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Technical Information

5 Reasons Why SMPP is Preferred Over http

We are living in the age of technical advancement, where we prefer to use the technology that delivers best possible results in short span of time. Same thing goes with enterprise messaging. Sending messages to the clients is crucial part of marketing, promotion and support section in the commercial sector. Thus, it demands for the system that can offer them secure, reliable and fast delivery of the messages to the customers. Where we have various methods available for enterprise messaging, most of the business individuals prefer Short Message Peer to Peer Protocol (SMPP) for the following reasons:

SMPP is quick – SMPP ensures quick delivery of the messages without fail. SMPP remain constantly connected to the server, which means it does not require validating the username and password to send the message which is a common case if we send the messages through HTTP API. It is an open source system originated for proper delivery of the messages.

SMPP is reliable – The main problem that business individual faces with enterprise messaging are -loads of messages remain undelivered to the client or get failed. Such issues do not arise when you send the messages through SMPP server.

Higher Throughput – Other messaging systems provide through put maximum up to 20messages/second. On other hand, through SMPP; one can send up to 1000messages/second.

Less Downtime – While other systems have greater downtime, with SMPP server downtime reduces to 1% which is quite low. Thus, business individuals do not face the risk associated with downtime or constant message failures.

Support Business Campaign – Through SMPP, a million messages can be sent successfully in a single day. With other methods or system, it is not possible to deliver such massive number of messages without errors. Hence, it completely supports the bulk message campaign held by the enterprises to promote their brand.

Categories
SMS Marketing guides

5 Reasons to Opt for Promotional SMS

Going with the trend is an easy way to be up in the competition in any sector. The same rule is applicable in the commercial arena. Promotional SMS is new hot shot in the brand and service promotion section and hence, business individuals should go with the flow to remain ahead in the race. But, another business rule says – ‘Never adopt anything before finding its key reasons for success.’ So, we have come up with 5 good reasons to help you understand – why one should introduce Promotional SMS in his business promotion plan.

1. To Make an Easy Reach to Customers

In order to sell your product or service, you must have a way through which you can make an easy reach to your targeted audience. Making a call is not a convenient option as it consumes both, cost and time. Also, most of the time customers do not want to get disturbed with a call in peak working hours or during happy hours with family. Whereas, leaving a message on their mobile phone is a wise option. The people will read the message for sure in their free time and if they find it suitable, then will also make further move to reach out to your services or products. This way Promotional SMS ensure customer attention and effectual interaction.

2. Effective Way to Promote your Hot Deals

It takes a lot of money to print brochures, templates, hoardings, bill-boards and other relevant things to promote your hot deal or discount offer in the city. Also, most of the time – all these things go un-noticed and drain your money. On other hand, leaving a message on the customers’ cell phone will not go un-noticed. The receiver will surely have a look over the same and if your offer is interesting, then he will definitely avail it.

3. Easy & Convenient Option

It does not require technical expertise to held and execute SMS marketing campaign. On the other hand, it is quite painstaking to deal with the other option, like – call, mail and others. Also, they do not provide surety of delivery of information. SMS marketing is easy and convenient way to deliver the information to the targeted audience.

4. Cost-Effective

While other options for branding or marketing are costly and time consuming, SMS marketing is quick and pocket friendly. It will take merely a few pennies to send a message on mobile phone. It offers much better ROI w.r.t other available options.

5. Customer Friendly

SMS marketing provides an effective way to communicate with the clients. In addition, client will not have to spend even a single buck to respond back to your message. Thus, it is highly customer friendly option for marketing.

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SMS Marketing guides

Bulk SMS Service – How to choose agreegator for SMS Marketing in India

Growth of every business resolves around its marketing strategy. When it comes to plan your marketing strategy, first of all you need to find out who exactly your target audience is. As rightly said, people don’t plan to fail but they fail to plan.
Effective Data collection and Data mining are the two main ingredients which helps you to pitch your product and service in the market place in front of the right audience.
Once your target audience and market place is decided, you need an effective tool to reach out your prospective customers.
Bulk SMS is such a tool which has been in existence for last few years in the market. The major reason behind prominent MNC’s choosing bulk SMS as their preferred marketing tool due to exponential growth of mobile subscriber base in India.
Recent research shows that Bulk SMS marketing brings quick and effective response compared to other medium of communication. We at SMSlane.com provide cloud based SMS marketing tool , where response of a campaign can be measured in real-time with few mouse clicks. Our Bulk SMS API can be integrated with any third party software/application/CRM/ERP for enhance data reporting and data analysis.
Bulk SMS service in India is gaining momentum day by day in the current market. Selecting a reliable bulk SMS gateway provider in India is a difficult task all together. Here are few questions you should always ask your bulk SMS service provider in India before going for a long term relationship.

