You say it’s old fashioned. We say you are wrong. No offense.

As we explored in our previous post, Covid-19 has brought about significant changes in customer behavior. Businesses are looking for ways to connect and build direct and deeper relationships with their customers by updating their strategy. SMS which has been historically reserved for close friends and family members, is the perfect medium to use in order to build those connections. Wall Street Journal was probably one of the first to spot this shift. In its article back in April titled  “Texting Customers Is No Longer Taboo When Everyone Is Stuck at Home.”, it reported that the average daily number of people signing up for texts from March 30 through April 12 was 53% higher than the average for both January and February.

There is no doubt SMS will continue its growth in digital marketing in 2021, as more businesses plan to increase their SMS marketing budget. With only 39% of businesses using text message marketing to speak with customers, this is the time for you to adopt this medium. As you set out to update your marketing strategy to grow the popularity of your business and boost its sales, here are some SMS trends you should watch out for.

SMS is great, but omnichannel is better

We won’t stop saying it, but omnichannel is the way to go as you set out to establish a strong customer experience. This broader trend will influence SMS marketing strategies too.

In the past, businesses have approached SMS as a standalone direct marketing channel. They collected phone numbers, one or another and then sent one-off campaigns to those numbers. This is fast changing and in the next year we expect businesses to use the flexibility of SMS and its incredible open rate (98%), so as to integrate it with other marketing channels.

In the coming year, we expect to see:

• Sharing blog posts or other company news through text messages
• Combining email and SMS promotions 
• Combining of social media marketing and SMS

It is certain that with an omnichannel strategy you can do way more! So, don’t leave your SMS marketing alone. Provide your customers a seamless customer experience by integrating it with other channels, using our powerful marketing automation software.

SMS as customer care service channel

It may have escaped your notice, but your customers don’t like waiting and waiting for their calls to be connected with customer service operators. Customers expect quick and accurate responses to their inquiries, and they’re not afraid of sharing their negative experiences. Customer service plays a supporting role in marketing departments by delivering on your brand promise, and you definitely shouldn’t leave it to luck.  

Businesses are already using SMS to help their clients in tackling difficulties and we are observing a general shift in customer care service strategy towards text messaging, with studies showing that over 50% of consumers prefer texting customer support reps over phone calls.

So, if you are not yet using SMS, this year might be the time to do so. Here a just some of the ways in which SMS can facilitate customer service functions: 

• Sending order confirmations 
• Providing delivery tracking information
• Confirming and rescheduling appointments
• Responding to frequently asked questions
• Texting with customer support allows for shorter resolution times

In 2021, we can expect and hope to see better customer service. SMS platforms will come in handy, so go Routee and explore how our transactional SMS,and two-way SMS can help your business and its customer service.

Β2B SMS marketing on the rise

B2B communication traditionally considered texting as an informal form of communication. Over the last couple of years, B2B companies have started incorporating SMS into their marketing and sales strategy, as they rely heavily on building relationships and targeted marketing campaigns to attract and convert the right customers. 

Although B2B marketers have been slower to adopt SMS trends in their marketing campaigns compared to B2C companies, 61% of people last year recommended they be contacted by text message at work—an increase of 56.4% from 2014, as reports suggest.

2021 is the year that this trend will grow even stronger, as more businesses turn to SMS for lead generation, and to send valuable content and communicate with clients.

However to win with B2B texting starts by establishing communication and providing value. Here are some way which can help you: 

• Sending personalized messages keeps customers informed of their order status and expected delivery times.
• Letting customers know about product upgrades and improved service offerings, keeping them in the loop.
• Nurturing client relationships via personal text communications keeps potential clients engaged. 
• Getting timely feedback about your company’s products and services in order to improve your offerings.
• Scheduling product demos and webinars, answering FAQs and providing limited-time offers can increase customer LTV.

If you are looking for ways to start a text message marketing campaign for your B2B customers, Routee’s SMS services are here to help you navigate the SMS world. 

User reviews on the rise

In our previous post about the trends which will dominate email marketing in 2021, we mentioned the rise of UGC content. The same holds for SMS, and how could it not, as user reviews weigh heavily on a consumer’s purchase decision. 82% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses, but only 53% would consider visiting a business with less than four stars.

