The Benefits of MMS Messaging

I’ve been talking to a lot of customers recently about whether to go with SMS or MMS messaging when it comes to integrating with their Claris FileMaker business apps. I received the following notification a few days ago from a business that I was hiring a tuxedo from which served as a timely reminder about the benefits of using MMS messaging:

This type of message is much more engaging than the usual “Hi your garment is ready to be collected …” type text message that you’ve most likely received many times over.

We’ve been helping customers integrate their FileMaker solutions with SMS messaging for over 20 years now using our fmSMS solution. There are a number of benefits to using SMS messaging, including:

• they are perfect for appointment reminders, phone messages, segmented marketing, school absence alerts
• they can be used to reduce cancellations and no-shows for appointment based businesses
• reduces the amount of time spent playing “telephone tag”
• higher open rates (98% vs 20% email)
• higher click rate (29% vs 2.5% email)
• you can integrate 2 way messaging into your FileMaker app: send and receive SMS messages all from FileMaker

MMS messaging gives you all the benefits of SMS messaging and more, including:

• you can include multimedia messages (pictures, video, audio, gifs, QR codes etc)
• you’re not limited to 160 characters per message segment – you can have up to 5000 characters
• you can also include message subjects which act as a headline to your message
• higher click through rate than SMS which leads to even higher engagement
• a picture tells a thousand words (the human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text)

I’m always keen to find out from our customers how they intend to use our fmMMS solution and was talking with a customer recently and they explained that they work with a chain of stores in outback Queensland, Australia and farmers and graziers are wanting to take a photo of a piece of clothing (hat, trousers etc) and send that to the store with a message (e.g. needing to get a replacement for some trousers). Using fmMMS they can receive these directly from their customers and have them linked to their account and also send backup mockups of embroidery for approval.

MessageMedia have a useful best practice MMS messaging guide which includes 10 common templates you can use for inspiration to creating your own MMS templates. They recommend using MMS for:

• Brand-led messaging that draws customers in with visuals of products, locations or events (think Instagram)
• Sending QR codes, tickets, check-ins or maps to customers
• You just want more variety and dynamic options

If you would like to discuss integrating SMS or MMS messaging with your FileMaker business app please get in touch for a free initial consultation to discuss your requirements. Free trial versions of fmSMS and fmMMS are also available from our website.