How to Use Salesforce Mobile Connect to Send SMS?

SMS is the lowest-rated channel. You will understand why if we look at the SMS delivery success rate, open rate, and click rate over the years. Countless companies are returning to SMS to maintain a high frequency of engagement with their customers and reach complex geographic markets.

Is it simple/cheap to use and send SMS through marketing campaigns? Which use cases are best suited to your company’s needs? Is an SMS a medium that can give a commercial advantage, or just a transaction?

To answer these questions, turn to MobileConnect, the module that enables Marketing Cloud customers to send SMS. We’ll cover the key tasks and messages you can send using an organization as a case study. Lastly, we’ll go over the SMS principles to keep in mind when enabling this great channel.

What Is Salesforce Marketing Cloud Mobile Connect?

In Salesforce marketing cloud’s Mobile studio, you can create SMS/MMS messages via mobileconnect.

However, MobileConnect does not send direct messages to the subscriber’s mobile phone. To send a message, MobileConnect sends a message to the partners, known as aggregators, who pass the message through their SMS gateway to the local phone carrier for final delivery to the customer’s mobile phone.

The local carrier is often a telco company based in a specific country; Therefore, it is subject to local regulations and restrictions. Therefore, if carriers do not meet your business expectations, double-check carrier capabilities with Salesforce and your legal department before starting to avoid wasting time.

Common Challenges Along the Way

• Form Registration for Alpha Sender ID (SMS by ‘Name’)
• Opt-out keyword pre-registration (STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE, etc.)
• The US and CA Registration Form
• Auto-messages for opt-out and opt-in pre-registration

1. SMS Campaign Setup in Marketing Cloud

When you get to know about MobileConnect and all its out-of-the-box functionalities, you will definitely love it as much as we do!

If you want to diversify your messaging experience, create on-demand services, and ensure the best customer engagement, we strongly recommend enabling MobileConnect in your Salesforce Marketing Cloud instance.

• The message creation wizard in Content Creator in Mobile Connect allows you to quickly and easily set up an SMS.
• Using Mobile Studio’s guided options, you can create bidirectional conversations or surveys, implement opt-in functionality, perform progressive profiling, and trigger emails on demand.
• AMPScript also gives you endless personalization capabilities.

2. Mobile Code

The mobile code enables your Marketing Cloud instance to connect with a local carrier to deliver SMS to one or more countries.

Depending on the country and type of code, a mobile code can be relatively cheap (or expensive!). Each mobile code is associated with a tier, which represents the value required to activate it (not necessarily determined by type).

Today, Four Levels Exist

Tier 1: UK Private Long, Mexico Share Short, Italy Private Long, Czech Republic Private Long, Netherlands Short Shared

Tier 2:Singapore Private Long, Colombia Private Short, UAE Private Short

Tier 3: Canada and UK Private Short

Tier 4: France Private Short, Brazil Private Short, Mexico Private Short

Some Tier 1 code is usually included in the Salesforce Marketing Cloud Enterprise license, but it is always recommended to check with Salesforce.

Long Code vs Short Code

What do ‘long code’ and ‘short code’ mean? Here’s a comparison table, followed by a lengthy explanation:

1. Long Code

Enable unidirectional SMS communication for meaningful 1:1 conversations with customers, for example, to collect survey responses or send international messages.

Also known as international codes, these can be sent at the rate of only 1 SMS per second.

Long codes can be specific to one country or serve multiple countries. For international SMS campaigns, widely used Uk long code.

Activation of a longer code may take 1-2 weeks and is dependent on country-specific activation requirements (eg pre-registration forms, documents).

Long codes are usually cheaper than shorter codes and are often associated with Tier 1.

2. Short Code

Enables bidirectional communication*, and is always specific to a country. A shortcode is required for messaging to the United States, Canada, France, and others.

Note: They can also be used for unidirectional communication.

Also known as local codes, their activation can take anywhere from 2 to 12 weeks and will likely require pre-registration forms, documents, and a legal commitment to content and intentions.

Short codes have better throughput and are often used to send engagement campaigns, security authentication, or service interruption notifications. By using short code we can send up to 100 SMS per second.

Shared Code vs Private Code

1. Shared Code

Used by multiple companies at the same time to deliver SMS messages to specific countries. They are usually speedy to activate (1 week).

Because of sharing these codes with other customers, their main limitation is on the availability of keywords (which we will cover shortly); However, they come with 5 keywords for your choice and an opportunity to buy 5 additional keywords.

2. Private Code

Used only by your company. They are often more expensive than shared code. You benefit from an unlimited number of keywords and are often able to get an alpha sender ID (by name).

Private Code vs Shared Code – Which Is Better?

In our experience implementing SMS with Marketing Cloud, we absolutely prefer private code rather than shared code. Brand recognition is important. Send Name more than ever to implement a reliable, multichannel user experience. Personal codes will definitely add this value to your brand.

Why Use Mobile Connect?

We would like to show some use cases taken from real campaigns we implemented with a company to provide some real insight into what MobileConnect is and what it can achieve.

What types of messages can you send:

• Transactional messages
• Commercial messages
• Security messages
• Progressive outline

Summary

Before enabling a new marketing channel in the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, organisations should consider whether they have compelling use cases, especially if this is a worldwide implementation.

Start with marketing use cases for SMS, which include unidirectional SMS and a small range of countries. It will build your confidence with the data you need to be able to create SMS messages, configure travel, personalization with basic fields and be able to deliver SMS.

We at Emizentech is a leading Salesforce development company providing Salesforce CRM solutions to clients globally for more than eight years. So, if you have a project in mind do get in touch with us.