Each industry has specific terminology. The SMS business is no exception. We have decided to share with you 50 most commonly used SMS industry terms in the form of an SMS glossary.

As technology continues to advance and with OTT players constantly on the rise, certain services and software inevitably become obsolete. How should telco businesses and service providers evolve to stay relevant and cope with the ever-changing trends? What are the market gaps that will surface when 5G and giant cloud techs finally hit the trade? The editorial team at Telecoms World Asia had the opportunity to interview Fabrizio Salanitri, the CEO of HORISEN. He will be sharing about the evolution of the telco industry, the challenges that communication service providers face today, and what to look forward to at Telecoms World Asia 2020.

In recent years OTTs have disrupted telecom industry causing a downturn in P2P SMS volumes. Operators’ core revenues have decreased, with both P2P SMS and voice traffic going down. Hence, MNOs and voice players have been searching for a new cash cow, which they found in a fruitful A2P SMS, also known as business messaging. Although popular chat applications like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger have been threatening the messaging business, something interesting has happened. Not only that SMS survived the initial shock, but it flourished! SMS traffic is now growing because the use of SMS has become prevalent among enterprises. Moreover, OTTs have become the biggest SMS traffic generators, as millions of OTP messages (One Time Password) are sent each day. This is a phenomenal opportunity for mobile operators to leverage this new OTTs’ SMS revenue stream and compensate part of their profitability loses.

With the rise of the super-fast 5G and cloud technologies, the world is on the brink of always-on connectivity, which will facilitate business automation. It will impact and revolutionize every industry, creating a brand new ecosystem of fully-connected devices and technologies. Such technology entails safe M2M and M2P communication. The safest means of communication today is the SMS. Texting is the most reliable way to send any information due to its ubiquity, simplicity, and safety. The mere fact SMS messaging is alive for more than 20 years, and is still thriving, proves all the above. A significant advantage of SMS is that it reaches users anywhere in the world, even when mobile data are switched off. The SMS message will undoubtedly be delivered as SMS doesn’t rely on the Internet and is the only technology harmonized between all mobile operators in the world. Consequently, business messaging, commonly referred to as A2P, is booming in the past few years. It’s no wonder then to see other advanced technologies such as IoT deploying it.

The first question that usually comes up when you try to make a connection between SMS marketing and B2B business model is the following: Is SMS marketing suitable for B2B companies? Unlike B2C (business-to-consumer) companies focused on selling products directly to consumers, B2B is a business model in which companies are doing business with each other. B2B companies are selling products or services to other companies.

The world of SMS is full of acronyms that might confuse you, especially if more than one term is used for the same thing. So, we decided to help you learn this specific language. Being familiar with SMS industry jargon is half the battle. We’re starting with MO vs MT messages. Industry experts and professionals often use these two terms. What do these acronyms mean? Let’s start with the MO message.

Although we witness a serious rise in popularity of Over-The-Top (OTT) instant messaging apps like WhatsApp, more than 50% of WhatsApp users still think that SMS will always be an essential form of communication for them. And more importantly, OTT messaging services don’t allow users to send messages in bulk which puts SMS on the top of the list of the most useful marketing tools.

SMS marketing is a perfect business choice if you want to communicate with your customers/audience in a fast, efficient and inexpensive way. There are more than 6 billion mobile devices in the world today. SMS reached more than 3 billion people using these 6 billion devices. This means that SMS is ruling the mobile market and is the most used tool on smartphones, despite mobile development with an abundance of mobile apps and easiness to access and browse the net on a mobile phone.

Bulk SMS is a very useful and effective marketing channel that should be an integral part of any mobile marketing strategy that tends to achieve real success in today’s mobile world. As we all know, mobile phones are ruling our digital world, so mobile-focused marketing has become a focal point of every strategic marketing planning. Mobile marketing is a huge must for every business that wants to keep a competitive edge over their competitors and maintain advantage within the industry.

1. How SMS Marketing starts? SMS marketing starts when a mobile user sends a keyword as a message to a specific shortcode. These type of messages are called MO messages (Mobile Originated message). Here is an example: Text START to 8888 for our weekly list of special offers! The moment the system receives the message (subscription) containing the keyword, the phone number from which this message was sent automatically goes into a database and triggers an automated response – a new text message sent back to the user. This message is also called the MT message (Mobile Terminated message). In this case, the message would contain a list of all available special offers of the week.