By Adejuwon Osunnuyi
For a long time, Bayo Akinloye, a 38 year-old teacher with one of the private secondary schools in Lagos would ever remain grateful to the technology savvy in town. Having dreamed of having a big wedding ceremony last month, Bayo had everything going for him except how to reach hundreds of people he had wanted to be at the ceremony.
Apparently, part of the problem he had was that, apart from the fact that he could only print few invitation cards, reaching out to the different guests who were at different parts of the country was a herculean task.
The fi rst option for him was to send SMS otherwise known as text message but when he considered the challenge involved in sending the SMS to almost a thousand contacts from his mobile phone, he quickly dismissed the option as too cumbersome and expensive. However, the advice given to him by his friends to make use of bulk SMS seemed to have done the magic. As he found out, not only was it cheap, faster and convenient, it also afforded him the opportunity of customizing the message.
Instead of the usual number of the senders number showing, what the receivers of the message saw was Bola weds Bayo . To his delight, the SMS did the magic as hundreds of people he had thought he couldn't have reached with his few printed invitation cards attended his wedding. "It has indeed been an exciting experience for me", Bayo recalled.
Today, aside Bayo, there are thousands of people ranging from businesses, schools, churches, professional organizations, banks, estate agencies, marketing companies and others that now see the need in using bulk SMS services as the quickest way of getting messages across to their target audience. Often used in SMS marketing, as a matter of fact, Bulk SMS can be said to be the delivery of high SMS volumes from a server.
It is best used by clients who need to deliver messages to large groups of people either on a one-off or continuous basis. It is also effective where clients need to send instantaneous messages such as sports, community news or local information.
It can also be used to deliver contents such as marketing messages. Commonly used for alerts, reminders, marketing and also for information and communication between both staff and customers, people who are into the business of providing these services admit it is a lucrative one.
According to Muyiwa Ake, CEO of Zamar, while it is a common knowledge that today over 90 million Nigerians have access to phone facilities especially the GSM, many who are into the bulk SMS business are making over N300,000 monthly just sending text messages. Ake revealed that one of the reasons people now use the SMS frequently is the fact that while over 90 percent of mobile SMS marketing messages are read by recipients, generating average response rates of 15-30 percent or more, more corporate organisations are opting for the SMS as a way of breaking through advertising clutter especially for their promotions and marketing.
As he puts it, "This technique creates immediate results via SMS text message marketing to your target audience. Catch your clients at their cell phones. It reaches customers on the go, allowing them to get information, buy your product, enter contests or receive coupons instantaneously".
Michael Udeme, an SMS retailer at Otigba in Computer Village, Ikeja Lagos said one of the people or organisations that make the business more lucrative these days based on their large patronage are churches.
According to him, quite a large number of churches patronize the business more often to send regular messages to their large number of congregation on a regular basis.
"These churches have messages sent out to their members weekly, bi- weekly or monthly to remind them of services or special programmes. Based on this, I make a lot of money weekly providing them these services." Udeme told Naija Mega Infor.
However, getting into the business could be as simple as ABC, as it doesnt require much capital. Samuel Isa, CEO, Imax Communications explained that all one needs to do is to register and become a reseller. Becoming a reseller, he said, one gets his own Bulk SMS messaging application. Isa told Naija Mega Infor that a reseller needs to get registered with a vending company and get some marketing strategy that will help him win in the game of bulk SMS reseller's business in Nigeria.
According to him, while GSM service providers wholesale bulk SMSs to Content and Service Providers, who are connected to their networks, they in turn then offer this functionality to their clients to use. Some of the Content and Service Providers that offer bulk SMS services independent of the GSM operators include Cellulant Nigeria Limited, MobileXcetera Limited, Mtech Communications,SMSLive247. com, iTouch Global Concepts Nigeria Limited, GTS-Infotel Nigeria Limited among others.
To become a Bulk SMS reseller, - It's as simple as: sign up with a Bulk SMS Service Provider of your choice, have your portal confi gured for you (which they' ll do within minutes), add SMS Credit, and you're good to go! Prices charged for sending bulk SMS actually varies. Minimum start up SMS Units is 10,000 units at the rate of #1.50k. But in all cases, the more messages sent the cheaper.
For instance, in some cases, depending on the service provider, SMS between the range of 1000-9999 goes for N2 per SMS while 10,000-49,999 costs N1.80, 50,000-99,999 at N1.60, 100,000-999,999 at N1.50 and 1000000 and above costs N1.40. For the Bulk SMS business, essentially, software is required for sending and receiving bulk messages and various software packages are provided by the Bulk SMS Vendors.
