How you implement conversational messaging, however, will depend on several factors. Here are our suggestions for evaluating your messaging readiness:

1. How many messages do you expect to send per month?
   SMS-Magic is a powerful tool, no matter how many messages you send, but our platform really shines as your volume increases. You can send thousands of text messages in just a few minutes, or you can send eye-catching multimedia files at a slightly slower pace. It’s easy to tailor your message volume to your goals and budget.

2. Do you work with a CRM like Salesforce or Zoho?
   If you send just a handful of messages each month, you can use SMS-Magic without using a customer relationship management tool like Salesforce or Zoho. If, however, you have conversations with more than a few clients or customers, a CRM can help you track your conversations, segment your delivery lists and customize your messaging campaigns. SMS-Magic is a top-rated partner for Salesforce and Zoho, and it integrates with them seamlessly.

3. Do you need to track all your conversations in one place?
   Once you’ve integrated messaging and your CRM, SMS-Magic will store all your messages to a single customer in one record. If you use a practice management tool like Litify, you can see the conversation history in Litify – there’s no need to open both applications. Accessing a conversation history allows contact centers to work more efficiently and reduces customer frustration. Customers don’t have to repeat their stories time and again because the conversation is available to the rep immediately.

4. Do all your employees need the ability to message?
   We can provide messaging access to all your employees – not just your marketing team – if that helps you respond to your customers faster. Some of the law firms that use SMS-Magic have found that empowering all their employees with messaging access allows their staff to respond to client questions and concerns, even if the lead attorney on the case is in court. The message history is available to everyone, so staff members can relay information to clients, follow-up on missing documents or send appointment reminders.

5. Do your employees need messaging access on the go
   The SMS-Magic Mobile App is a great solution when your staff members can’t be in the office. One of our customers, a property management company, has streamlined maintenance requests by converting to messaging. Tenants can use their preferred communication method to report maintenance issues, and staff members can respond promptly, even if they are visiting a property at the time. Because SMS-Magic is integrated into Salesforce for this customer, all conversations are stored for easy access back at the office.

You know how powerful conversational messaging can be. Your customers love it! They read 98% of the messages they receive and respond within three minutes to 95% of them. You can deliver a message at your convenience and your customer can respond at theirs.

Billions of people use messaging platforms like SMS, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp – allowing them to make payments, talk to their bankers, and submit applications from their mobile phones. Conversational messaging has become the preferred business communication channel around the world.

Are you ready to switch to conversational messaging? We’d like to help make your decision easier. Our customer support team would love to show you how SMS-Magic can make reaching your customers easier and more effective with a demo or a free trial!

Billions of people use messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and SMS – allowing them to make payments, talk to their bankers, and submit applications from their mobile phones. Conversational messaging has become the preferred business communication channel around the world.

Now you have a chance to test drive the newly updated version of SMS-Magic!

If you already have created a sandbox environment, we would like to push an Early Release Preview to your sandbox in the next two weeks. We’d like you to try it and let us know what you think. Here’s all you need to do:

• If you have a sandbox in Version 1.68 now, do nothing. We’ll push the new release to your sandbox automatically.
• If you’d rather not play, send an email  to marketing@sms-magic.com to tell us to exclude your sandbox from the push.
• Be sure to save your work before the auto-push.

Once you’ve tried the new version of SMS-Magic, we need your feedback. We’ll give you some time to try the new release out, then we’ll send you an email with a feedback link. Your input will help us create a better product for you.

What’s New in the Early Release Preview?

SMS-Magic is known for sophisticated, easy-to-use APIs designed for CRMs like Salesforce and Zoho. The upgrades in the new release make those integrations even easier and give you more control over how you engage your customers.

