Clickatell Introduces a New Model Around Premium Rate
June 03, 2004 Clickatell have once again introduced a 'global first' by deciding to give all the revenue generated on premium rated campaigns to the campaign runners and only charging a flat SMS handling fee. Global SMS solutions provider Clickatell have been offering application-based bi-directional SMS messaging for some time now, with a large number of their clients using this solution for a variety of services ranging from selling pre-paid airtime and marketing polls to updating customer details. By utilising their own SMS gateway product, which connects directly with the SMS infrastructure of mobile operators, Clickatell can guarantee the delivery and receipt of bulk quantities of inbound and outbound SMS content. At the same time Clickatell can ensure that their customers receive a high performance SMS environment at the most competitive price. Normally, the revenue generated from premium rated messaging would have been split between the mobile operator, the client and the campaign runners. But Clickatell has now gone one step further by only deducting a nominal handling fee and passing all of the revenue on to the campaign runners. "The mobile content market is continuing to grow at a rapid rate. Bi-directional SMS, as a commercial service, has opened up new avenues for businesses which have a need for valuable market knowledge, or seek to roll out new services. Bi-directional SMS has also allowed for the incorporation of billing transactions into mobile messaging and has added a valuable dimension to measuring audience responses to campaigns," commented Pieter de Villiers, Clickatell's CEO. "Due to the widespread adoption of SMS, premium rate messaging is beginning to emerge as the next frontier of growth in messaging. This is simply because it allows users to interact effortlessly with businesses or in relation to services on offer, merely by using their mobile phone." "As a foremost international mobile messaging solutions provider, we enjoy a global view of the industry and how it is affected. We have come to realise that the familiar billing model for premium rated SMS does not provide marketers with sufficient revenue in order to ensure the long term viability of such campaigns, possibly jeopardising that industry as a whole, hence the introduction of this new model." "Unless mobile operators and aggregators adopt our model, the long-term effects could have severe consequences on the growth rate of mobile content marketing. We therefore challenge others in the industry to adopt this same model." concluded De Villiers.
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