Business SMS

What is business SMS?

Business texting is a phone system feature that allows you to send messages from the local or toll-free number associated with your business. Unlike other communication channels, SMS have reliably high open rates, making them a fantastic communication and marketing tool. Companies use the feature to send information updates, appointment reminders, promotions, and SMS marketing.

What does the business SMS feature look like?

The feature is part of your complete communication history, which you can find in the Agent Workspace section of your MightyCall profile. It also includes other types of customer interactions, such as calls with AI summaries and recordings, voicemails with transcriptions, MMS messages supporting different media files, messages from other team members if they interacted with the customer, and any internal notes they left.

Reporting and analytics

To get more insights into texting communication within your business, go to Reports → Message log, where you can see every message sent to and from your business, along with details such as the time and date, contact, the employee who sent it (for outbound texts), the business number it was sent to or from, the message content, any media attachments, and internal notes left by your team.

How to enable business phone texting in MightyCall

To text from a business phone number, you’ll need to complete messaging registration first, but if you only want to receive SMS, it’s not required.

For local numbers, it’s called A2P 10DLC registration, and you can read more about it here.

For toll-free numbers, a process is slightly different, and you can get additional details here.

If you have already completed the process and then added more local numbers or changed existing ones, please reach out to our support team to add the new numbers to your registered messaging campaign and enable texting on them.

Unlike local numbers, toll-free numbers need to be verified individually, so if you change or add a toll-free number, you will need to submit the verification form again.

If you’d like to temporarily disable messaging on a business number, both inbound and outbound, you can toggle it off in the Numbers → Numbers list section.

How does business text messaging work?

Messaging allows you to communicate with clients through short written information right from your business phone number. Customers can reply to this number, just as they would reply to a friend.

Here’s a bit more on the perks of MightyCall SMS:

• Send business SMS without buying a special short-code number: you can communicate right through your local, toll-free or vanity phone number. This is both easier for customers to recognize and doesn’t cost anything extra for you.
• Since this is a business feature, your whole team can have access to it. You can customize each agent’s access to messaging on specific numbers, so team members who need it can view texts in communication threads, making follow-up easy.
• Instead of your business phone number, you can put your business name as Caller ID. This is known as CNAM. So when a customer gets word from you, they see your company name, not just a bunch of digits they don’t know.
• According to U.S. regulations, clients must consent to SMS. This is usually done by being clear about the commercial nature of messaging and providing an opt-out option.

Good occasions for using mobile communication

When is a good opportunity to use the feature instead of an email or phone call? For most companies, this type of communication is best for:

Sending appointment and event reminders – If you are a local business and operate through appointments or hold events, sending a short reminder to the invitees with the date and time is a great idea. Mostly everyone on your list will appreciate the discreet reminder.

Dispatching important information – Use it to send SMS messages about special holiday hours, new office locations, important service announcements/updates, product launches, and other information that’s too important to get lost in email.

Sending promos and marketing – Beyond just short info, you can send promotions, sales, coupons, and short videos. Interactive communication using images or video (MMS, also offered by MightyCall which you can learn about here) works best for commercial multimedia content.

SMS from your business number on Android and iOS

To have every MightyCall feature in your pocket, wherever in the world business finds you, download our free Mobile App for iOS or Android today.

How to send and receive business text messages?

With MightyCall, you can use this functionality on the web, in the desktop app, and on your team members’ smartphones.

Via the web panel (or the desktop app)

For contacts you have already communicated with:

1. Go to the Agent Workspace.
2. On the right, select the contact you need to send an SMS to.
3. To send a new message, scroll down the communication history and type your message.
4. Click the right arrow to send it.
5. Your message will instantly appear in the communication thread as a delivered text.

For new contacts:

1. Click the “Send a new message” button in the webphone.
2. Enter the phone number you want to send a message to.
3. Write your message
4. Click the right arrow to send it.
5. Your message will appear in a new communication thread.

Via the mobile app

1. Open the MightyCall Call Center App and go to Recents
2. From here, you can either select a thread where you need to send an SMS or tap the message icon in the top-right corner and choose the recipient from your contact book. If you don’t have a number saved as a contact yet, you can still send a new message by simply entering the destination number here.
3. After you choose the recipient, type your message below and tap the right arrow to send it.
4. Your message will instantly appear in the communication thread as a delivered text.
5. Another option would be to use the Journal view you can switch to from Recents by tapping on the Recents at the top of the screen. In the Journal view, you can specifically select to view only Messages, if you’d like to follow up with a specific SMS received or sent.

