Adam and me back in 2003 ready to conquer the world

We were 10 years old yesterday – if you base our birthday on Companies House’ record of when Esendex Limited was founded.

Like many boot-strapped businesses the first few years were extremely tight and there are lots of stories from those early years that will be kept back for the 10th birthday party next month – and a few more that won’t even be aired then !

We’ve come a long long way from a few mobile phones ziplocked to the back of a PC in Adam’s attic. Our first job was to send out triathlon results by SMS (something that’s now become a standard thanks to our bright idea) but other early projects included an “order your bagel by SMS” messaging service – which hasn’t caught on!

In that first year we had a few months when we failed to raise an invoice. But we’re still working with many of our early customers and we now have over 11,000 customers worldwide being looked after by 45 people in offices in the UK, Australia, Spain and the USA and have direct connections to mobile phone networks around the world.

We’ve seen a similar scale of change within the SMS messaging market itself. When we started the biggest objection was that “SMS was surely just for kids”. Of course SMS is now probably the most ubiquitous worldwide communication channel. And whilst the crazy-frog probably hurt the whole industry, today business SMS has come of age: recent analysis by Juniper suggests that A2P SMS revenues of $70.1 billion will exceed peer to peer traffic by 2016.

Esendex has never been stronger: profitable businesses in 5 countries, traction in the States having launched last year and a bunch of new projects. It’s difficult to predict what we’ll look like on our 21st birthday but if we change just half as much as we have over the last 10 years it’s going to be a very exciting time.

Biathle involves a mass-start 1500m run, followed by a 200m swim (Richard “The Fish’s” speciality) and then a final 1500m run. This is the 3rd time that Richard’s won this event.

Esendex have supported Richard for almost 3 years now and this victory comes at the end of another long season. Well done Richard.

At the moment we’re just using Feefo for those customers that sign-up for PAYG terms – we tend to have less opportunity to catch up with these customers than with those that are on a monthly contract. However, assuming that the pilot goes well we expect to rollout to all of our customers, across all markets and all SMS solutions.

As ever, if you have any thoughts or ideas on how our SMS service can be improved please get in touch at support@esendex.co.uk

Why bother? The old logo worked fine and it’s difficult to prove that we ever lost a customer because they didn’t like our branding.

The trigger was probably the realisation that the logo’s structure wasn’t optimal for online use (the chevrons took too much space) and this was a constraint as we looked to improve online navigation. We considered simply tinkering but Esendex had changed: we’d grown significantly despite the recession and a number of threads were being pulled together:

• The company’s vision had been clarified and we were developing our positioning;
• We’d committed to a strategy of continued growth and were planning to launch in the US;
• The new Echo portfolio of services were well underway.

And so we decided to not just change the logo but rebrand the business and our entire online portfolio, ready for the next 5 years.

After an extensive search we decided to work with a local agency, Alight to help us through the process.  The logo itself dropped out relatively easily, in part because we’d done our homework but also because we were clear on what we wanted to achieve.

This new branding reflects the maturity and ambition of Esendex.  It’s modern, serious but clean and professional.

That of course was just the beginning.  We’ve completely redesigned and rethought our brochure sites, our online services will need to be redesigned, there’s stationary, invoices, and of course the “online proliferation”.

The first tangible evidence will be the launch of our US website, which goes live shortly.

After that “B” or Branding Day is 1st August when we start the rollout across the rest of the organisation, with a plan to update each of our sites in the coming months and all our applications.  It’s a huge task for everyone involved, particularly the marketing team who’ve worked hard on something that they’re justifiably proud of and the development team who’ll need to rework all our online tools.

I’m looking forward to seeing the new identity come to life in the months ahead.

The technology clearly exists: the featured “Security experts” sent an MMS but Esendex’s own Business SMS service allows the option to set the message ID – the SMS “originator” can be set to any combination of 11 alphanumeric characters including your company’s name or a mobile number.

However, this feature is invaluable for many of our Business SMS customers:

• Organisations confirming an appointment or delivery want to ensure that their message is clearly identified and branded
• Estate agents set the message to that of the person handling the enquiry when they send out a property alert
• Marketing customers use the feature to ensure that the message gets maximum “oomph”

The legitimate value to businesses of this functionality far outweighs the somewhat spurious risk of phishing: none of the quizzed networks was aware of SMS being used in this way.

The article also failed to highlight that whilst email is essentially free, there is a cost to sending an SMS: the maths of phishing just don’t stack up when this is factored in.

Furthermore, reputable SMS suppliers such as Esendex just wouldn’t make their service available to scammers in this way.

Whilst there’s no room for complacency, the story really does seem a little overblown.

So how do potential or existing Business SMS users differentiate between different suppliers?

Many start with price.  And this should be relatively transparent.  We’ve always published clear SMS pricing and have set out our pricing principals before.

Like many SMS providers we also offer a free trial of both our office products such as Web SMS and Email SMS and our SMS API so that you can get to grips with the functionality that we offer.

But how do you gauge the level of service and support that you will get with each supplier and their strength in depth, particularly when half a dozen providers are claiming to be the “UK’s leading provider” of Business SMS services.

A company’s reputation is often a good starting point: dig down a few pages on a Google search, or even a Twitter search: what are other people saying about them, are they hiring, are many others using them?

For those looking at Premium Rate SMS services, PhonePayPlus’ adjudication database can also be “illuminating” too!

Thereafter a certain amount will come down to “gut feel”:

• Does the SMS provider have the financial strength to offer you account terms?
• Is it always the same person answering the phone, indeed do they answer the phone!?
• And do their claims seem unrealistic: if a provider claims global reach or to be the biggest provider in the market, how does this stack up with whatever others say about them?

As a business we’ve defined one of core values as Integrity. We’ve always been careful not to make claims that we can’t back up. At the risk of sounding pompous we’ll continue down this path but we urge potential purchasers to dig deep when looking at different suppliers.

If you’ve got any questions about what we offer or who we are, please get in touch.  We’d welcome the opportunity to meet with you here in Nottingham.

This was a time-lapse video we captured in our Nottingham office on the day of the Christmas Party on Wednesday. No this wasn’t a case of “big brother is watching you” although yes it was good to see some early starters in the office! Shame we didn’t capture the ice skating that took place later on at the Nottingham Market Square Ice Rink  – another time perhaps……

Mr Brown estimated that £600m could be saved on GP appointments alone.

We couldn’t agree more – we know just how successful a use of SMS this is.  We’ve had great results in both the private and public sectors, including the NHS.  Whether it’s using a simple Web SMS tool or integration SMS with back-office software via an API.

The problem within the public sector is that purchasing is so strangled and fragmented that it takes an age to get set-up.  What should take 24 hours ends up taking 12 months.

So Mr Brown – if you’re reading this do please get in touch (julian.hucker(at)esendex.com) – I’d love the opportunity to talk you through just how powerful Business SMS can be!

We are now making the necessary changes to ensure that all UK customers are paying the correct VAT rate from 1st January 2010.

However, we will not be making this change until midnight on 31st December so if you prepurchase messages before this date you will still be able to benefit from the lower rate of 15%.

If you have any questions on how this may affect you please contact your account manager or email invoicing@esendex.co.uk