As reviews play such a critical role in marketing and sales, more companies are taking advantage of text marketing’s high engagement to collect them from customers in order to build trust. Using SMS to generate customer polls and surveys is a great way to gain customer feedback and monitor satisfaction with your products and services. This way you give your customers the chance to voice their opinion about your products and services, before you see it on social media.

With our SMS surveys, you will be able to quickly set-up your surveys and obtain the necessary insights.

Leverage Transactional SMS Updates for Cross Selling

Transactional SMS messages keep customers updated on their purchases and any interactions with your business, so it is essential to communicate everything a customer needs to know. This type of communication ensures that your customer is not left wondering about when they will receive their order or if it was successfully placed.

Sending text messages to potential customers creates a positive impact on them, with a study from MediaPost indicating that 77% of consumers have a positive perception of companies that keep them informed through texts. 

With increasingly crowded email inboxes, more customers are opting in to SMS to receive these updates, giving companies a way to cross-sell or provide discounts for future orders while customers are already engaged. 

Don’t miss this opportunity. Leverage your transactional SMS updates and cross-sell to your customers at the right time using Routee.

Elevate your business growth in 2021 with SMS message marketing

SMS marketing is not new, yet the time is ideal for us to appreciate its benefits. In 2021 we expect to see companies adapt their marketing strategy and include SMS in the mix. However, the success of their strategy considerably depends on the quality of services used for sending text messages to customers and potential clients. It is therefore advised that businesses invest in a platform that can guide them through the process! Routee’s SMS platform and its team of experts are here to guide you through it all, so you can launch your campaigns and uplift your sales!

Born back in the ’90s, the VoIP market has certainly reached new heights in 2020, as Covid-19 triggered the largest work-from-home experiment in history. It is predicted to grow even more in the coming years.

According to reports, the global VoIP market is expected to reach $102480 million by the end of 2026.

VoIP technology has become a business necessity in recent years, changing the way businesses communicate forever, both internally and externally. This comes as no surprise with the emergence of mobile VoIP and the expansion of internet access across the globe.

In 2021, as more people and businesses will adopt and increasingly rely on VoIP, it is essential that we explore the trends which will be shaping the market to ensure that they are leveraging its full use.

It is the end of…traditional telephone services and systems

In the last decades, we have witnessed the slow death of traditional landlines and other telephone systems. Αt first it was the rise in usage of hand-held devices, now it is the increasing use of VoIP. According to estimations, close to half of the landlines in the world are gone, and those remaining are rarely used.

As the internet remains easily accessible and as the advancements in smartphone technology continue, there are all sorts of ways to communicate nowadays. Therefore, businesses are trying to keep up by accommodating their customers through a number of different channels. This has resulted in the rise of more sophisticated VoIP platforms. In the coming years, more businesses will be investing in these systems, integrating VoIP services with chat, SMS, email, video calls, and social media for an omnichannel approach.  

If you have decided to make the shift from landline to a VoIP phone service, we will guide you through, helping you create strong bonds with your customers.  

5G will be big

The wait is over, 5G is here. The fifth-generation wireless network technology is expected to radically change internet connectivity. 

This is of course major news for the VoIP industry, as users will see improved call quality, faster communication speeds when calls are being made and received, reduced dropped calls, and elimination of call jitters. Besides, 5G will allow internet users to have better connections, extremely fast browsing speeds and increased capacities, which is especially important as VoIP starts to integrate video and other forms of communication, as we will discuss later on.

The benefits offered by 5G are likely to make even more businesses interested in adopting VoIP,  while those already implementing VoIP are likely to expand its usage. This is therefore the perfect time for you to find your VoIP communication tool.

AI is all around us

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is everywhere you look. From Netflix serving you the most suitable shows for you, to your social media feed making sure you are getting relevant updates, more and more businesses are looking to leverage AI for customer service and personalization purposes, with some making huge investments. 

The improvement and adoption of AI is predicted to reach and touch every industry. The VoIP industry is no different. In 2021 and the following years, AI will become an integral part of VoIP communication tools.

Some of the AI innovations which will help shape VoIP communication include:

• Smart assistants to help with scheduling, reminders, and tasks
• Self-help solutions and options in call centers
• Intelligent, automated call routing options (Including routing options based on mood analysis, voice recognition, and agent skill level)
• AI chatbots and intelligent IVRs

With all that being said, it is definitely looking like you should start incorporating AI technology in your VoIP systems in the coming years. 

