SMS Aggregators: Act Now to Ride the Next Wave of Opportunity in Messaging Markets

Many messaging suppliers are evolving their market position to take advantage of new strategic growth opportunities based on technology developments in AI amongst others. With some challenges due to acquisitions as well as compliance requirements, messaging suppliers need to be agile to ensure continued revenue growth.

Enterprise Solutions represent a strategic growth area and specialist organizations are set to do well but there is an opportunity for suppliers to expand their service portfolios beyond traditional SMS aggregation.

AI-Driven Communication Solutions can also help to streamline end-user communication processes for enterprises, providing greater insight, channel optimization, message content, and facilitating two-way interactions.

Challenges

Overall, the messaging market does offer some clear opportunities for players, but we can also see a number of challenges including:

·        Building and maintaining relationships with carriers in a highly competitive market that exhibits significant price pressures and the risk of commoditization and migration towards alternatives.

·        Creating excellent relationships with customers and moving them towards value added solutions

·        Optimizing the approach for technology advancements and adopting innovative solutions through robust infrastructure, scalable platforms and more advanced messaging capabilities

·        Playing a key role in the ever-rising incidence and sophistication of fraud and maintaining optimum levels of security, coupled with anti-spam and filtering obligations

·        Complying with necessary regulatory requirements

Opportunities

Naturally, the market offers a number of opportunities, and part of the challenge is deciding on which opportunities offer the best way forward as part of any supplier’s strategic growth plan.

Rising market growth opportunities.

Demand for business messaging is rising and companies can capitalize on this trend by offering scalable and cost-effective added value messaging solutions to enterprises across various industries. And as part of this, there is an opportunity to expand geographically and address emerging market opportunities through leveraging new partnerships.

Advanced value-added solutions.

Deploying advanced solutions integrating SMS messaging with chatbots / virtual assistants and AI platforms offers more personalized enterprise communications solutions that improve customer engagement, streamline processes and provide a more tailored messaging experience, whilst offering predictive analytics and message optimization.

Added value can also take the form of additional fraud prevention capabilities, through the use of AI algorithms to detect and prevent activities such as phishing scams, smishing attacks (SMS phishing), and unauthorized access to SMS networks.

Integration of SMS into omnichannel marketing solutions

Omnichannel marketing solutions can leverage the integration of SMS with other digital marketing channels including email, mobile apps and social media to enable enterprises to engage more readily with existing and prospective customers and to support the various touchpoints on the customer lifecycle.

SMS as an IoT carrier

There is rising interest in SMS as a carrier of IoT traffic due to its reliability and ubiquity, particular for small amounts of data transmission such as sensor readings – low overheads of SMS and its relative simplicity provide an excellent basis for connected device communication and integration into diverse networks

TecFutures is well positioned to support messaging providers

We can design custom consulting projects tailored to your needs and growth objectives, aligning our solutions with your unique challenges and priorities. Our consulting methodologies are research-based, drawing on industry insights, market data, and 'ground-truth' market feedback to inform our recommendations.

Our Market Acceleration Framework groups the areas where we apply market strategy into three topics, providing you with a tailored approach to optimizing market performance. The Framework has three core building blocks.

·        Market and Product Demand - Robust market analysis to discover and capitalize on current and future customer needs, defining clear opportunities for your business to grow. Drive revenue by meeting these needs with compelling value propositions.

 ·        Competitive Response - In-depth analysis of the evolving competitive environment allowing you to optimize your position and grow market share. Identify new white space opportunities, develop strategies to thrive in complex markets and build new strategies with clear differentiation.

 ·        Growth and Expansion - Identify new and adjacent market opportunities that offer growth through a structured analytical framework. Analyse relative market potential, enabling deep and actionable understanding of what is required to ensure ongoing growth and success. Build strategic expansion by helping you decide between different opportunities, with tailored entry strategies.

To learn more about how TecFutures can support your growth ambitions, reach out to marketing@tecfutures.com. You can follow TecFutures on LinkedIn or visit us at www.TecFutures.com