Protect Your Text Campaign with Dedicated Short Codes

Only 17% of the world's mobile phones are smartphones, yet just about 100% of today’s mobile phones have text messaging (SMS) capabilities. Simple math suggests that leveraging text to deliver your message has the potential to reach a far greater audience than other forms of mobile communication.

Annual worldwide SMS usage is expected to reach 10 trillion texts by 2012, and as you read this, an average of 200,000 texts are being sent around the world each second. People of all ages and demographics are now fluent in the art of texting.

Most companies that market via text messaging opt to work with an SMS service provider. SMS service providers typically have agreements with multiple mobile network providers so that you can reach your entire target audience, regardless of what vendors the recipients use for mobile service.

Before you select a service provider, though, you need to understand how short codes work.

Short codes are the special numbers, significantly shorter than full telephone numbers, that can be used to address text messages from mobile or fixed phones. Short codes are assigned by the SMS provider to an organization to use for text-messaging initiatives. A great example of this is Twitter’s short code, 40404. Any Twitter user who has tied his account to his mobile phone number can simply send text messages to the 40404 short code, automatically updating his status.

What companies often don’t realize is that there are both shared and dedicated short codes for text messaging. Many SMS service providers will assign a shared short code, meaning other businesses and organizations may be leveraging the same code as you. With a shared code, rather than one dedicated solely to your business, you lack ownership and control over its use.

This can be a challenging and even dangerous situation for several reasons:

* You will not have visibility into which other organizations are using your code and for what purposes. Your company brand could wind up associated with someone or some organization to which you would rather not be tied.

* Text messaging campaigns are an efficient and effective way to gather data from your target market. If you do not own the code, you do not own the data that are gathered, thereby costing a great opportunity to better understand your customer.

* Particularly in text marketing campaigns, keywords can play a critical role. You may not have access to specific keywords if you are sharing the code.

* Most important, there is always the risk that you will be adversely affected because of another company's abuse of the code.

A good example of this last risk is the 2010 outage in the United States imposed on customers of a popular SMS service provider. A few companies abused the service by using shared codes to send spam, causing several telecom carriers to shut down service to all customers of the SMS vendor. With shared codes, it’s not possible to pinpoint and shut down service to only the noncompliant user, so a blanket outage went into effect. The abrupt cease in service caused a lot of problems for companies that relied on text messaging as a critical business and marketing tool.

You may find that dedicated codes cost more than shared codes, but given the risks and lack of ownership and control associated with the latter, it’s a good idea to seek out a provider that has a dedicated option.

It’s also wise to investigate what measures your SMS provider takes to ensure its customers are not abusing the technology. Make sure it has a process in place to thoroughly vet potential customers, protecting you from the problems that can arise when a company does not follow the appropriate guidelines for text messaging in business.

Tom Sheahan is the CEO of text messaging solutions provider Red Oxygen.