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Enabling Business Communication at scale, uniquely engaging one customer at a time.Enabling Business Communication at scale
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“Thank you Bidvest team for your great service throughout 2024.”
- MTN
“Working with the Bidvest team is a real pleasure. We've thoroughly enjoyed partnering with a local provider for our business' WhatsApp profile - invoicing is simple and our templates are loaded and approved speedily. Prepaid24 would highly recommend Bidvest. Such a seamless process from setup to production!”
- Prepaid24
“We're incredibly grateful to the Bidvest Data Team who go above and beyond to support us with vital customer communication. Their commitment and innovation has kept us at the forefront of electronic customer engagement.”
- Sanlam Retail Mass
“Dear Bidvest team, Just wanted to take the time to say a very special thank you to TEAM BIDVEST. Everyone at OUP thanks all the people involved over the last few weeks and trust me, everyone in our organization now knows how much we can depend on Bidvest and we're all truly grateful for your efforts. Your responsiveness to our changing needs and requests is truly appreciated”
- Oxford
Explore effective SMS strategies for enhancing customer engagement. Learn best practices and successful use cases tailored for South African enterprises looking to boost communications and drive satisfaction.
In today's competitive digital landscape, South African enterprises are increasingly turning to SMS as a powerful tool to enhance customer engagement. This guide explores effective SMS strategies, industry best practices, and real-world examples tailored for corporate and medium-sized businesses looking to boost customer interactions and loyalty while ensuring compliance with local regulations.
SMS, or Short Message Service, remains one of the most effective communication channels for businesses. With open rates exceeding 98% and response rates around 45%, SMS provides an immediate way to reach customers directly on their mobile devices. This makes it an indispensable tool for enhancing engagement, particularly in sectors such as retail, finance, healthcare, and logistics.
Before sending SMS communications, ensure you have explicit consent from customers. This aligns with the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) in South Africa, which emphasizes customer privacy.
Personalization greatly enhances engagement. Use customer data to tailor messages according to preferences, purchase history, and past interactions.
Timing your messages for when customers are most likely to respond can significantly improve engagement rates. Avoid over-messaging, which can lead to opt-outs.
Every SMS should include a concise call-to-action that guides customers on what to do next, be it visiting a website, redeeming a coupon, or responding with feedback.
Several South African companies have effectively utilized SMS to boost customer engagement. Here are a couple of notable examples:
A leading retail chain successfully implemented SMS alerts to notify customers of flash sales and exclusive offers. As a result, they saw a 30% increase in foot traffic during promotional periods.
A healthcare provider adopted SMS reminders for appointments and follow-ups, reducing no-show rates by 25% and improving patient adherence to care plans.
To understand the effectiveness of your SMS campaigns, it's crucial to measure key performance indicators (KPIs). Common metrics to track include:
Incorporating SMS into your customer engagement strategy is a proven method to enhance communication, drive customer satisfaction, and create stronger relationships. By following best practices and leveraging real-world examples from South Africa, companies can successfully harness the power of SMS to achieve their engagement goals and foster customer loyalty.
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Bidvest Data sends on average more than 10 million personalized SMS/SV SMS messages per month, with daily peaks exceeding 2 million messages. This comprises mainly of transactional notifications and hosted transactional data.
The SMS channel delivers a secure, shortened personalized URL to the consumer, directing them to their unique microsite. All consumer activity can be tracked.
PDF documents, HTML content, videos and animations can be hosted on our Zero Rated Data domains. Reverse billing of data on these domains ensure access for end users to content at no cost. Bidvest Data offers this service on all South African and Namibian mobile networks.
Bidvest Data offers custom-built, screen adaptive, HTML environments, enabling features like animation, rotating GIFs, and interactive buttons.
Our service includes automated large file batch sending through sFTP data transfer. The data can selectively drive template messaging. Near real-time SMS sending is facilitated through our API, using templates or dynamic text.
Where another channel in our omnichannel platform is unsuccessful in delivering a message, we can automatically fail over to SMS. Priority and fail over channels are configurable.
Bidvest Data provides near-real-time and periodic aggregate batched reporting on consumer engagement, including link tracking, SMS and SV SMS delivery status, and customized reports on microsite access.
“Thank you Bidvest team for your great service throughout 2024.”
- MTN
“Working with the Bidvest team is a real pleasure. We've thoroughly enjoyed partnering with a local provider for our business' WhatsApp profile - invoicing is simple and our templates are loaded and approved speedily. Prepaid24 would highly recommend Bidvest. Such a seamless process from setup to production!”
- Prepaid24
“We're incredibly grateful to the Bidvest Data Team who go above and beyond to support us with vital customer communication. Their commitment and innovation has kept us at the forefront of electronic customer engagement.”
- Sanlam Retail Mass
“Dear Bidvest team, Just wanted to take the time to say a very special thank you to TEAM BIDVEST. Everyone at OUP thanks all the people involved over the last few weeks and trust me, everyone in our organization now knows how much we can depend on Bidvest and we're all truly grateful for your efforts. Your responsiveness to our changing needs and requests is truly appreciated”
- Oxford
Get answers to common questions about Sms And Svsms