  1. Are they connected with Telecom Operator / Aggregator through SMPP pipe
  2. What is their throughput  (Any  thing above 200 SMS per second is recommended)
  3. Does their service supports load balancing
  4. Do they provide real-time delivery report

We hope that the information shared above will help you planning and choosing the best bulk SMS service provider in India for your bulk SMS campaign.
Feel free to contact us at 9979524323 for cheap and reliable bulk SMS gateway. We also provide consultancy services on custom SMS integration for Two Way SMS communication.
Regards
Team SMSLane

Categories
SMS Marketing guides

SMS Marketing In India

Now a days bulk SMS Marketing in India is very popular service for sending a message. People promote their business, product & service and also companies and banks can provide information to their all clients/Users at one time. This service is more useful, especially in Real estate.

SMS marketing allows for sending of bulk messages from PC and Applications to MOBILE. That make it possible to do this work in an efficient manner. This is the main reason why they can prove to be useful in the Real Estate industry. Several benefits and uses of the same have been mentioned below.

Organizing the data and the people concerned is one of the biggest challenges a real estate agency faces. Getting all the properties listed, having their agents at the right place, contacting the right customer, who had an inquiry about a particular property, all the paperwork and legal matters, etc. are just some of the duties of the real estate agencies. Bulk SMS Marketing is one efficient and innovative way to help them get all these things in proper order.

Simply have all the concerned people like homeowners, buyers, sellers, and agents give their mobile numbers and get it stored on PC. Now, using this database of mobile numbers clubbed with the help of SMS software and gateway technology on the agencies’ PC and all the work can be easily managed.

Firstly, a database of the properties listed and their owners need to be made. From this, SMS can be created mentioning the location, floor space, cost and other valuable inputs and bulk SMS can be sent to those people who are interested in buying a new home or property.

The innovation part comes in when we introduce the SMS application. This application helps you to keep track of all the data and with the help of this application, you can actually send personalized SMS to the buyers.

For e.g., if the buyer is looking for a 3 bedroom house in a particular area, with the help of database find exact matches, using filter option, and automatically sends a message when a fit/match is found. This can also be used to match the owner’s criteria such as in rented properties they might not want bachelors, a family with pets, etc.

Another great way that BULK SMS marketing helps make things easier for real estate agencies is by easily managing the agents and their meetings. Now that a property has been selected by the buyer, it is essential for them to see it as soon as possible. Here, proper timing and scheduling of three people, the owner, the agent and the buyer is needed to be done. With the help of SMS Marketing, proper timings can be negotiated and a fixed date and time can be messaged to all concerned persons. Not just that but we can also send reminders to all of them so that there is no misunderstanding or delays.

This BULK SMS service can also make it easier for dealing with all the petty work. Sending bulk messages every time a new property comes up in the market, rejecting a deal on a property, collecting keys in case owner is not around to show the house, sending legal documents for property transfer and collecting of the same, etc. all this work can be easily coordinated with the use of BULK SMS.

Let’s look at the other uses of BULK SMS in Real Estate:

  • Assigning codes to properties so that automated services regarding enquirers can be sent to the customers
  • Large-scale SMS campaign for property fair or other events
  • Communication at all levels (Owners, Buyers, Agents)
  • An easy way to follow up with all the concerned parties

This technology has immense benefits for the Real Estate industry such as:

  • Live updates
  • Cost-effective
  • Reaches the masses
  • Higher viewership
  • Faster registrations and enquirers
  • Instant mode of contact and communication
  • 24/7 active services
  • Customers and property tracking
Categories
Technical Information

Difference between Promotional and Transactional SMS

This is a very common question !! What is the difference between promotional and transactional gateway.

Last year TRAI has come up with a category called Transactional SMS to curb the unsolicited communication. We have already described this in an earlier post What is Transactional SMS.

Unfortunately, TRAI has not defined what is Promotional SMS category. Therefore, any message apart from transactional sms category is called promotional sms.

Over and above, its the content which decides the category of SMS apart from from who is sending SMS. For example, a registered Bank is eligible to send Transactional SMS as per TRAI, however they can can not send any promotional content to their registered customers through Transactional channel.

Example: The following example illustrates the two different type of sms sent by a bank

Transactional: Dear customer your account balance is Rs 55555. Regards. ABC Bank.

Promotional: Now get 4.5% interest on all your fixed deposit. Regards. ABC Bank.