Unified Communications (UC) Systems Rising

The need for an omnichannel, seamless customer experience is a recurring trend, which we talked about in our previous posts regarding general and SMS trends. UCaaS solutions (Unified Communications as a Service) provide businesses a way to manage and organize their messaging strategy so that they can offer an omnichannel service experience to customers.

With more and more businesses investing in systems that can support chat, SMS, email, video calls, phone calls, and social media, unified communications platforms are quickly growing. UCaaS offers cloud-based communications that allow users to access it or log in from anywhere as long as they have an internet connection. 

According to The State of Unified Communications in 2020,  42% of companies have increased cloud application and unified communication adoption. Furthermore, “…67% of organizations are moving significant portions of their unified communications solutions to the cloud.”

Through UCaaS, businesses can focus on critical business functions and employees can stay connected no matter what the circumstance requires. In addition, they provide reporting and visibility into communications so that businesses can always look for ways to communicate better and increase efficiency.

So, if you are looking to provide a seamless customer communication experience with Cloud IVR, Routee is here to give you all the help you need.

Mobile VoIP is a must

With the Covid-19 pandemic, many businesses had to figure out a way to work remotely while maintaining employee engagement and productivity. While many businesses had already put initiatives in place, the pandemic increased the importance of mobile business access, functionality, and success exponentially in 2020.

From a business perspective, mobility has opened up new opportunities for optimizing efficiency and productivity. In 2021 and beyond, business mobility is going to be a must-have for every business that wants to stay competitive and agile in the changing business landscape. It will allow teams to get in touch with each other more conveniently.

But it is not just a case for businesses. As our mobile devices are now mini-computers that can do a lot more, people are no longer using their mobile phones as just mobile phones.

Businesses view mobility as a factor in succeeding in their respective industries. In fact, the 2019 T-Mobile Mobility Trends Report had shown that 7 in 10 enterprises had mobility as a priority in helping them gain competitive advantage, while it also revealed that global spending on mobility solutions is predicted to hit an impressive $1.8 trillion in 2022.

Businesses are investing in mobility solutions, including VoIP systems for mobile devices, to cater to mobile users. With the rise of 5G networks, the functionality of these systems is expected to increase. So, be on the lookout.

In 2021, take advantage of VoIP services to advance your business

VoIP can bring tangible benefits to your business. Not only can it prove a cost-effective alternative to traditional phone and communication systems, but it can also be used to optimize the way you handle business calls and transactions.

It is believed that VoIP is the future of business communication, but, like all modern technology, it is still evolving. We hope that with this list of VoIP trends for 2021, you will be able to get a better idea of how you can leverage VoIP adoption, in order to gain a strategic business advantage.

However, like any other technology, the success of your VoIP strategy considerably depends on the quality of services used. If you need help finding the solution that best suits you, check out Routee’s VoIP solutions.

Push notifications have been around for more than 10 years (first introduced for iOS in 2009), and they have often been seen as a disruptive and an invasive annoyance.

However, as the years went by, they have become more intelligent and efficient.

The statιstics speak for themselves:

• 90% opening rate. 50% higher than that of email marketing
• 7 times higher click rate than that of email marketing
• 70% of users find them useful

As users’ attention is finite, with many battling to cut through the Covid-19 information clutter, push notifications are becoming an integral part of marketing tactics. They not only provide direct access to your customers when not interacting with your app or website, but they are also a helpful tool for delivering value and engaging with them, improving brand loyalty, and driving sales.

Push notifications have been a somewhat underutilized marketing channel. With more and more businesses adopting them, 2021 is looking hopeful. The question is, how should you leverage them in order to communicate with your customers effectively? We hope these trends will help you out.

Personalize before you push

We have said it before and we will say it again, personalization is more important than ever in digital marketing. Customers expect your messaging to be relevant to them and they are willing to sacrifice their data to get it! This is particularly important for push notifications since as we stated in the beginning, they are often seen as being more intrusive than other channels.

