Festive Mobility: The SMS Gateway

As the peak of the festive season draws ever closer, more and more American retailers are connecting with their customers through SMS gateways.

According to a Deloitte survey, almost 20% of Americans are using mobile phones to help them with their festive shopping this year. And that’s only among the adult consumer population. Within the 18 to 29 age group, the figure reaches almost 40%, which effectively means that SMS gateways can enable you to do more than simply spread festive cheer to your customers.

What Your Customers Expect:

During a busy festive season, consumers are depending on retailers to supply them with information that will make their lives easier. This includes:

• Establishment location
• Product information
• Coupons
• Price Comparison Checks
• Purchases
• Festive Open and closing times

In short, it’s about helping your customers get what they want while they’re on the move, wherever they are, with a simple 160-character message sent through an SMS gateway.

How You Can Help Them:

In many ways mobile shopping  is still a niche market. But while it hasn’t quite caught up to the retail industry yet, experts are expecting it to boom within the next couple of years. Your business can get in on the action and lay claim to your own piece of the profit pie by easily and affordably helping your customers during the busy festive season through an SMS gateway.

The SMS gateway itself is the interface that allows you to connect to your customers. This can either be done through a web-based application, a desktop application or by integrating existing software through any of the available application programming interfaces, or API’s. These include SMTP (email to SMS), HTTP/S (web to SMS), SMPP (high volume SMS), FTP (FTP to SMS), XML (web or application to SMS), SOAP (web or application to SMS) and .COM (web or application to SMS).

One of the main benefits of this versatile business-consumer interface is that it allows you to send more than just text – anything from ringtones to wallpaper images and more. This means you’ll not only be able to send your customers a festive jingle, but also information on your latest and greatest specials. The SMS gateway also makes keyword-based automatic response a reality, meaning that, should your customers text in the words “Fine wines”, they’ll receive a message from you detailing this seasons’ specials on fine wines.

It doesn’t take divine inspiration to see that the SMS will be every retailer’s gift this festive season. Get yourself connected to the SMS gateway, and your customers, today.