• Enhanced User Experience: Personalize your user experience with additional role-based permission sets and organize the records detail page with conversation component resizing.
• Multimedia Conversations: Send bigger rich-media files over instant messengers and set Salesforce as the storage location for them.
• Tame the Templates: Enjoy quick access to org-wide templates from SMS-Magic Global Navigation.
• Find Your Conversation Flows: Search by “app name” or “PA-Key” and view process builders, workflows and flows linked with any Converse App.
• Launch Conversations at Scale: Manage multiple high-volume campaigns directly from SMS-Magic Global Navigation.
• Engage with Customers at the Right Time, Every Time: SMS-Magic’s Early Release Preview keeps track of your conversations from start to finish in a single thread – before or after you create the record. Modifying objects and templates? No problem. Your conversations are always on. You can immediately spot conversations assigned to you and keep them uninterrupted and synched with Salesforce at all times.
• Enjoy Stronger Compliance & Support: We’ve enhanced the back-end so you can track all SMS-Magic user activity in one place and access all activity logs when you need them. Configure opt-in and opt-out keywords, templated messages, and message tags. Maintain audit trails and enable reporting for multichannel compliance, opt-out rates, message delivery, and more. Have a question? Our support team is ready to help resolve any issues you encounter. You can turn on full- or limited-access to the support team for seven days at a time.
• Confidently Continue Conversations On the Go: You can spot new messages anytime, anywhere. The upgraded SMS-Magic Mobile App prominently displays how many unread messages you have. The app also lets you continue conversations from your mobile phone and tracks them in your CRM. You can share exact map locations in conversations to improve any in-person meeting experience.

The new release of SMS-Magic’s Early Release Preview is your perfect partner to power high-stakes conversational messaging for moments that matter. Help us make it the best it can be with your feedback. If you have questions, please contact customer support.

If you haven’t tried SMS-Magic yet, our customer support team would love to show you how SMS-Magic can make reaching your customers easier and more effective. Ask for a demo or a free trial!

Long codes are essentially phone numbers, complete with an area code. Short codes are generally five or six digits. Keep reading and we’ll give you some great information about short and long codes to help you make decisions for your campaign.

Characteristics of Short- and Long-Codes

Let’s start with short codes. As we said, short codes are generally five or six digits. They are fixed and easy-to-remember, and they must be registered with your carrier. Think of a short code as your mobile marketing address. For example, Burger King’s is 287437.

Most companies create short codes to drive their messaging strategy. They combine short codes with related keywords and automated responses to deliver specific content or answers to keyword responses and questions.

For example, a pizza chain may prompt you to text the word “PIZZA” to a 6-digit short code by offering a coupon or discount. When you text, they reply by immediately sending a link to a coupon. The response is generated automatically.

Here’s a drawback to using short codes: short codes can only be used to send either SMS or MMS messages. You can’t use them to send faxes or make calls.

Here’s the upside: short code delivery is usually faster than long-code delivery, the margin of error is smaller, and carriers don’t tend to mark messages using short codes as spam as often as they do with long codes.

By contrast, long codes are 10-digit numbers and are tied to specific area codes. They can be used to send and receive texts and faxes, as well as to make calls. Toll-free numbers also can be used as long codes.

The choice of short or long codes depends on several variables. Here are the five most important:

1. Speed of sending/receiving text messages

• SMS long codes have a limit of one message per second; therefore, long codes are used primarily for person-to-person communication.
• Short codes can be used to send 40 messages per second. They work better than long codes when a high-volume response is expected, such as voting during a television program.

2. Inbound-to-outbound message ratio

Carriers limit inbound long-code messages to one for every four outbound messages. Short codes don’t have a limit – you can send and receive as many as you’d like.

3. Difference in use cases

Typically, long codes are used by courier companies, banks, airlines and other service sectors for customer-service communications. Here are a few examples:

• A courier company could use a long code to inform a customer that their package is out for delivery.
• A bank could message clients their account balances every month.
• An airline could reply to a passenger’s seat preference request.

Short codes are used by companies for marketing and security or to disseminate urgent information. Short codes examples include:

• Marketing promotions. Use short codes to send coupons, sales alerts, and other promotional information. If your company is US-based, it’s mandatory to have a short code for all marketing messages.
• Two-factor authentication. Since a message sent via short code can be delivered quickly, short codes are preferred for these applications.
• Alert notifications, including hurricane warnings or flight delays. These notifications are urgent and important. They are effective because of fast, reliable delivery.