Now that we have defined both the categories, we will compare the features of both the categories:

Category Alpha Sender ID Delivery Windows Can be delivered to DND numbers ?
Promotaional Not Available
Only numeric
senderid
e.g LM:610410		 9 AM to 9 PM No, you can not send promotional sms to DND (Do not disturb) numbers
Transactional Yes, Available
Exactly 6 Character
alpha senderid
e.g LM:AXISBK		 24 Hrs Yes, Transactional sms can be delivered to all the numbers

What are the precautions required while sending Transactional SMS

  • Always maintain a database of your opted-in clients. This is required to be produced in case of complain is filed by recipient
  • Do not send any promotional content to any one from transactional pipe.
Categories
Technical Information

Kannel SMPP Server

At times companies need Kannel expert to setup SMPP server for inbound and outbound SMS traffic.
We provide consultancy and step by step guide for Kannel smpp configuration.
Step by step setting up Kannel Server with SQLBOX and SMSBOX is very important to achieve maximum throughput.
Our solution provides, multiple SMSC routing management for load balancing of SMS traffic. Our state of art solution also covers multiple sessions (with window size) to achieve up to 500 TPS which can even be scaled based on future requirement.
Contact us to discuss your requirement at support@smslane.com
Team SMSLane

Categories
SMS Marketing guides

DND Open Route SMS

Post TRAI regulation on banning SMS to DND (Do not disturb) numbers, various genuine entities have suffered a lot in sending legitimate transactional sms to their opted in clients. Though TRAI has no intention to hamper such operation, but at the same time, they do not have any mechanism to control such unsolicited communication which has clouded over the time intruding mobile phones.
SMSLane.com has a different take on this issue. While we project this issue in public domain for pursing TRAI to consider its decision to take a holistic approach, we also tried to develop a platform, through which we can provide our users a DND Open route subject to their legitimacy and convincing approach.
In view of above we have developed a state of art user friendly interface, where we can allow our user to send sms to DND Number which are Transactional in nature through a pre-approved template. All such templates are vetted and approved by our compliance team in line with the law of the land.
In no case, DND open route can be subjected or exposed for sending bulk sms which are unsolicited and not as per the guidelines of TRAI (Transactional SMS).
If your requirement is truly genuine and transactional in nature, our team is always there to provide you with a solution. We are sure, a small formality, will never create any hinderence on achieving your goal.
Post this regulation of Transactional sms, we have already catered this facilities to hundreds of our users in different categories.

Categories
Technical Information

Transactional SMS

What is Transactional Messages ?

  • Information sent to its customer(s) by the Bank or financial institution or insurance company or credit card company
  • Information given by Airlines or Indian Railways or its authorized agencies to its passengers regarding travel schedules, ticket booking and reservation
  • Information from a registered educational institution to parents or guardians of its students;
  • Information sent by e-commerce agencies in response to ecommerce transactions made by their customers
  • Information sent by a company or a firm or depository participant, registered with Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) or Insurance Regulatory Development Authority (IRDA) or Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI) or National Commodity & Derivative Exchange Ltd. (NCDEX) or Multi Commodity Exchange of India Ltd. (MCX) to its clients pertaining to the account of the client
  • Information sent by a registered company to its employees or agents or to its customers pertaining to services or goods to be delivered to such customers

Who can send Transactional Messages ?

  • Registered Companies
  • Registered Banks & Financial Institution
  • Insurance Company
  • Credit Card Companies
  • Registered Education Instituted (Only for sending critical information to parents)
  • Airlines & Railway (Only for sending ticket & PNR details to passengers)
  • Stock Market DP Info Alerts (Only to opted-in/subscribed customers)
  • E-Commerce website sending response to ecommerce transactions made by their customers

Sender ID for Transactional Messages

Only 6 Character long Alpha sender ID is allowed for sending Transactional Messages. Sender ID must contain exactly 6 characters (neither less nor more) in upper case and must be convincing enough with respect to industry/brand/service
Example: LM-ABCDEF
‘L’ stands for the operator code here its “Loop Mobile”
‘M’ stands for the service area here its “Mumbai”
‘-‘ is the delimiter
‘ABCDEF’ indicates six alphabets for company or organization sending transactional SMS
Note: Only one Sender ID is allowed per account . Sender ID is subjected to approval.

Message Submission Timings Window

Transactional SMS Gateway is open for 24 hours 365 days

Message Templates

Transactional SMS gateway works with template based system, you can create any number of message templates from your account. Once your template is approved by us you can start sending transactional messages to all your opted in clients including numbers registered with NCCPR Registry (DND)
If the template and sender id does not match (including comas and space) with our records sms will not be processed and dropped.

SMS Template API

If you are using our API’s for pushing SMS, you have to pass the correct template and additional parameter gwid=2 (subject to approval of your account for sending transactional sms)
Our developer API is available at https://developer.smslane.com/

Sample SMS Templates

Dear #Field#, Your account #Field# has been credited with #Field# on #Field#. Your current account balance is #Field#.Thanks
You can replace the #Field# with your own variable contents while sending SMS. Please remember if you change the structure of the template, including blank spaces, SMS will not processed. While sending the Transactional SMS from your control panel, our system takes care of probable mistakes, however while sending your message through API, you need be extra cautious. We always recommend you to test your template after approval before migrating to production mode.
All templates are subjected to approval.

