SMS Marketing Agency in Dubai

Text messaging has become an increasingly popular way for businesses to reach customers. 

But there are many things that you need to consider before sending text messages to your customers.

This article will teach you everything you need to know about SMS advertising in Dubao.

What is SMS Marketing a.k.a. SMS Advertising?

Short Message Service (SMS) is an inexpensive form of communication that has become increasingly popular among consumers.

It is also one of the most powerful ways to reach people because it reaches everyone who owns a mobile phone.

In fact, according to YouGov, nearly 90% of U.A.E adults own a cell phone and the average person checks their phones 344 times a day!

Understand the Benefits of Using SMS Marketing

There are several benefits to using text messaging as part of your marketing strategy.

First, it allows you to communicate with your customers at any time, day or night. And in fact the average open rate for SMS messages is 98%.

Second, it provides a low-cost option compared to traditional methods of advertising.

Third, it gives you the ability to send personalized messages to each customer.

Fourth, it helps you build relationships with your customers by allowing you to interact with them directly.

Finally, it allows you to track the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Is SMS advertising effective to small businesses or medium to large businesses only?

Think of it that way, SMS marketing can reach millions of people in minutes.

It’s the best way for marketers to get in touch with potential customers and increase their sales which could lead them to expand their business.

In other words, regardless of the size of the business, utilizing mobile marketing in the right ways will be of added value for you.

Some examples of the business categories which are already applying SMS advertising:

• Real Estate
• Restaurants
• Retail Shops
• Banks
• Petrol Stations
• Insurance Companies
• Travel Agencies
• Cleaning Services Companies
• Beauty Salons
• Printing shops
• Cupping Therapy centers
• Medical clinics
• Dental clinics
• Hospitals
• In short, whatever business you are in, there will be a use for text message marketing.

How To Get Started With SMS Advertising?

There are a few steps required to get your SMS campaign up and running which, we will break down for you in this section.

Finding the right SMS Marketing Agency:

With the increasing number of digital marketing agencies in Dubai, it is easy for customers to fall into the trap of working with inexperienced marketers that will hurt their brand’s reputation and put their money into waste.

The first thing to check when choosing an agency is whether they have SMS marketing & advertising as part of their services.

Then it’s wise to ask for sample SMS campaigns and results which have been offered by them and ask for a customer reference.

The more important stuff to be aware of which will have an impact on the cost, is whether they are using the local SMS providers like Etisalat, or are they relying on external SMS marketing platforms like Twilio?

This is a game changer as Etisalat rates tend to be much cheaper.

Depending on your language requirement, you might need Arabic SMS as well as English SMS, so make sure to check for an agency with Arabic Speakers. Relying on Google Translate does not always generate the best results.

And one final note: Stay away from agencies who promise you to deliver a database of contacts for your campaigns. More on this point in the Legal section.

Registering Your Sender ID on the CMS Portal and the Messaging Platform:

This is an important step to make sure that your brand follows the UAE laws to send promotional messages.

Your digital marketing agency can do this step on your behalf given that you sign an NOC letter to authorize the agency to register the sender ID for you.

Registering the Sender ID comes with a one-time fee charge.

To know more about the charges, you can message us by clicking here.

The maximum length of the sender ID can be 11 characters only.

But unfortunately, you cannot use all 11 characters for your brand name because any Promotional SMS sent in Dubai should start with “AD-“ indicating that this is an advertisement. That’s 3 characters down and you are left with 9 characters only.

For example, if your business name is Home Center, that’s a total of 11 characters including the space between home and center. So, your sender ID will look something like this: AD-HOMECNTR giving a total of 11 characters.

Sender ID approvals usually take 2 to 4 hours.

Choosing Your SMS Package:

Once the sender ID is approved, its time to choose the right SMS package depending on the number of numbers in your database and on the number of SMS messages to be sent per month.

The regular SMS rates in Dubai are 0.18 fils/message, however our market rates are less that 0.18 fils and could go as low as 0.9 fils/SMS and even lower depending on the quantity of messages to be sent.

In other words, you could save more than 50% from the regular rates.

How to choose the best SMS Package that saves you the most amount of money?

It’s time for some math!

