SMS Scheduling and Validity Period: Maximize User Engagement

Timothy Allen

It doesn’t take much effort to maximize your delivery rates and keep your customers well informed and satisfied. This quick guide will show you how to: 1) optimize your marketing processes; 2) inform your customers about latest news and promotions at the right time while still having your people’s hands free for other important tasks. SMS scheduling will help you to do everything in advance so you don’t have to stress when the promotion day comes.

An example of the Scheduling option inside our Infobip Portal web interface

The same thing goes if you’re planning to have a major server upgrade, or are rolling out a really important service or app update. When the time comes you and your team need to stay focused.

It doesn’t matter if you’re sending the message internally inside your company or you want to inform your end-users when at the right time, you need to stay focused to be able to resolve issues in real time.

Of course, this is not possible if you or any of your team members are spending time sending SMS messages or emails (that might get lost in the spam folder) to the rest of the company informing them that your platform will be down for some period of time.

You can send an email notifying the entire company, but still there will be a certain amount of people that will not read it, or even receive it on time. That’s why the best solution is a simple SMS message. Everyone has their mobile with them at all times. So, even when on a meeting, without an internet connection everyone is still able to keep track of what’s going on.

Here is an example of how to schedule your message using our SMS API:

JSON

And here is the response you will receive:

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With SMS, you’ll avoid unwanted confusion in your ranks, keep everyone informed and focused on the task at hand. On the other hands, you’ll have time-sensitive promotion periods that you need to stop at the right time. For this, you can use the SMS validity period. By simply adding one more line of code, you’ll actually be able to plan everything ahead and focus.

Give your customers an opportunity to choose the best time for contact*

*Common sense will tell you that your users probably don’t want to receive SMS messages in the middle of the night. This is annoying. While driving to work early in the morning, carving through thick traffic they also probably don’t want to receive promotional offers.

There are couple of ways to figure out the right time to send your messages. The best way is by getting feedback directly from your consumer base. Then, you can be sure that you have their attention and in some way their indirect consent that they are actually engaged with your messages. Secondly, you can always run a couple of test campaigns and check the stats.

Here is an example of how to set the SMS message time validity:

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And response you will receive:

JSON

See, it’s not that hard and makes your life that much simpler.

Great campaigns start with a great api

With some planning, and a solid SMS API, you can make running SMS campaigns easy and painless. No one wants to have to launch campaigns manually. When you’re targeting a global audience, the best time to send messages might not be the best time for you (like in the middle of the night). Scheduling messages let you send messages at the best time for your audience and for your workload.

Aug 18th, 2016
3 min read

Timothy Allen