Friday, May 18, 2012
The major wireless carriers came together in 2003 to create short codes to allow marketers to easily communicate with mobile phone users. Since then SMS text messaging has exploded in popularity. However, short codes haven’t seen an equivalent growth. With the long, confusing, and expensive process prevents all but the largest brands from text marketing to their customers with text messages. Now, with long codes mobile marketing is suddenly accessible to businesses and organizations of all sizes. With instant setups, affordable and transparent pricing, communicating to your customers with SMS text messages has never been easier. What is a long code? A long code is a ten digit virtual phone number. Once a long code is connected to a SMS gateway it can be used to send and receive messages from anywhere in the world. Short codes have to be provisioned by the major carriers and some regional and prepaid carriers who still do not support short code messages. Conversely, long codes just work. As you can see short codes offer a number of advantages: Instant setup: Getting setup takes less than 24 hours, instead of the 8 to 12 weeks it takes to provision a short code. Cut out the middlemen and save money: No aggregator fees and contracts, and no short code leasing costs mean your campaign can run at a fraction of the price of a short code campaign. The widest coverage: If your customer has a mobile phone number that can send and receive text messages you can reach them with long codes. Speed: Long codes have the fastest messaging throughput available. Send 5 messages per second with a single long code. By pooling multiple long codes, you have unlimited throughput. There are two ways to get a long code. If you are looking for a turnkey solution, CallFire offers a simple and affordable solution to what you would expect on a short code platform. With all this talk about long codes, short codes are still not without merit. Short codes are easy to remember for consumers. Long codes on the other hand are ten digit numbers, and are therefore not very memorable. Nothing beats a good five digit short code when it comes to making sure your clients remember your number. Whether it is voting for American Idol candidates, taking polls, or responding to ads on the street, consumers have grown accustomed to short codes. Short codes were designed as an ideal marketing platform, and in this regard they excel.