MMS marketing is a form of mobile advertising that allows you to send rich media such as images, videos and audio clips to your customers. MMS stands for "Multimedia Messaging Service" and can be considered an enhanced version of traditional SMS. Just like any type of mass text messaging, MMS requires prior consent before you can begin sending to your customers.
MMS is also known as "picture messaging" and offers a couple of advantages over standard SMS. These enhancements are the support for images and longer character lengths in the messages themselves.
Even though text messages have extremely high open rates, sometimes people do choose to ignore them. Think about it... When was the last time you ignored a picture message? Probably never. The point is that MMS marketing / picture messaging creates a new window of opportunity. Whether you're a marketer or using a mass texting service for communications, MMS will capture more attention.
MMS can be looked at as an enhanced version of SMS. While in everyday life, we may refer to both as simple text messages, there are two key differences that are important to point out.
Some question the actual performance of MMS in terms of ROI. According to businesses across various industries, almost all claim that MMS marketing shows increased engagement, some upwards of 250% over standard SMS marketing. That's huge!
MMS marketing is a great choice for many businesses and for different reasons. Realistically, it boils down to 4 key benefits.
MMS marketing provides a much richer customer experience over your standard SMS messaging. A picture is worth a thousand words and will always be more eye-catching than a message containing only plain text.
Because multimedia messaging grabs so much attention, it naturally gets more engagement. Not only do more people read the messages and interact with the content, they are also up to 8 times more likely to be shared with friends.
More engagement means more redemptions. Pairing your text blasts with a great visual leads to better response rates and that's exactly what users are seeing with our MMS marketing service.
Sometimes you just can't communicate what you need to in a 160 character block of text. Multimedia messaging gives you plenty of additional space to get your message across.
While the concept of MMS marketing is relatively simple and straightforward, we do field a handful of commonly asked questions. Here we address the popular ones.
The acronym MMS stands for “Multimedia Messaging Service.” Most people, however, refer to MMS as picture messaging, even though it supports more than just images.
Yes, MMS messages cost more to send than standard SMS text messages. While seemingly silly, MMS consumes a lot more technical resources to encode and deliver a message than standard SMS. Most SMS / MMS marketing services charge by message credits. A single SMS uses one credit while an MMS uses three. Sometimes, depending on the situation, we’re willing to reduce the number of credits MMS messages use to help our customers.
MMS supports far more characters than standard SMS. MMS messages can be up to 1,600 characters in length while SMS only supports up to 160.
MMS supports several different file types however it also varies by the type of number you’re sending from. Typically, all numbers support PNG, JPG, JPEG, GIF and animated GIF. Short codes also support PDF, MP4 and VFC files.
While MMS is supported by all numbers in the US, it surprisingly isn’t supported in very many other countries. If you’re looking to send media internationally, we recommend you send an SMS with a link to your file.
Technically, yes MMS messages have file size limits. Those limits vary by carrier as well. With that said, you don’t have to worry about that with our service. We automatically compress, optimize and encode your files for each carrier to ensure the best possible delivery.
With various MMS marketing services out there today, choosing the right solution is an important decision. Here are 3 reasons why our group texting service is your best bet.
SlickText handles the various file size restrictions that each of the cellular carriers have and intelligently optimizes your images to ensure the best quality media lands on your customers' devices. This results in more engagement and better redemption rates.
While almost all carriers in the U.S. support multimedia messaging, there is still between 1% and 2% that cannot receive pictures from short codes. We've got that covered as our software will auto-convert those people's messages into SMS and provide a link to the media you are trying to send.
Some MMS marketing services are finding sneaky ways of saving money by using cheaper methods to send your messages. While that saves you money, it can leave a lot of messages undelivered. We don't play that game. We use the best possible carrier routes to ensure your messages are delivered.
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