The following table shares an overview of the key aspects concerning short and long codes.

4. Acquisition Process

You’ll need to have long- or short-codes before your campaign launches. Depending on your choice, it could take months to acquire the codes you need. Here are common time requirements:

• Long codes. You’ll have your code within a day after you complete an online form or make the call to your carrier.
• Short codes. May take six to eight weeks to attain. Short codes must be registered with the US Common Short Code Administration (CSCA) and carriers, and they all must approve your registration.

We recommend you keep a set of short codes available for campaigns. At SMS-Magic we keep

pre-approved short codes available for our customers.

5. Coverage Around the World

• Long codes. You’ll use the same long code across the globe.
• Short codes are country specific. They provide delivery receipts, which are needed in cases such as two-factor authentication or when message delivery is critical.

Let SMS-Magic Help You

The SMS-Magic team helps clients with short- and long-code decisions every day. We would be excited to share our experience and help you decide which one is best for you. Or if you’re already sure which would be best for you, we can help you implement your choice.

Does the SMS-Magic team sound like the partner you’ve been looking for? We hope so!

Contact us to set up a demo or to start your free trial. Let us show you how SMS-Magic can help you build and automate your messaging campaigns!

Take a few minutes and spend time with speakers who can offer a new perspective – or just make us laugh.

As a simple holiday gift, here are five of our favorite TED talks:

How to Make Stress Your Friend

Kelly McGonigal

In one of the most popular TED talks, research psychologist Kelly McGonigal talks about how to make stress work to our benefit. She was recognized by Oprah Magazine as a 2020 Visionary.

This Is What Happens When You Reply to Spam

James Veitch

Ever received a suspicious email from someone with unclaimed insurance bonds or friends marooned in a foreign country? Join James Veitch as he responds to a spammer who has offered to cut him into a great deal and riches untold.

All It Takes Is 10 Mindful Minutes

Andy Puddicombe

Mindfulness expert Andy Puddicombe shares the transformative power of doing nothing for 10 minutes a day. (No need to sit in uncomfortable positions or burn incense.)

What Makes a Good Life? Lessons from the Longest Study on Happiness

Robert Waldinger

Robert Waldinger, director of a 75-year Harvard study on adult development, discusses what makes a happy life in one of the most popular TED Talks.

The Power of Vulnerability

Brené Brown

In a poignant, funny talk, Brené Brown shares insights from her research about our ability to connect to each other and how connection shapes our lives.

All of us at SMS-Magic wish you the happiest of holidays!

Think about how you’re contacting your customer now. If you’re sending any type of message in small batches, you are spending quite a bit of time making sure all the elements (subject line, message, email address) are correct before you hit send. It would take several hours to send out 1,000 messages, and we don’t want to consider how long 10,000 messages might take, even with a bulk email delivery service.

And if you’re relying on emails, you are probably disappointed with the response rates your messages generate. Those of us in the U.S. only open emails 22 percent of the time, according to Gigaom. No wonder your customers aren’t beating down the door – they aren’t getting the message. And following up on emails that have gone silent takes lots of time.

If you’re using the phone to contact customers for any reason – their car is ready, their appointment is coming up, or you still need those documents completed – you’re not only spending time dialing and leaving messages, you’re also spending time in the social aspects of a phone call. The minutes spent asking about your customer’s holiday plans can quickly add up to hours.

Then there’s the cost. Customer-service phone calls, according to a Forrester Research study, cost the sponsoring company about $16 each. A text thread, however, averages out to between $1 and $5. We think that’s enough of a reason.

Even so, we don’t mean to disparage talking to your customers by phone, but when you do engage in a phone call, you need to have a specific reason. Are you calling to establish a personal connection to solve a problem or ask for an opinion? In that case, the phone may be the best way to connect.

