We help you engage your customers in their go-to channel: Mobile

Ajay Singh Khera, Strategic Partnerships and Business Development

Travel has gone mobile and so have travelers. In fact, travelers consider their smartphones to be the single most indispensable item they carry with them when they travel, ahead of their toothbrush, deodorant, and driver’s license. And it’s not just when they travel. The mobile phone has become an indispensable tool for travelers at every stage of the customer journey from searching for ideas of where to take their next vacation, to making a booking, to sharing their feedback post trip.

When it comes to mobile communication, there is one channel that travel brands cannot afford to ignore – SMS. Unlike mobile apps, SMS is ubiquitous to all types of mobile devices and doesn’t require a high-speed data connection. It’s also a native technology meaning that it’s already on every mobile phone (and has been for a while) so everyone knows how to use it and does so frequently, 18.7 billion times a day worldwide in fact. IT departments understand how to implement it, and 64% of all consumers are likely to have a positive perception of a company that offers texting as a service channel.

To demonstrate how SMS can help you better engage travelers at every stage of the customer journey, we’ve created the following use case infographic which highlights just a few of the SMS use cases that travel brands can implement and start realizing business benefits from today.

There are many other SMS use cases that can help benefit travel brands including promotional SMS messages to support slow sales periods, or to help optimize investment in branded apps by sending SMS messages with special offers that reengage inactive users. SMS is also being used by travel brands to help protect customer privacy with 2FA (two-factor authentication) and OTP (one-time passwords.)

The key to understanding what use cases are going to help you realize the biggest business benefits is to understand how and when your customers are interacting with you along their journey today. That insight will enable you to see where an additional layer of communication would be most beneficial. SMS has the highest response rate of any mobile communication channel with 95 percent of messages being read within three minutes of sending, that makes it the most immediate and engaging form of mobile communication. Therefore, look for instances where timeliness is important like travel updates or booking confirmations, or instances where you want to ensure your customer receives your message, such as limited-time promotional offers.

Many travel brands like Marriott, Uber, Expedia and the major airlines are already realizing the benefits of SMS in enhancing the customer experience, are you? I’d love to hear what use cases you are finding most effective.

April 4, 2017 [Zug, Switzerland]: Mitto AG, a global SMS mobile messaging provider, has today release a new white paper, “Driving Business Through A2P Messaging.” The paper, authored by Juniper Research, a global leader for industry research and data, provides a comprehensive overview of how Mobile Network Operators, OTTs and Enterprises can use A2P messaging and its associated use cases to drive business and realize increased revenues.

Key findings include:

• Consumer affinity with text messaging now extends to its A2P incarnation suggesting that the market has been seeded for additional use cases.

• A2P messaging provides MNOs with an opportunity to plug a growing cost-revenue deficit being caused by declining core revenues from voice, P2P messaging and data and increasing capex and opex costs.

• While A2P messaging generated traffic worth nearly $36.3 billion in 2016, 31 percent of that traffic was grey route and not monetized, totaling nearly $11.9 billion in lost revenues to Mobile Network Operators.

• OTT players are heavy users of A2P messaging, generating billions of traffic per annum in their use of A2P messaging for 2FA (two-factor authentication) and to re-engage users who have abandoned their messaging application or changed device.

• The greatest financial benefit that A2P messaging can deliver to OTTs that provide content is in the form of an alternative billing mechanism with the value of digital content paid for via carrier billing projected to increase from $16.5 billion in 2016 to nearly $56.2 billion in 2021, an average annual growth of 28 percent.

• Consumers prefer SMS as a means of communicating with companies over other channels including OTT messaging apps, Facebook/Skype and push notifications direct to a company’s app.

The white paper concludes with a series of recommendations from Juniper Research on the steps these three industries should take to increase revenues from A2P messaging. Those include the requirement to use carrier-grade messaging platforms or work with third party platform providers that can help stem grey route traffic and increase reach to deliver a robust and reliable global SMS connectivity offering.

“While companies know that the A2P opportunity is there, we find that more often than not, they don’t know how to take advantage of it for their own business benefits,” comments Andrea Giacomini, Managing Director, Mitto. “That’s why we engaged Juniper to write this white paper, to provide simple recommendations that companies can quickly implement to rapidly start realizing results from the mechanism.”

The white paper is available for complimentary download at http://go.mitto.ch/A2P_messaging_whitepaper.

Louise Finlay, Marketing Director, Mitto

It’s been an exciting start to 2017 here at Mitto. As our team of mobile specialists continue to enhance our platform, fine tuning our proprietary connected dynamic routing technology to provide our customers with the most reliable SMS Messaging platform in the industry, in the marketing department we’ve been hard at work, updating our branding with a fresh new look and feel.

In planning for the rebrand, we spent time a lot of time talking with customers about how Mitto helps solve their business issues. They told us three things. First and foremost, they told us that the reliability of our platform provided them with peace of mind that they could continue to optimize engagement with their customers through timely, effective mobile communications. Secondly, they told us that they found real added value in being able to use our Mobile Intelligence solutions to verify that their SMS communications were reaching the right people, on the right networks in the most cost effective manner. Thirdly, our mobile operator partners told us that our platform and deep mobile expertise was enabling them to tap into the growing A2P opportunity.

With those conversations in mind we categorized our services as follows:

Engage – this category includes our SMS messaging services and is all about how Mitto helps companies engage customers in their go-channel: Mobile.

Verify – this category includes our Mobile Intelligence services that provide companies with the information they need to make informed decisions that improve the accuracy and increase the cost effectiveness of SMS messaging.

Enable – this category is dedicated to our A2P Managed Services offer, our newest service line that helps mobile operators realize new revenue streams and monetize their connectivity assets.

When it came to the imagery we wanted to use to represent Mitto and the business issues we solve for our clients, we took inspiration from the connectivity of SMS. We saw several parallels between SMS and how the road system and the technologies it uses to connect people works. You’ll see that reflected in images of bridges that enable people who were previously separated by physical boundaries to connect; you’ll see it in images of traffic lights used to filter and direct traffic in the most efficient way possible and you’ll see it in the speed of motor traffic. Now we’d love to hear what you think! Take a look at our new website and check out our social media pages – LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook and let us know your thoughts on our new look and feel.

Nadeem Ladha, VP of Channel and Mobile Intelligence

In a mobile-first world where personalization and personalized engagement are the buzz words of the day, the mobile device is quickly becoming one of the most powerful data sources for Enterprises looking to understand more about the behaviors and attributes of their customers.

With data points including the online/offline status of mobile numbers, what mobile network the number is associated with and portability and roaming status, there are multiple ways that Enterprises can use the data to enhance customer engagement. Here are three ways our customers are using it.

If you’re using mobile intelligence we’d love to hear what’s working for you and how the data is helping you enhance engagement with your mobile customers.

Mitto has a singular mission – to provide our customers with the most reliable, robust and secure SMS Messaging service in the industry, which is why we are delighted to announce that we have been awarded an ISO 27001:2013 certification.

ISO 27001:2013 is a globally recognized standard for establishing, implementing, maintaining and continually improving an information security management system. With the award of this certification, Mitto can ensure that best practices in the management and handling of information are executed in a secure manner with the appropriate security controls. This enables us to minimize risk for our customers.

If you have any questions about our certification, please email them to info@mitto.ch.