Thursday, April 5, 2012

CallFire is pleased to announce the availability of “textable” local phone numbers. CallFire’s ten digit SMS long codes, offer both call forwarding for voice and the power to send and receive SMS text messages. CallFire’s call tracking and local phone number platform allows a user to purchase a local or toll-free number, and configure that number to ring at your business. CallFire’s IVR technology allows users to setup complex phone trees, auto attendant, and virtual receptionist applications.

It also enables customizable call routing so that calls go to voice mail when you’re not there, or turn on the “accept transfer” feature if you want to accept calls on a case by case basis where rejected calls are sent to another voice module.  You can even preface the transfer with a “call may be recorded” message with either our text-to-speech voice or your own. Expanding on CallFire’s voice features, long code SMS text messaging allows users to generate dynamic conversation with their clients.  

To illustrate how long code text messaging can help small businesses we’ve put together to use cases of effective marketing with CallFire long codes. Suppose your advertising your local phone number on a number of sites on the internet.  You want to market to the under-thirty crowd, who might be less inclined to call than to text.  In your ad you post different keywords for people to respond auto-reply messages. If someone texts “party,” for example, we will have the system automatically send them one message, and  if they text “list” we will send them a different message.

Now when you post your internet ad about the party your company is sponsoring at the beach this weekend, you can invite users to “text ‘party’ to 3105551234 for more information about the blowout or just text ‘list’ to sign up for future invitations!”  Everyone who responds will be added to your opt-in SMS database, but the ones texting “party” will get instructions with a URL to the weekend’s events, or whatever else you decide to send them. The user can create an unlimited amount of responses to an unlimited amount of long code keywords. Having dynamic call routing and SMS text messaging enabled allows several advantages. 

On the one hand, you can configure the voice number to ring to your office between the hours of 9:00 to 5:00, while the same number can receive and auto-respond to incoming texts 24/7.  You won’t miss another contact again. Here’s a second popular use of this product.  Suppose you are a restaurateur and have already collected a list of your regular customers who have opted in to your SMS marketing campaigns.  Using the CallFire scheduler, you shoot out a message every Thursday evening alerting them to the offerings at Friday night’s happy hour: “Show this message to your server and get half off all drinks from 5-7!”  Your customers now have a concise message offering them an incentive to stop by and spend. Perhaps the best thing of all is the cost: local numbers lease at $1 per month, and each SMS text message (sent or received) is only billed at 3 cents.  Set-up is a breeze and the possibilities are limitless!