Due to the fiercely competitive state of today’s digital economy, SMS is utilized by businesses extensively for important communication reasons, i.e. OTP verification, transaction alerting, service messages and to run promotional campaigns. SMS is very well recognised in having both high delivery success as well as reliability; however, there can be instances where delivery performance may differ due to things such as; network congestion, operator restrictions/limits as well as routing issues or regional limitations (i.e. Restrictions placed on where text messages can be routed to or from). This is where we believe Smart SMS Routing solves all the above issues.

Smart SMS Routing allows all messages to follow the optimum route to reach the recipient thereby greatly increasing the delivery success rate, delivery speed and delivery reliability rate of all messages that are being sent.

What is Smart SMS Routing?

Smart SMS Routing is an intelligent, innovative technology used to route SMS messages via multiple channels based on several indicators. These indicators include real-time data analytics, performance monitoring, and intelligent routing decision making. Additionally, Smart SMS Routing can offer more than just one predetermined route at the time of sending, but will provide a dynamically selected route each time based on multiple criteria.

Common Reasons for Poor SMS Delivery

• Congestion on the network at a peak time
  
• Blocking and filtering by the operator
  
• Route failure due to technical problems
  
• Delivery restrictions by region
  
• Inefficient routing policies
  
• No real-time monitoring
  
• overloaded gateways due to high traffic.

How Smart SMS Routing Improves Delivery Rates

1. Dynamic Route Optimization

By using reports about the route in relation to delivery, latency, and how often it fails to send, smart routing is able to assess the performance of routes on-the-fly, selecting the best route for use at any given time, even if network conditions suddenly change.

2. Operator-Specific Intelligent Routing

Operators each have different routing preferences and rules for sending deliveries. A SMS routing system that is smart can map messages to the operator routes which will offer the best chances for acceptance and fewer chances for rejection.

3. Automated Failover and Redundancy

If a route fails or becomes inoperative, messages are automatically re-routed to another path through back-up routes and with no operator intervention, therefore, ensuring business continues uninterrupted and no message loss due to a route failure.

4. Real-Time Traffic Management

Smart routing is capable of intelligent management of high-traffic volumes and distribution of load evenly across multiple routes to reduce congestion and queuing delays while maintaining consistent throughput rates during a high-volume traffic event.

5. Improved OTP and Transactional Message Performance

Messages that are time-critical must be delivered to the recipient in almost real-time, therefore, smart routing routes transactional traffic utilising the highest speed and most reliable routes for an improved authentication success rate and user experience.

6. Regional and Country-Based Route Selection

Performance of delivery varies between regions and countries. Through localized routing strategies, smart routing will use routes tied specifically to an identified region, based on that region’s unique telephone infrastructure and rules/regulations governing the provision of telecommunications. This will improve the success rate of international SMS messages being delivered.

7. Intelligent Cost-to-Quality Balancing

The level of quality, or the performance of the delivery route, will differ from one delivery route to the next, therefore a smart route should evaluate both cost and how often business deliveries succeed, and then use this information to deliver optimal quality at the lowest expense, thus improving return on investment overall.

8. Sender ID and Compliance Optimization

Each individual segment of the world has particular rules and methods for sender identification, templates, and other regulatory compliance, and therefore by utilizing smart routing features, an organization can ensure its messages are fully compliant with these requirements, thus minimizing the likelihood of the organization’s messages from being filtered or blocked and increasing the messaging organization’s acceptance rates.

9. Delivery Analytics and Performance Insights

Smart routing platforms will provide an organization with multiple layers of analytics and reporting, including the delivery report for each message, operator performance, route level performance analytics, and failure reasons for delivery of messages. This will allow organizations to continually optimize their messaging strategies.

10. Scalability for Growing Messaging Needs

As an organization expands its messaging volume, it becomes exponentially more difficult to continue to deliver messages at the same consistent rate. Smart routing has been designed to be scalable so that it will deliver millions of messages per day with little or no degradation to the quality of the message delivery

Real-World Example

E-commerce platforms sending OTPs or order information during flash sales using static routing would risk having network congestion resulting in delayed OTP deliveries, causing users to be unable to log into their accounts and leaving their shopping carts full of abandoned items. By implementing smart SMS routing, traffic to customers would automatically be sent out on the best-performing routes with traffic volume by providing timely delivery of OTPs and notifications, regardless of high traffic volumes.

Industries That Benefit Most from Smart SMS Routing

• Banking and financial services
  
• E-commerce and retail
  
• Healthcare and appointment systems
  
• Logistics and delivery platforms
  
• Travel and hospitality
  
• EdTech and SaaS platforms
  

Final Thoughts

Smart routing of SMS is crucial for improving the delivery of SMS messages in today’s fast paced world of telecommunication with multiple suppliers providing services via complex protocols. Real-time data can be used by businesses to select the quickest and most reliable way of sending text messages as well as automating failovers and performing performance analytics so that the company is saving money on sending the same, fast and reliable SMS/Text Messages.  

If an organisation relies on OTPs, transactional alerts or mass messaging campaigns, investing in smart SMS routing will help ensure that they maintain their customers’ trust, operational efficiency and their ability to communicate reliably with customers.

TeleOSS provides smart routing solutions that will allow businesses to upgrade their SMS infrastructure and achieve superior delivery times, higher success rates and more reliable messaging performance.