The Australian Green Benefit of SMS Gateways

SMS gateways can be used to make Australia greener. After all, seeing as 92% of the population now owns a mobile, why still use paper?

Okay, so there are a couple of things paper could (should?) still be used for, such as books (sorry, but the electronic counterpart just doesn’t cut it, both in terms of look and feel), birth certificates, their post-mortem counterparts, love letters, etc. You get the point. But for all other purposes, there’s SMS – conveniently sent to your customers, clients and other contacts through SMS gateways.

SMS Gateways for the Environmental Benefit?

Here are a couple of environmental stats to help motivate the move from paper to SMS (just in case your boss needs a little bit of motivation):

• More than half of the world’s tropical forests have been lost due to deforestation.
• Every ton of recycled paper saves almost 1500 litres of oil. If you didn’t use paper…?
• For every tonne of recycled paper, 17 trees are saved. Is your paper being recycled? What if you just didn’t use that much paper?

The fact of the matter is that SMS gateways have helped (and is continuously helping) businesses to go green. Even the smallest replacements can make the biggest differences:

• Use SMS instead as reminders for appointments, reminders and alerts.
• Used in conjunction with email, statements, invoices and payment reminders can be communicated through SMS.
• Still printing your payslips? Why not email them and send a notification via SMS that salaries have been paid?
• Reliant on paper-based advertising like pamphlets? It’s been shown that SMS response rates can be up to 25%.

See where we’re going with this? As far as causes go, the environment is right up there with endangered species and finding other habitable planets (which we’ll be forced to do if we don’t turn things around, soon).

In all seriousness, however, using SMS to replace paper is barely a new concept. Most of us already receive SMS reminders (sent through SMS gateways) to remind us that we did not pay last month’s bill and have now been levied with an interest rate of, say, 15%. Sizable companies have long since employed SMS as a preferred method of communication for a number of additional reasons aside from the obvious environmental benefit. These include:

• SMS communication is more effective than other, more traditional, forms of communication due to the fact that it captures the reader’s attention like no other medium can.
• SMS messages are stored in chronological order and can be sorted accordingly, depending on the handset model. One argument that arises is that email can perform the same function, but keep in mind that email requires an internet connection.
• SMS requires no internet connection, and works wherever there is mobile coverage.

How to Implement a Greener Solution with SMS Gateways

Having laid bare all the stats and figures as to why you should be using SMS instead of paper, there’s one thing that remains to be said: the chance is there that, sooner or later, it’s going to become compulsory. And here are the tools you can use to communicate with your customers, clients and contacts:

Application Programming Interfaces (API’s)
There are currently 6 API’s available to businesses with the software infrastructure required to seamlessly integrate with current systems. One example of such a seamless integration is a simple reminder system, where clients are notified that their electronic statements are now available once the system publishes said statements.

The available API’s include: HTTP/S, FTP, SMTP, XML, SOAP and SMPP. COM objects are also available for Windows ASP environment.

Small Businesses (or those who don’t have their own developers)
Currently there exist two applications capable of sending SMS messages through SMS gateways:

• Web-based applications, such as Communicator, provide an easily-navigable interface that allows for both the sending and receiving of SMS messages through SMS gateways. These applications provide most, if not all, features associated with the API’s such as reporting, etc. but cannot easily be integrated into existing systems (this means messages will have to be sent out manually, or exported to an file which can then be uploaded).

• Desktop applications, as with web-based applications, provide an easily-navigable interface that allows for sending, receiving, reporting and much, much more. Yet again, they aren’t easily integrated with existing systems, which makes automatic message transmission through SMS gateways a difficult operation. An example of such an application is Messenger PRO.

That being said, take note however that the aforementioned two applications are ideal for businesses who do not have large client lists or who can export the necessary information to CSV or excel files. These files can then be uploaded and sent accordingly.

Nevertheless, it’s clear that there’s a green solution for every business out there. If this is what you’re looking for (or might be looking for), check out the information on our SMS Gateways page.

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Tags: application programming interface, environmental SMS, SMS business application, SMS gateway, SMS Gateways