But we all know that when you’re sending lots of messages with the same text or question, it isn’t fun. It’s routine. It’s boring, but it’s still vitally important. So why not use a system that can send messages in seconds, update your customer’s record, and provide a quick, easy way for your customers to respond?

If you’re using a CRM like Salesforce or Zoho, text messaging apps like SMS-Magic can link directly to the CRM. That allows you to:

1. Collect all the customer service information about an open ticket in one place. That allows anyone on the team to handle the next interaction.

2. Know exactly what messages were sent to which customers because it will be logged into their CRM record.

3. Communicate with messages from all of the messaging apps like WhatsApp, Messenger, WeChat, Line, Phoenix, Viber or the native texting app on your customers’ phones.

SMS messages are limited to 160 characters and cost less to send than larger MMS messages. MMS messages, however, can include audio, video, GIFs and complicated graphics, among other rich media components. Even with a large file attached, you can send your customers the information they need, exactly when they need it.

Let SMS-Magic Help You

We think SMS-Magic can help you reach your customers with less time and effort than you’re spending on emails and phone calls. We offer conversational messaging so that your customers can respond to your texts. If you want to tie into your CRM, we work particularly well with Salesforce and Zoho, but we can help you with many others, and we work with all the messaging apps like Messenger, WhatsApp, and SnapChat, so you don’t sacrifice anything to reach your best customers wherever they are … and you get your life back! How cool is that?

Contact us to set up a demo or to start your free trial. Let us show you how SMS-Magic can help you end the nightmare of scheduling installations!

As we listened to her story, we thought she had done everything right because she worked with a reputable company. We thought they really did want to provide great service, but the sales staff left out a critical part of the installation process – the installer wouldn’t haul away stained carpet. The customer service staff wanted to help, but our colleague couldn’t reach them on installation day because she got caught in endless voicemail loops. When she finally reached them, customer service couldn’t get in touch with the installer quickly enough to resolve the issue. Our colleague faced a huge expense to find and hire someone else to dispose of the old carpet.

The End of the Story & Critical Solutions

The installers eventually gave in and finished the job, but they trashed the old carpet in a dumpster the homeowners’ association had supplied for a different project. Our colleague faced fines from the HOA for improper use of the dumpster. It’s easy to see why she won’t use this supplier again. But it all could have been avoided.

How? By using text messaging to standardize scheduling, deliver consistent installation tips, and connect customers with customer service and installers quickly. We think text messaging can help you turn a disgruntled customer into a delighted customer. Remember: you can’t help a customer that you can’t reach.

How Can Text Messaging Help You Schedule Installation?

If you sell products or services that need installation, text messages can help you reach your customer wherever they are. Your customers actually prefer texts to emails or phone calls. Consider this:

• Nathan Eddy writes in eWeek, “Over half of [survey] respondents (52 percent) said they would be likely to text with a customer support agent. Similarly, 52 percent would prefer texting customer support more than their current preferred method of communication.”
• Globally, we send more than five billion texts a day – not counting other types of messages – and we open 98 percent of them. Conversely, we only open emails 22 percent of the time, according to Gigaom. Research from Asurion shows that we look at our phones 96 times a day or once every 10 minutes.

Clearly, we like to text and find it helpful in personal interactions. We think the next big business opportunity is to make messaging a regular part of customer support.

Text messages, either SMS or MMS, are versatile. They are immediate because your message goes directly to your customer’s phone. Text messages are brief but they can link to much more information like calendars, web pages, PDFs, videos or podcasts. You can deliver the same critical information about the installation to every customer, every time.

And during the sale, your customer can opt into receiving text messages. You can include it as part of the sales process.

When you set up a new messaging campaign, we recommend that you plan the flow of text messages using both templates and automated delivery. You decide what information your customer needs and in what order – the next text message in the sequence is triggered by the customer’s response to the last text. If you don’t receive a response within a certain time, your system sends a reminder text. If you don’t receive a response or your customer indicates a problem, the issue can be referred to a live customer service rep automatically.

