want to sit on hold for an hour waiting for someone to help. They want responsive, in-the-moment support that fits seamlessly into their busy lives. Your customers need to know that you’re there for them, not just before the sale, but afterwards as well.

Advanced conversational messaging solutions make it easy for your support team to answer questions and solve customers’ problems. Using keyword automation, your customers’ questions can easily be routed to the right agent. Members of your team can seamlessly collaborate on the same conversation, and messages from multiple channels will appear in a single inbox. Easy access to message history ensures every agent who works on a particular issue has all the facts they need to quickly resolve it. Your customers will appreciate the convenience of a text-based support conversation, which can take place while they’re on the clock, in the field or juggling other tasks.

With SMS marketing, your tech company can drive revenue, boost customer satisfaction and improve agent efficiency and workflow. Want to get started with SMS-Magic? Contact our customer support team for a demo or a free trial!

Consider the proven results of messaging campaigns: MarketingProfs reported SMS marketing has a whopping 98% read rate, while 40% of text messages actually receive a response from customers. And when it comes to paying via text messaging, customers enjoy the convenience just as much. From mobile readers to crypto transactions, digital payments are fast and convenient.

Why would a business expand its customer tools to offer payment solutions via text messaging? A study conducted in 2020 by Weave found that 35% of customers are interested in paying with a text from their phone.

Convenience and Personalization

By offering flexibility and convenience to customers, businesses are more likely to improve their accounts receivable turnover ratios. Companies with high accounts receivable turnover ratios indicate that they collect payments from customers quickly without long waiting periods.

In addition, customers may also enjoy the personal, casual aspects of receiving text messages rather than formal bills sent via snail mail or email with a deadline to pay. In fact, a 2014 industry survey found that 52% of customers would be likely to text with a live customer support agent, and that the same percentage would prefer texting instead of their current method of reaching customer support.

One limitation to consider is the nature of SMS and MMS messages sent in the United States. Your messaging provider can make the physical and backend parts of their systems secure, but no one can secure messages once they are enroute without the special security environment provided by over-the-top apps like WhatsApp.

Compliance

Perhaps the number one priority for businesses accepting text payments is the need to be PCI compliant. If you don’t plan to process payments yourself, make sure you partner with a vendor who builds compliance into their interactions with your customers.

There are only 12 requirements your business must meet to accept debit and credit card payments, but being aware of these requirements is only half the battle. You must also adhere to them in your systems and transactions.

To ensure you take no shortcuts with compliance in text payments, practice these rules:

• Partner with a payment processor that has a solid track record of compliance
• Know the ins-and-outs of sensitive cardholder data
• Establish crisis and incident response plans
• Conduct regular security audits

Payment Data Storage

Storing cardholder data – account numbers, pins, CVVS, and more – is also a critical aspect of a company’s PCI compliance and security when accepting text payments. When data breaches occur, scammers are often skimming cardholder data.

In an ironic twist, your company’s own employees may be a major cause of non-compliance if they are not handling cardholder data appropriately. A Veritas Technologies study of international office workers found that 71% employees are exposing companies to risk by sharing sensitive data outside of the businesses that employ them.

Training employees in ethical and secure data handling is just as important as ensuring your internal controls and infrastructure meet compliance standards. Many companies choose to bring in an outside expert to establish data security standards and train employees for mobile payment practices.

The ability to accept payments or store personal information is becoming increasingly popular with global companies. In fact, banks and other financial institutions use WhatsApp to send bank balances, overdraft alerts and other inquiries to their customers via messaging. WhatsApp, which is supported by SMS-Magic, also has the ability to safely secure personal data.

BYOD Policies

With the rise of remote and mobile work, many companies have developed “bring your own device” policies. Guided by these policies, employees are allowed (or encouraged) to use personal devices that are not under the purview of the company, even if they are used for business purposes. When employees use their own device to communicate with customers, the employee becomes responsible for ensuring that they are practicing compliant behaviors when they’re engaging in messaging and in text payment processing.

Even secure transmission apps like WhatsApp can make proving secure communications difficult. For example, if a company ever had to conduct a security investigation – internally or externally – it would be difficult to extract information from an employee’s personal device unless individual consent or subpoenas are involved.

That’s why it’s important to make sure your business has an ironclad phone policy for employees using their personal devices for business purposes. Establishing dedicated work apps keeps their communication within a controlled work environment, ensuring you have access to communications if issues arise in mobile payments.

Whether you’re using WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, LINE, or any other messaging channel to accept text payments from customers, your business is making the customers’ lives easier. 

Ensure your company’s infrastructure is prepared to handle this sensitive data by choosing the right payment processors, cybersecurity specialists and messaging solutions to keep you compliant and safe. 

At SMS-Magic, we can help your business securely accept mobile payments from customers via our messaging solution that meets PCI and telecommunications regulations. To chat with an expert, set up a free demo.