Let’s say that you have a database of 2,000 leads and customers.

If you were to send a single SMS for each of them, that is 1 SMS x 2000 Contacts = 2,000 Messages Sent. If you consider the regular rate of SMS: 2,000 SMS x 0.18 fils/SMS = 360 AED.

So each time you want to send a single SMS to your contacts, that would cost you 360 Dirhams on the normal market rate.

But lucky for you marketing agencies like Leadgend Marketing, tend to have discounted prices that could save you at least 100AED on each SMS you send.

That’s not a lot of savings?

Alright fine, for one SMS, I might agree with you, but imagine you are sending  5 or 6 SMS messages per month, that would be at least a 500 AED, 600 AED in savings.

Creating the SMS Campaign:

This is the real deal where the message is created.

For English messages, the maximum number of characters per SMS is 160 characters.

What if you used 161 characters?

Then you will be charged double as that extra character will be considered as part of a new SMS so in total you are sending two messages combined in one, and thus charged double.

Beware of agencies who don’t shorten your links in the SMS campaigns as long URLs will eat up your characters and you will end up paying more for extra messages.

For Arabic SMS, the character limit is 70 characters only .

Scheduling Your Campaign:

You have a choice of either sending the SMS right now or schedule it for a later date and time depending on your needs.

Like Pizza Hut for example, every Tuesday they have a buy one get one offer and they send an SMS every Tuesday.

The best strategy for SMS marketing is to send or schedule the SMS on the day it’s required.

Meaning if you are having a promotion for next week, the best time to send the SMS is on 9:00 AM on the first day of next week with a strong marketing message and a call to action.

Uploading the Data:

By data we mean the phone numbers in CSV format. The numbers should also be in a specific format in particular:

Correct Format:

Country code + Number: “971559243006” – This is the correct format, country code without the “+” sign followed by the number

Not Recommended Format:

“+971559243006” – Avoid adding the “+” sign before the country code

Wrong Formats:

“971559243006 “ – Adding an unwanted space

“0559243006” – Missing the country code

“ 971559243006” – Adding an unwanted space

Monitoring the results:

You need to measure results when using any form of marketing. If you aren’t measuring what works, then you won’t know whether your efforts are paying off. To do so, you should track the following metrics:

• The time the message was sent
• Whether it’s a one time SMS or a recurring SMS
• Bulk SMS or Single SMS
• No of recipients
• Success Percentage (This is an important metric to keep an eye on.)

Legal Advice

If you were wondering whether SMS marketing is Legal in Dubai then let us clear some of those doubts.

SMS advertising is legal in Dubai if and only if you are using the database of your existing customers who willingly provided their phone numbers and consented to receive marketing updates from your side.

This takes us back to the claim that you shouldn’t opt in for agencies who promise to give you a database of contacts for the marketing campaign and this is for two obvious reasons:

• Its illegal to use any person's number without their consent.
• These numbers are burnt out. In other words, they have been spammed a lot with unwanted messages that sending a message to them will raise a red flag on your brand.

Conclusion

SMS marketing in Dubai could be a powerful tool to promote your business to your customers directly on their mobiles and stand out from the social media noise.

Be careful when choosing your agency for SMS advertising.

To learn more about our other services, please visit the services page!

Introducing SMS Marketing Agency in Dubai

The goal of SMS marketing is to build a database of subscribers with the purpose of increasing customer loyalty. Stay on top of your customers and offers by implementing close range marketing. Text notifications are a good way to show offers people near you without the time commitment of push-notifications. We also send important notifications to your customers, reminding them of upcoming deals and events. But we don't stop there! We ask customers for their opinion to see what they think of the items they just got in order to improve our service.

SMS Marketing is an effective way for businesses to connect with their customers. In fact, over 60% of customers prefer it to email marketing or push-notifications. You can now segment and manage your text messages for optimal use. For example, sending the most important messages to those who are keen on receiving them. With SMS marketing, businesses do not incur a hefty cost. This means that sending text messages can be as cost effective as other marketing methods.

With over 8 years of experience as a leading SMS Marketing company in Dubai, we are the best choice for businesses that need to create mobile marketing campaigns.