A bit of background – a Virtual Mobile Number allows you to receive SMS as well as send SMS. Many of our customers are now realising the benefits of allowing their customers, employees and suppliers to text back replies. It’s often the case that our customers start off with a send-only SMS service and move on to a 2-way SMS service further down the line. We offer a couple of ways to enable inbound SMS:
Virtual Mobile Number – 11 digit number
We can provide you with an 11 digit number, that is dedicated to your company (no one else uses this number!). When you send broadcast SMS messages, people can text you back by hitting reply.
A shared short code with a free keyword – 5 digit number
Alternatively (and this is very popular for SMS marketing campaigns) we can supply a shared short code to you – this is a 5 digit number. You choose your ‘keyword’ and when people send SMS replies they text using your keyword and send it to the 5 digit number. Not to be confused with a premium rate number (the person replying only pays their standard network rate to text the response). Short codes are very useful as a direct response tool for TV, Radio and Print advertising. A couple of other benefits of using SMS short codes in SMS Marketing campaigns:
- More memorable than long phone numbers
- Capture consumer data easily
- Allow you to measure the success of SMS marketing campaigns immediately
As for receiving replies, you can set up SMS forwarding rules regardless of whether you use Email SMS, Web SMS or our SMS API. If you use Web SMS for example, just go into the options screen of your Web SMS account and set up the email forwarding rule. All replies to your Web SMS account will then be forwarded onto an email account you choose so you don’t have to be logged in to get the response – ensuring you never miss an SMS message.
Choosing between a standard virtual mobile number or a shared keyword depends on your requirements, but both are free for now so get in touch with us at [email protected] and we can add the reply facility to your Esendex account straight away. Alternatively, text ‘OFFER’ to 80800. This is our Freetext shortcode, so it’s completely free for you to text us.