These software packages are integrated into their system and provide users with the opportunity to add as many phone numbers as required as these phone numbers can be managed in a variety of ways. In most cases, most SMS software applications allow users to upload lists of mobile phone numbers using a TXT or CSV file.
Some sophisticated systems can automatically remove any duplicated numbers or the mobile numbers are validated prior to sending the messages. With enhanced software features, messages can be scheduled to be sent at specific times and or days and bulk messages can be sent on national and international mobile networks as long as the bulk messaging software provider sends internationally of which most Nigerian Bulk SMS Vendor's system allows.
Alternatively, If you have your own application and just looking for a simple SMS API connection, then you can set up an SMS API with an SMS services provider that allows you to send bulk SMS messages through a number of different API interfaces, HTTP, SMPP, SMTP or SOAP. This will require more capital and more technical knowledge.
For instance, setting up your own SMS website right away goes for between N15,000 and N20,000. Steps to be taken when registering include fi rst going to the website then click on the Sign up button to register. Subsequently, you go to your email to verify your registration and log on to your account with your email and password. The second step is to click on reseller button and send them 1000 SMS credit which is the cost of setting up your own website. An expert, Adeola Aberuagba noted that there are price rules one must have in mind.
According to him, while as a Gold reseller, you make sure you are buying from a company that is selling nothing more than N1, you also avoid seller who sells for higher price above N1.20 for silver a nd 1.30 for bronze packages as they are called by some of the users. Aberuagaba advised that the bulk SMS Website any user is getting must be APIs enabled as according to him, creating bulk sms website without API Swap option would only make you become a slave never having the option to swap to better service providers. How and where can one buy sms credits? Once you determine how much SMS credits you need, you can purchase SMS credits either by paying with your interswitch ATM card, or by paying cash or cheque directly into the vendors bank account.
ATM Card payment, experts note, is the fastest because it is instant as your account would be credited immediately ATM payment is made. However, you must login to your account and click the Buy Now link to make ATM Payment. While bank payments is said to roughly take 30 minutes if you paid in cash, Cheque payments are usually not credited until the cheque clears. In the bulk SMS business, as there are no fi x prices, there are also no form of rigid service which one might get across board. Different providers set out with different plans so as to attract resellers.
For instance, SMS Grace designs site like theirs for N10,000, exclusive of SMS UNITS and gives customers the complete freedom to send sms messages from anywhere in the world where you have access to a Web browser and Internet connection. At infor@50kobo.com, the pricing system is such that offers customers the advantage to get more SMS units for as long as they buy more. Besides, there is no maximum limit or expiry date for units while the minimum number of units that can be purchased at anytime is 100 units.
For Explorer SMS, their Bulk SMS Reseller's Package include getting your own branded Bulk SMS Application which gives you admin access and thus allowing you to manage your users, and credit SMS to your clients and so on. While users can proceed to make payment via any payment option he has confi gured in the admin end, it offers them services such as Compose SMS which is a standard sms composer. With this, resellers users can choose a Customized sender ID, send to multiple recipients and it comes with an sms length counter.
It also offers advance SMS, a facility which allows users send bulk messages, each to specifi c mobile contacts with a single click. With voice broadcast, your users can send bulk voice calls/robocalls while a transfer unit allows users transfer units to one another.
With the schedule option, reseller's users can schedul e sms/voice calls for future delivery as the message will be sent on the exact day and time, whether they are online or not. Meanwhile, the bulk SMS business is however, not without its own shortcomings especially for senders and receivers of messages. While in most cases, recipients do not have access to the phone number of the sender, what this means is that it does not give room for interaction in form of feedback.
But today, many have now devised a means of adding their numbers as part of the messages sent. Many recipients of bulk SMS messages are sometimes at a loss as to where the sender might have got his or her number as in most cases, he or she might not have had any contact with the sender. Adeoye Faseyi, a journalist, is a victim of bulk SMS messages with a harrowing experience.
Apart from the fact that he keeps on getting regular unsolicited bulk text messages, a particular one he gets from one of the private cab operators in Lagos has almost ruined his marriage as his wife has been accusing him of infi - delity. According to Adeoye, "There is this particular regular bulk SMS I get from Metro Taxi always thanking me for riding in the cab and ultimately urging me to take them for a ride again. Whereas I have not even gone near the taxi before, my wife has been accusing me of using the taxi to take my supposedly girlfriends out. It is very embarrassing to me because I don t know where they got my number from."
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