SMS Messaging - Any recommendations or advice when looking for a vendor?

[Rafael_Munoz]

We are looking to start using SMS messaging very soon and I was wondering what the consensus is out in the community with any vendors you may be using?  Twilio seems to be the most popular, I am looking to understand a bit more of your experience on the Marketo platform with your SMS vendor? 

1. ease of use? 

2. ease to retrieve metrics? 

3. any unforeseen issues come up? 

4. something to look for that maybe one doesn't think about when looking for a vendor? 

5. ease to set up opt out?

Any input would be greatly appreciated. 

Thank you.

Rafael

[Josh_Hill13]

• Have a privacy and permission process for EACH country you plan to do this in.
• Consider your use cases - will this be annoying or relevant in the context you plan to use it? Will your audience want this?
• One way or Two way communication?
• How to handle the process and recording in Marketo.
• Phone number and/or shortcode to use
• cost of the numbers required.

[Grace_Brebner3]

Other than to say I have heard positive things about Twilio, I won't make specific vendor recommendations as I've only worked with smaller ones that focus on SMS to NZ/AU, but I will second Josh Hill​'s points.

Make sure you're familiar with any particular spam compliance requirements for your region(s), and that whichever supplier you choose is able to support those. And then, whether the regulation applicable requires you to provide a same medium opt out mechanism or not, I'd strongly recommend choosing a supplier that allows two-way and can pass info back to Marketo to manage opt-outs. Again, can't speak specifically to Twilio's capabilities here, but none of the suppliers I've used in the past handled opt outs very well at all, and it caused a lot of issues.

While SMS can be a really engaging method of communication, some people really do not like receiving marketing this way. You want to make it as easy as possible for them to opt out of this communication method and avoid burning the lead!

[Josh_Hill13]

I've looked at Twilio and Informatica SMS. There are others too. You can probably do this with RingCentral too

I'd say the local culture determines this. US=no. Japan/Asia=more likely. Netherlands=yes? Depends.

[Anonymous]

Hi Grace,
I've just started to look for a vendor for SMS integration into Marketo and found your comment in this discussion. Can you share the experience that you've had with local providers for AU? Did you manage to find a local vendor who could manage 2 way SMS with opt outs?

Any recommendations would be really appreciated.

[Grace_Brebner3]

Hey Jocylin Uchi​,

I've used Burst SMS in AU and Click Send in NZ. We never actually integrated Burst with Marketo as it was used pretty intermittently, so I couldn't really comment on it's effectiveness on that front, but I found their support good and their user interface was pretty simple and easy to handle. They did have API functionality and I likely would have looked to integrate it into Marketo as a next step had I not left the role shortly after.

Click Send (I believe it operates in AU as well as NZ) was more difficult, it did technically have two way and technically have opt out blocking, but basically that functionality was null and void if you were using a webhook to fire out the sms. At the time I really struggled with it, but I also didn't have much experience with APIs back then. I suspect you'll find that having access to some developer resource with an understanding of APIs will be useful regardless of the solution you choose.

Hope that helps

[Amanda_Thomas6]

Hi Rafael Munoz If you're still looking for a tool a couple other are BurstSMS and Oxygen8​. There are a couple good posts by Fab Capodicasa​ on LinkedIn on this topic. Here's part 1: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/sms-marketo-definitive-guide-part-1-fab-capodicasa/