Note that in all outbound SMS cases, you can change the business number you are sending messages from.

How does MightyCall’s SMS translation tool work?

Navigating a multilingual world just got easier with MightyCall’s new SMS Translation feature, available for Android and iOS users. If you have an existing message thread, a long tap on any message will reveal a new ‘Translate’ option in the menu. If it’s your first time using the feature and you haven’t downloaded any dictionaries, a prompt will ask if you’d like to do so. Once downloaded, your first language choice becomes the default for future translations, indicated by a star icon.

In case if you have no dictionaries downloaded, the system auto-detects the original language and downloads it alongside English. Translations happen in real-time, right within your message thread. If you want to switch languages, a modal window makes it easy to choose from your downloaded dictionaries. The process is intuitive, ensuring that language is no longer a barrier in your communications.

Why send and receive texts with your business phone number?

There are lots of perks to making the feature a part of your daily business ritual. Here are just a few:

98% open rates

Neither email nor social media can boast the same open rates as a simple SMS. Not using it for business when it’s so readily available means missing out on a lot!

Professional attitude

Sending an appointment or event reminder from your business text number shows customers that you are a professional, reliable company. It also shows that your customer service is on a high standard, and it will be a pleasure to do business with you in the future.

Discreetly spread brand awareness

When you’re present in customers’ daily lives, they will remember to choose your service at the exact right moment. The important thing here is to be discreet and not over communicate – otherwise, customers will either unsubscribe or banish you to the spam folder.

Marketing minus extra costs

Promoting ads for your brand on social media demands constant investment and can accumulate into a fortune. But SMS for business is already included in your phone system subscription. This means you don’t have to pay anything extra for getting that extra exposure.

It’s personal and creative

Since this is a communication channel we mostly use in personal conversations, receiving information right on your mobile phone feels personalized and unique. While plain forms don’t provide a lot of creativity, with multimedia messaging there’s no limit to how you style your communications – be it through enticing images or even videos.

Easy to use for teams

For most companies, it’s not just one person doing the communications part with customers. If you have several people on the team, it’s important for all employees to send and receive text messages from your business phone number. This is exactly what the feature provides, since your team can follow up with clients right from their own phones.

Use case

Let’s say you are a local legal firm and operate on an appointment basis. Sometimes it happens that your clients get busy and miss their appointment. To avoid this, you want to send reminders after you have had a call with them. This feature is useful and handy since you can send texts from a business number both from the app or the webphone and ensure that your communication is constant. Your clients will also be able to reply right from their mobile phone and notify you in advance of any changes or if they need to set the appointment to another date.

Helpful terms to know about business texting

VoIP – VoIP stands for “Voice over Internet Protocol”. The term is used for modern telephone systems which operate via the internet instead of over PSTN networks or traditional phone lines (wires). Skype and WhatsApp are both VoIP. So is MightyCall.

SMS – The familiar abbreviation stands for “Short Message Service”. We often use the term colloquially, but in fact it implies only a plain-text message of 160 characters or less. For anything longer, or multimedia, see the term below.

MMS – Also known as “Multimedia Messaging Service”, it is the more advanced form of business phone texting. Used for sending not just plain words but also images, GIFs, audio, video, documents, and more.

Outbound Caller ID (CNAM) – The abbreviation means “Caller Name Delivery”. With MightyCall text messaging, you can activate this service that allows you to display your business name instead of just a number on your clients’ devices. For example, when you reach out to a customer, they will see “Brad’s Florist” displayed on their phone screen, instead of just a number like 1-800(123-4567).

Ready to text from a business phone number?

The feature isn’t just another perk of virtual phone systems, but a great way to build your professional reputation and add a friendly presence in your customers’ lives. Wondering how to get a business text number quickly and without paying a penny more for the service? With both traditional and multimedia messaging, MightyCall messaging gives you all the tools to create personalized conversations with customers, and easily engage your team into the process. Try it today and see the difference for yourself.