Getting Started

  • Download undertaking for sending transactional SMS
  • Print the undertaking on company letter head and send duly signed scanned copy of ducument to support@smslane.com mentioning your username and category under which you want to send transactional sms (refer who can send transactional sms above to find your category)
  • Once your document is received and approved, transactional sms menu  will appear your control panel.

What to do once my Transactional SMS Menus are enabled

  • Login to you smslane.com account and click on My Templates
  • Add you template for approval
  • Also submit a request for new Sender ID (for Transactional SMS)
  • Once your template and senderid are approved, click on SMS From Template and start sending Transactional SMS
  • API users can add an additional parameter gwid=2 to existing API for sending transactional SMS
  • In case your messages are not delivered through transactional channel, in 99% cases, the issue remains to be of template mismatch. Please drop a service support request from your control panel along with your message and affected mobile number for speedy resolution of your issue.
Categories
Technical Information

Incoming SMS ASP.net C#

Earlier we have written about Receiving Incoming SMS on PHP page
We have received lot of request for similar code for C# . The process is very simple. We just need your public URL  where we can post your incoming sms parameters through GET method.
You have to write the following code in your Page Load Event.
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
Response.ClearContent();
Response.Clear();
string mobileNumber = Request[who].Trim();
string message= Request[what].Trim();
// Now you have the incoming sms and senders mobile number. You can write your code to insert the details in your database
Response.Write(“Success”); // You can also change the response message.
Response.End(); // This is required because we do not want any HTML code/tag in your response.
}

Categories
Technical Information

SMPP Client Vs SMPP Server

Plenty of products are sold across the internet, on its name, which does not necessarily even matches its functionality.  SMPP Server is one of such victim. There a hundreds of website I have found selling SMPP client on the name of SMPP Server. If you are looking for best smpp client or best smpp server, finally you get confused and end up buying a simple smpp client instead of smpp server.  I my self searched on the internet but could not find a robust SMPP Server in India.
The only reason I find for this act is the lack of awareness across the users and gimmicky of terminology used by various marketing gurus.

What is SMPP Protocol?

SMPP protocol has been a blessing for SMS era and the entire credit goes to SMPP Forum (Open Source) for keeping the protocol very user-friendly and open. Plenty of open-minded developers have developed native library based on TCP/IP protocol and socket connection (port programming) to connect a SMPP server (so-called SMSC). These libraries help a developer to develop a SMPP client without digging the details of port programming and TCP/IP protocol.
In fact, we have our own native library (SMPP Client) too, which is offered free of cost to our valued clients to connect to our SMPP Server.
There are many SMPP client and server implementations and their compliance with the SMPP specifications are very varied. SMSLane.com probably offers the most “intelligent” SMPP solution available since it has been designed to interact with many different Operator level SMPP clients/servers.
So, what do these variations consist of?
Let us look at the most important differences between SMPP 3.3 and SMPP 3.4 by specification.

  • First of all SMPP 3.3 is a proprietary protocol which was handed over to the SMS Forum (formerly SMPP Forum) and evolved into the SMPP 3.4 protocol managed by SMS Forum, an independent body.
  • A SMPP 3.3 connection is either for sending (bind_transmitter) or receiving (bind_receiver) messages, so in order to be able to send and receive messages 2 connections are needed. SMPP 3.4 introduces bind_transceiver, which allows for sending and receiving messages over the same connection.
  • SMPP 3.3 uses submit_sm and deliver_sm for sending and receiving messages, while SMPP 3.4 also adds the data_sm operation which can be used in both directions.
  • SMPP 3.3 only supports a fixed number of parameters per operation, whereas SMPP 3.4 introduces “optional parameters” which may optionally be present in a SMPP 3.4 operation.
  • SMPP 3.3 message ids are numeric and are sometimes presented in a decimal form and sometimes in hexadecimal. SMPP 3.4 message ids are alphanumeric.

When it comes to SMPP Server, its altogether is a different chapter and its far beyond implementation of a SMPP client. SMPP Server is nothing but a complete SMSC (Short Message Service Center) which can handle multiple SMPP Clients, manage sessions, take care of billing, relay millions of SMS traffic to interconnected SMSC’s. In fact the majority of the Telecom operator outsource their SMSC from a third party owing to its complexity and consistency.
After years of research, Smslane has launched Power SMPP itextWeb which is suitable for aggregators who want to run SMS business on their own platform. Get in touch with us for further details.
I hope this article will provide a bare minimum information in differentiating between SMPP Client and SMPP Server.
You can contact us for either of the solutions you are looking for your organization. We will be happy to share our inputs on these subjects without any obligation as we have been providing consultancy service on enterprise-grade SMS Server implementation to various agencies across the globe.
Thank you.
Team SMSLane