As statιstics show, incorporating segmentation and personalization in your push messaging increases conversions:

• 7% open rate for segmented push messaging compared to a 3% open rate for generic, broadcast messages (a 2x improvement)
• 54% of users convert from a segmented notification, compared to only 15% for broadcast messages (a 3x improvement)

If you are thinking of sending a generic broadcast message to users, think again. Then go ahead and segment your subscribers so that you can send a personalized message to them, offering a unique individualized experience. After all, this is your chance to show your customers you truly know them and care.

There are plenty of ways you can personalize your notifications. Here are just some:

1. a. By demographic information (age, gender, marital status)
2. b. By Technology (phone, tablet, iOS)
3. c. By Customer’s Life cycle stage (new, returning, re-engaged)
4. d. By Localization (city, timezone, climate)
5. e. By behavioral information (time in-app, last session, last push, last purchase, items in cart)

Boost your audience’s engagement capitalizing on segmentation with Routee’s push services for web and mobile.

Stay relevant, provide value

The ultimate goal of your push notifications is to increase sales. That can only be achieved if you offer your customers relevant content they can benefit from. It is easy to send a notification to a specific segment of your loyal customers, so be sure to target your messages correctly instead of sending everything to everyone.

According to Business of Apps, a campaign that is hyper-relevant is said to boost open rates by 9%, with 49% of users stating that they use an app more if their stated preferences are being taken into account.

Customers who subscribe to your push notifications have trust in your brand. Whenever you deliver push messages to them, make sure you offer them value. Offering value to your users begins by understanding what’s relevant to their unique needs. If these your push notifications don’t offer any value to your users, it is better not to send messages to them. Simple as that.

Timing is everything

Sending push notifications at random times is probably not a great idea. A Forrester study which suggests that 49% of users opt-in to receive notifications because they want timely information, is a case in point. At the same time, a study from MarketingDive shows that campaigns where all users got sent notifications simultaneously, recorded a 1.9% open rate.

It is therefore crucial to identify the best time to push your notifications to your customers. For example, if your audience is global, there is no point in sending them your messages at the same time, as they might be in different time zones and hence miss out on them.

Effective timing however is not limited to timezones. Effective timing can also be structured around behavioral cues. For example, if your customers perform specific website or app actions, you can use these behaviors in order to target them with timely and relevant notifications. However you choose to structure the timing of your notifications, it is essential to perform continuous testing to find out the time when your users are active.

Our push notification tools, which offer A/B testing can help you find out which template responds better, improving the efficiency of your communication.

Copy is key

Many times businesses overlook the importance of engaging copy. Push notifications provide only a limited space for writing, enough for maybe a sentence or two. Their success heavily depends on the messaging and the language used.

Therefore, you have to make every word count and to make it clickable. Focus on providing a unique value that is relevant to your audience. Create effective short messages with a strong sense of urgency. We are talking about real-time consumption. Your notification must create urgency for users to take action. Be direct with what you want them to do. With little time on their hands, your customers appreciate you more when you are being direct.

Don’t forget to put a playful, yet rich twist to your notifications

We have talked you through the basic trends shaping your push strategy in 2021. It is now time to get down to the more ‘playful’!

They say a picture paints a thousand words, after all. And the same is true for your push notifications. Enriching them with some form of media that is more than simple text, such as video, image, or interactive features shows that it can improve open rates by up to 56%.

Research has even shown that notifications with emojis enjoy a 254% increase in open rates compared to ones without. Additionally, by introducing media-rich elements into your notifications you can work your way through the restrictive nature of their character length, catching the eye of more visual customers.

With all that in mind, it’s safe to say that rich media content can help contribute to an app’s overall retention rates. So, get creative with your messages using engaging images, links, call-to-action, and rating buttons with Routee’s tools.

Push without being intrusive

When done right, push notifications can be a game-changer for your marketing strategy, engaging your audience non-intrusively and ultimately increasing your sales. To make the most out of them, keep these trends in mind and start experimenting with different campaigns to see what works the best for you.

Wait no more, let Routee’ experts guide you through!

Before we get knee-deep on all the email marketing nitty-gritty, let’s just rewind to January 2020. As distant as that may seem, for many reasons. 

Back then, rumor had it that 42-year old email marketing was flat-lining. Until Covid-19 surfaced and changed everything. Εnormous increases in send volumes, high engagement, with Covid19-related content dominating it all. Despite the increase in emails, email open rates recorded a 20% increase since March, while at the same time, social media engagement was decreasing. After all, email offers a direct and much more personalized way of staying in touch with an audience, contrary to targeting their flooded and sometimes ‘impersonal’ social media feel.

