With TRAI’s SMS spam regulations in effect from today, the telemarketers have started devising innovative ways to sustain their business. The strict measures against telemarketing and SMS spam are taken to ensure that people don’t get frequent messages from companies promoting their brands. Also, all the marketing Calls between 9PM – 9AM will be banned.
I know many services which totally rely on SMS systems. Some of them are: 160by2, Way2SMS, SMSGupShup, etc. They all have to start thinking innovative ways of making the customer know of a product without making it look spammy. I think the era of SMS marketing is bound to almost end with this new regulation and the companies will have to come up with something unique, which is perhaps a little not too intrusive as SMSes are.
A perfect example of proper telemarketing and lead generation for companies is a Bangalore-based startup named ZipDial.
ZipDial’s model is based on missed calls. If you are a company and sign up for Zipdial, your customers can leave a feedback or register a vote by giving a missed call on ZipDial’s assigned number. When someone calls on the number, the call gets disconnected automatically and the user gets an SMS depending on the campaign to which the customer can again respond through a “missed call’.
The whole process means that users get the service without requiring to make a call and it is also ensured that only those customers are called who show an interest – thereby it also does not violate TRAI’s norms of spam. I like their model where the customer won’t be charged a penny and it will totally depend on him whether he wants to be involved in the process of interacting with a brand, thus making the system the least intrusive, unlike the SMS campaigns which used to fill my phone’s inbox earlier.
The company has already recieved clients like LG, Videocon, KFC, and Procter & Gamble, to name a few. Colleges are employing the ZipDial method to gain feedback on college fests. TV shows are using it to poll votes for a contestant and so on.
I am sure that with the passage of time, this service is going to be a huge success!
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