If our colleague’s carpet company had used this type of system, they could have given her options for carpet removal and disposal long before the day of installation. They might have been able to keep a customer.

Let SMS-Magic Help You

We think SMS-Magic can help you eliminate nightmares when you’re scheduling installation for your products. SMS-Magic can help provide a great experience for your customers, too. We offer conversational messaging so that your customers can respond to your texts. If you want to tie into your CRM, we work particularly well with Salesforce and Zoho, but we can help you with many others, and we work with all the messaging apps like Messenger and WhatsApp, so you don’t sacrifice anything to reach your best customers wherever they are!

Contact us to set up a demo or to start your free trial. Let us show you how SMS-Magic can help you end the nightmare of scheduling installations!

So we have to ask: “If you’re interested in building relationships with your customers or patients or clients, why aren’t you already using conversational messaging powered by SMS-Magic?”

Your experience likely has taught you that consumers often ignore business emails and phone calls, even when they need help making critical decisions about their finances, their health, their education, and their environment, among other things. You know that messaging allows you to reach your customer (or patient or client) conveniently and in a way that they prefer. You also know conversational messaging, in addition to being convenient, allows your customer to respond to you directly, making their life easier and providing you with immediate feedback about their situation.

So what’s holding you back? Are you concerned about:

Managing Complicated Conversations?

Your interactions with customers aren’t always simple. (For the sake of brevity, let’s call everyone who might have a relationship with your organization a customer, even if they’re a client, student, applicant, or patient.) Your customers can have complicated questions about almost anything. Conversational messaging allows your team to answer the question using messaging or to divert the conversation to another medium, like a phone call or information on your website. The key is that you can direct your customer to the best information possible because you know more about their situation. SMS-Magic handles conversational messaging like the professional solution it is.

Empowering Multiple Team Members?

Everyone wants to solve a customer’s problem during the first interaction but that isn’t always possible. When the next team member enters the conversation, they want to know everything that’s been said. It’s easier to solve problems when you have all the information at your fingertips. Working with a CRM like Salesforce or Zoho, SMS-Magic can manage all your customer contacts in one place, no matter how the customer has contacted you.

Communicating Using Longer Time Horizons?

Sometimes customers aren’t ready for you when they contact you. They might be gathering information about your product or service and intend to decide later. They might not qualify for your service during the initial contact but might be ready in six months. Conversational messaging allows you to “ping” potential customers from time to time, checking on their readiness to work with you. Done well, your conversational check-ins with your customers can help you build a relationship with them. By the time your customer makes a buying decision, they’re already comfortable with your organization. SMS-Magic can help you stay in touch with prospects over time.

Ensuring Full Compliance?

With business messaging increasing 400 percent each year, you want to honor a customer’s request to opt out of messages. We do, too. That’s why SMS-Magic is built to provide full compliance with laws and regulations like the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) in the U.S. or General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe. We give you the tools you need to be confident your customers have opted into messaging and that messages are going to a welcoming audience.

Why Choose SMS-Magic?

You can give us a test drive without spending a penny. SMS-Magic offers a free trial so that you can get a feel for our product. If you’re as pleased as we think you will be, you can choose the level of service that’s best for your company.

If you use a customer relation management system (CRM), we can integrate SMS-Magic into your system. We work seamlessly with Salesforce and Zoho, and we have the capability to work with most systems.

One of our customers has two Salesforce AppX developers on staff. Their chief technology officer said, “Our developers were able to work with the SMS-Magic AppX code to expose the functionality of SMS-Magic to other developers on our team. So other developers who work in Python and are writing API code, they could just ping a simple end point and then it would send a message through the SMS-Magic package, show up in Salesforce and have the right bookkeeping.”

If, however, you don’t use a CRM, no worries! You can deploy our stand-alone product that doesn’t require a CRM. Our installation is quick, easy, and supported by our experienced technical staff members.

Let’s Go!

Does SMS-Magic sound like the answer you’ve been looking for? We hope so!