In one of our previous blog posts, we touched on the general trends shaping Email, SMS, and push notification marketing. Now is the time to dig deeper into the trends that can get you at the top of your email game. 

Invest in your storytelling through automation

Today’s email scene is overcrowded. Cutting through it is definitely hard. It is not enough to just produce and sell. There are more viable ways to become visible, memorable, and wanted.

Using the power of storytelling combined with email marketing automation can greatly boost the effectiveness of your campaigns. As research suggests, automated emails enjoy 119% higher click rates than broadcast emails.

Stories have a great impact on customers’ perceptions, as they are more memorable and impactful than facts, and help create genuine connections. This is what your customers want in 2021. Storytelling combined with email marketing automation that uses sequences of trigger-based emails instead of ‘one-hit wonders’ emails.

Kickstart this year by investing in your storytelling through marketing automation and create a consistent and much friendlier communication flow between you and your customers. 

Next-generation marketing automation tools, like WayMore, can substantially help you in improving your email marketing results and eventually boost your sales. 

Leverage your users

Better known for its use by social media professionals, UGC has emerged as a strong email marketing trend in 2020, and it is looking like it will grow even bigger in 2021. 

There is strong evidence to suggest that user-generated content promotes conversions, with stats showing that 93% of customers read online reviews before buying a product. Therefore, by including these online reviews in your emails, you offer legitimacy to your brand and encourage positive buying recommendations.

Here are some ideas on how you use UGC content in your emails:

• Share videos, pictures, or simple messages, from past customers. 
• Use your emails to collect reviews and testimonials from your customers. Offering them an incentive could entice them even more.
• Create polls on your email and have readers react or respond to the emails. With their replies, you can collect insightful information to gain a comprehensive understanding of consumer attitudes.

So why not? This year get your customers involved in email content creation. 

Keep the design simple

We stand for simplicity as it makes your campaigns feel more real and authentic to your audience. Let us elaborate a bit further and investigate what is needed to make your emails a bit more minimal and your content stand out through your email design:

• Send uncluttered and well-structured emails. 
• Be bold when you want your design more than your content to drive action and evoke emotion. Color is great for that, driving both engagement and conversions while increasing brand awareness.
• Don’t overdo it with imagery, using unique color blocks will attract the customer’s attention and get the job done. 
• Invest in a content-driven strategy. Emails and subject lines should capture your target audience’s attention and tempt them to read them. 

With templates for almost every occasion and a super-easy drag and drop builder, through Routee’s email platform you can experiment with some of the above suggestions when you start building your 2021 email campaigns. 

Think mobile-first

Building on the above-mentioned point, research suggests that if you want to be relevant and provide value to your customers, you need to make adjustments in your copy and your design to fit your smartphone screens. Why is that? 81% of customers across each demographic, check their emails using a mobile device. You surely don’t want to make a bad impression. 

Another reason, why this trend should not be overlooked is that the growth in purchases made from a mobile device has reported an increase of 33.3%, in just four years. And if that doesn’t do it for you, mCommerce is predicted to dominate 54% of sales by 2021. The future is looking rather bright for mCommerce, it would be a pity for brands to miss this opportunity. 

If your business is small, skip social media, go with email

Establishing an email marketing strategy for your small business may seem like a daunting task. That is why many small businesses focus entirely on social media channels, to connect with their audience. However, what many do not realize is that no matter who your ideal customers are, or where they live, work, etc, it is most likely that they have an email account where you can reach them, rather than a social media account. 

When done right, email marketing can help you create more awareness for your business, expand your customer base, build customer trust and loyalty, and ultimately grow your revenue. According to Score, for every dollar you invest, email marketing can deliver $42. Before you embark on email marketing, make sure to use it as a relationship-building two-way communication channel, rather than a selling tool.

If you are ready to kickstart your small business email strategy, then go ahead and contact Routee and one of our email experts will guide you through the creation of your email campaign.

Email for the win!

40-year-old email marketing is definitely not looking its age. It stands strong and ready to take on the challenges as they come. 

