Differences between transactional SMS and promotional SMS

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What is a transactional SMS?
A transactional SMS is an SMS sent by a company to a customer to facilitate a commercial transaction. The goal here is to simplify the service received by the consumer and improve their sales experience. All messages are automatically configured on your SMS platform and their sending is triggered by the customer's action. Here are some examples of transactional SMS .

Purchase or reservation confirmations
Most of the time, purchase or reservation confirmations are made through an instant message. You can also configure this automatic text message that confirms the purchase of products or services. It can, for example, contain an image of the item, the price paid, the expected delivery time or any other information that you have set.

Booking confirmations typically include the date and time of the booking, as well as the option to cancel or reschedule. Appointments and reservations can be transferred directly to the recipient's mobile phone calendar.

Appointment and reservation reminders
This is a real goldmine for businesses! You can set up your transactional SMS to send reminders to recipients. This feature has transformed the way many industries operate and helped them increase their revenue.

Transactional SMS is very useful in significantly reducing the number of missed doctor appointments. Each year in France, 28 million medical appointments are not honored. This is due to no-shows or last-minute argentina telemarketing data cancellations. Indeed, few cancellations are made in time for another patient to take advantage of the available slot. This problem is also recurrent in all sectors of health. As a result, missed appointments represent a sum of money that could have been used for urgent needs in the health sector. Nowadays, Health Insurance encourages practitioners to use SMS so that their patients have a record of their appointment and can receive reminders, as well as updates.

The restaurant and beauty industries have also seen a significant improvement in their business. When restaurants reopened after the pandemic, they saw a dramatic increase in the number of missed reservations. This was largely due to panic bookings due to limited seating capacity. Customers who contracted Covid may not have bothered to cancel their reservations. Transactional SMS can be set up to send a reminder to the customer at specific intervals, such as the day before or an hour before the appointment. Here is an example:

“Hello Jean, you have a reservation at the St-Georges brasserie tomorrow evening at 7:30 p.m. We look forward to welcoming you. Send us a text message with “O” to confirm your arrival or click on the link to cancel and make another reservation.”

By using a quality operator, the customer will be able to interact with the company using two-way SMS.

Delivery update
Delight your customers by sending them regularly updated delivery notifications. You can link the messages to your delivery service and allow your customers to track the progress of their orders. This transactional SMS feature is highly appreciated and increases consumer engagement. 85% of shoppers say that delivery tracking is one of the top criteria they consider when purchasing online.

Resetting passwords
Forgetting passwords is a common occurrence for many people, as we are constantly encouraged not to write them down. This can be very annoying. What is also annoying is the process of resetting passwords. Typically, the customer must enter their email address (if they remember the email they used initially), and then the provider sends a reset link to the specified email address.

With transactional SMS, the reset link can be sent directly to the recipient's phone in a text message. Although this is not yet common practice, it would make much more sense for this function to be performed via SMS. Many people do not use their mobile phones to send emails. For these individuals, the reset via email is not a useful solution and is rather an inconvenience. An SMS is then displayed and the buyer does not have to interrupt their online shopping experience. In addition, it is much more likely that the phone number used to create the account will be remembered than an email address.

Bill payment reminders and overdraft alerts
No one likes having to pay their bills, and it's true that receiving a notification like this isn't always a pleasant experience. However, an invoice payment reminder can save your customer from paying late fees.

If your bank alerts a customer about the risk of an overdraft right before they make an online purchase, it can also help them avoid paying fees. Customers appreciate reminders that help them stay on track and save them from unnecessary fees. It’s a great way to build brand loyalty .

Get feedback
Transactional SMS also allows you to ask for feedback on your service in order to improve the quality of your services. A feedback request should not have a promotional aspect. You can ask your customers to rate your services and leave you a comment.

What are the benefits of transactional SMS?
Transactional SMS is a great way to improve the level of service you provide to your customers. There are many ways to communicate with them, but none are as effective and instantaneous as SMS.

By sending confirmations, reminders, shipping notices, and updates this way, your customers will spend less time trying to contact you directly. In fact, your messages will allow you to anticipate most of their purchase-related inquiries.

On the other hand, 94% of consumers believe that good customer service impacts their brand loyalty . 61% of consumers will switch to a competitor after experiencing poor customer service . This is no surprise when you consider how much a poor customer service experience can impact us. Many people have an issue or complaint that is still being processed. In the worst cases, these incidents can sometimes last for days or even weeks.

34% of people put on hold on the phone do not call back if their call is not answered quickly. Using transactional SMS can:

reduce waiting times;
reduce staff;
reduce customer frustration levels.
Be sure to check out our customer loyalty blog to learn more about growing customer relationships.

What is the difference between transactional SMS and promotional SMS?
Transactional SMS messages are intended solely to communicate with customers about their purchases of goods or services, as well as their reservations and appointments. This type of SMS aims to strengthen the relationship established with the customer until the conclusion of the transaction they have made with you.

Promotional SMS messages are, on the other hand, only intended for marketing to subscribers. These text messages are subject to authorization and can only be sent if the person concerned has chosen to receive your marketing SMS messages . In France, it is currently illegal to send commercial SMS messages to people who have not given their consent. These are then considered spam. You must also offer a clearly defined exclusion function in your marketing SMS messages so that recipients can easily unsubscribe. Nothing prevents you from adding an unsubscribe function to your transactional SMS messages, but this is not a legal obligation.

What is a transactional push notification? And why are transactional SMS more suitable?
Transactional push notifications are short messages that appear on the user’s mobile phone to remind them to take an action. They serve the same purpose as transactional SMS, but they look different. Push notifications come from apps or websites and are sent in real time.

Push notifications have several advantages and are effective, but they also have some disadvantages. SMS is more reliable because it is a preferred method of communication. Most of the text messages we receive come from our friends and family. In addition, they have a 98% open rate and are usually read because it is always a pleasure to receive a text message. The ringing sound of a received text message attracts our curiosity and often forces us to look at our phone as quickly as possible.

When we receive a push notification, it appears randomly above the application used. If we make it disappear, it can be difficult to find it again, depending on the phone used. Indeed, the possibility of sliding a push notification makes it easy to miss it. As for SMS, they can be stored in messages unlike push notifications which are limited in time and disappear after a short period of time.