Contact us to set up a demo or to start your free trial. Let us show you how we can help you make the most of the conversational messaging!

As a business owner, these questions matter a lot to you. Understanding who is visiting your website can help you track the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and give you a good idea of who your potential customers are.

Tracking metrics is obviously important and URL shorteners and trackers can help you track while also strengthening your brand identity. Customized, shortened URLs are one of the most used tools to market your business content on social media. And most importantly these links allow you to track incoming traffic and marketing campaigns while maintaining a cohesive brand identity.

Getting Started With URL Shorteners

There are many URL shortening tools available, so you’ll need to select one that works for your needs. You’ll quickly be able to start creating new short links that you can add to your business marketing messages. If you choose to customize your links, make sure to add branded domains, content keywords, UTM parameters, and capitalization.

5 Reasons Why URL Shorteners are Useful to Promote Content on the Web

URL shorteners benefit in many ways but here are the top 5 reasons why URL shorteners are useful to promote content on the web. Ultimately, they generate traffic for your business and help promote your brand:

• They make URLs more meaningful and manageable
• They have the capacity to track and compile the click data
• They can be easily transformed in social media services
• They can offer users useful features
• Simply put, they also promote sharing

Create Short URLs for your Social Channels

Adding a URL to your social media messages is always a good idea. Long URLs are often ignored, look clunky, and give the appearance that your brand is not up to date. Think about creating short URLs, customized with keywords matching your brand! Brand identity and cohesion goes a long way.

When you plan your content marketing, every word of your message will count. Short messages with long URLs are always overlooked. If you want to increase the chances of the content being read, using URL shorteners is a smart move.

URL Shortening – Are there any Negatives? 

Although there are many benefits of using URL shortening, there are some disadvantages. By understanding these you can avoid mistakes and not be caught by surprise if you run into any problems.

1. At times, URL Shorteners cause redirection

Considering the many benefits of shortening a URL, at times, people tend to shorten the shortened URLs further. This creates multiple redirections. Suppose you click on a shortened URL. Then ideally, you should redirect to the source link. But if the shortened URL has another shortened URL, you get redirected elsewhere or it takes forever for the page to open. With this, you may lose your traffic!

2. Link Shortening and Spammers

URL shorteners are icing on the cake for the spammers. This is because they can easily hide their nefarious URLs in shortened links. As the destination page is hidden in the shortened URLs, the spammers latch onto URL shortening like leeches. People have experienced that shortened URLs can lead to random pages, increasing the possibility of spamming.

3. Link shorteners may involve middlemen

As link shortening services are offered by middlemen who sit in between the end result and your users, you have a dependency on them to keep your shortened link viable till the end.What Link Shorteners Do?

The benefits of URL shortening will always overpower its limitations. You can never overlook the usefulness of link shortening for promoting your content on social media channels. The additional feature of analytics that measures the traffic coming back to your website, gives URL shortening more power. Using a customized URL with capitalization and a branded domain is a comfortable way to avoid spamming and distrust.

With a branded domain added to the shortened URLs, they become branded as well. Your company name, its brand, the identity is carried forward with your shortened URL. Within this, you can assure that the links that you share are not spammed and instead remembered by the customers.

Earlier, URL shorteners were merely used as URL shorteners to address email systems that would break long URLs and wrap any email after 80 characters. Later, some social media platforms, including Twitter, introduced a 140-character limit. Innovations in the world of URL shortening gained momentum. Today, using URL shortening and tracking assists your business in many ways.

Sounds great, right? Bundled with so many benefits, who wouldn’t use these tools for their business success?

The Takeaway?

Using URL shortening and tracking will help you track and measure your business. Customers will appreciate the brand cohesiveness and your content will be taken more seriously. By using a custom branded domain for your URL shortener, people can be reassured that you are not spamming. More importantly, all this will lead to more clicks and hits to the shortened URLs added to your content.

Want to see how SMS-Magic Converse helps clients achieve all of this with text messaging? Reach out and we would be happy to give you a personal tour and share examples from our clients!