Although 2020 has shown to every one of us that not everything in life can be predicted, we are sure that these email trends for 2021, will help you optimize your email marketing strategy and grow your brand.

Based on recent Accenture research, the cost of cyberattacks in the banking industry reaches 15,4 million euros annually per company, showing a massive increase. 

Cybercrime and fraud do not only affect losses in terms of money but also in terms of user trust. The banking industry is facing a radical transformation in its business model, as the evolution of cybercrime results in mounting regulations regarding fraud, and changes in customer demand, with consumers seeking round-the-clock personalized service, accelerated the development of disruptive technologies. Banking institutions are in the middle of a chaos blast in which they have to ensure security for their transactions and their user and customer connections against online banking fraud.

The MFA elements

The 3 basic elements of an MFA are something the user knows (i.e., a password or PIN), something the user has (i.e., a mobile device), and something the user is (i.e., like a fingerprint, or voice). Multi-factor authentication relies on the principle that a second or third authentication element will compensate for the weakness of the other element and vice-versa.

How MFA works

MFA works by requiring additional verification information (factors). One of the most common MFA factors that users encounter is the one-time password (OTP). OTPs are those 4-8 digit codes that you often receive via email, SMS, or some sort of mobile app. With OTPs a new code is generated periodically or each time an authentication request is submitted. The code is generated based upon a seed value that is assigned to the user when they first register and some other factor which could simply be a counter that is incremented or a time value.

The MFA challenges

Acceleration of digital transformation

Due to the current Covid-19 pandemic crisis, most industries accelerated their digital transformation. Banking is one of these industries. Internet banking was already growing fast before the current crisis. The impact of Covid-19 has now reinforced this trend which is likely to continue once the crisis passes. Cost is a major factor for banks, but customers also increasingly want online banking.

Channel Unfamiliarity

As technology evolves at a crazed pace, new verification and authentication tools continuously emerge. In-house banking executives and IT departments cannot keep up with discovering and assessing the right channels and the proper tools that a bank can use to keep all its systems current with the latest security applications.

Complex Workflow Development

Insider attacks are often and usually affect larger amounts of data and money across a far broader section of held bank accounts. Bank employees need to keep their workflow moving but many times, they must log into multiple systems at once to carry out their duties, and conventional internal MFA technologies delay their job. So, many times the executives disable the internal MFA process to expedite their business workflow.

Poor User Experience

Most available traditional MFA tools are complicated, not user-friendly, requiring a lot of training on behalf of the banking executives and the bank customers to learn how to use them and get acquainted with them. The difficulty in using these traditional MFA tools leads to many usage failures, with in-house executives and bank customers proceeding with more verification requests, a fact that leads to a deteriorating user experience.

Losses from Poor Authentication 

Many acknowledged surveys estimate that cybercrime will create losses of over 4.4 trillion euros in value in the banking services sector over the next 5 years. Banking institutions already spend an average of 16 million euros annually in their efforts to combat the problem. Most finance experts agree that the most critical breach mechanism in the finance sector is hacking, with 4 out of 5 hacking attempts involving the use of stolen credentials.

The importance of internet banking is obvious for several reasons. It offers a cost-efficient alternative to telephone and branch banking due to the relatively low capital and maintenance costs and its fully-automated processing of most transactions. Besides, it offers unparalleled customer convenience by enabling 24-hour access to a wide range of services.

It goes without saying that internet banking security is an absolute necessity, especially due to the increase in cyber attacks in volume and complexity. Securing data in the banking industry across multi-channel environments is not an easy task. Fraud including identity theft is on the rise. Protection of customers in the highly sensitive banking services sector is vitally important to build trust and loyalty. With access to account information available across many channels, having a service that has reliable fallback options is critical.

Intelligent authentication tools like Routee’s MFA are properly designed to help banking and financial institutions secure online transactions. Routee’s MFA provides a layered security approach to form a groundbreaking secure user identity. This security approach acts as a foundation to protect digital channels and improve customer’s trust, protect sensitive financial and transactional data, secure all applications, devices, and endpoints across employees and customers. Besides, with Routee’s MFA a banking institution can build a frictionless user experience with convenient access to data anywhere and anytime, deploy the right mix of authenticators, detect threats and fraud in real-time, and implement customized solutions to fit unique banking needs.