Key Takeaways
- Most business SMS is one way. The customer reads it, has a question, and has nowhere to put it.
- Sending from a real Australian mobile number means replies come back to you. Sending from a branded (alphanumeric) name means they cannot.
- Replies are matched back to the campaign that likely prompted them, so a conversation has context instead of arriving as an orphaned text.
- Opt out in Australia is a STOP reply, or a hosted opt out page when the sender cannot receive messages.
- Before you send anything, decide which of those two senders you need. It is the decision everything else follows from.
Send a text to five hundred customers and something predictable happens. A handful of them reply.
They reply because that is what a text message is for. Someone reads "your appointment is Thursday at 2" and thinks, can I move it to Friday? So they type that and press send, the way they would to anyone else. It is the most natural thing in the world.
The question is whether anybody is on the other end.
The Dead End Problem
A lot of Australian business SMS is one way by design. The message goes out from a system that only knows how to send, the customer replies into silence, and one of three things follows.
- The reply disappears. Nothing bounces, nothing errors. The customer assumes you got it, you never did, and they turn up on Thursday anyway.
- The customer gives up and calls. You have just converted a thirty second text exchange into a phone call, a hold queue and five minutes of somebody's day. Our piece on the real cost of missed business calls covers what happens when that call does not get answered.
- The customer does nothing at all. The least visible outcome and usually the most expensive one.
None of that shows up in a report. A one way send looks like a complete success right up until you notice that the same customers keep ringing about things you already texted them.
Two Senders, Two Very Different Outcomes
Business SMS in Australia goes out under one of two identities, and the difference between them is not cosmetic.
A branded sender ID puts your business name at the top of the message instead of a number. It looks tidy and it is instantly recognisable. It also cannot receive anything. There is no inbox behind a name, so a customer who hits reply is typing into nothing. If you use one, it needs to be registered, which we covered in the SMS Sender ID Register rules.
An Australian mobile number looks like a normal 04 number, because it is one. It is less branded, and it is a two way channel. The customer replies, the reply arrives, somebody answers it.
Most businesses assume they have to pick one and live with the consequences. In practice the answer is usually to match the sender to the job. A one off notice that genuinely needs no response can go out branded. Anything that invites an answer should go from a number that can hear one.
What a Reply Should Do When It Lands
Getting the reply back is only half of it. A reply that arrives with no context is barely better than no reply, because "yes please" on its own tells you nothing.
In a proper bulk SMS service, an inbound message is matched back to the campaign that most likely prompted it, and the whole exchange sits in one conversation thread rather than a list of disconnected texts. Whoever picks it up can see what was sent, when, and to whom, before they answer.
That matching is an inference, not a certainty. It works from a reference in the reply or from the timing of the send, so a customer who replies a fortnight later, or who answers something completely unrelated, may not attach to the right campaign. Treat it as very good context rather than a guarantee, and a human reading the thread fills the gap easily.
The practical effect is the bit worth having. Your team is not detective work on a bare mobile number at nine in the morning. They open the conversation, see the reminder that went out yesterday, and reply.
Opt Out Is a Reply Too
Australian rules require a way out of commercial messaging, and SMS does not do unsubscribe links the way email does.
The mechanism is a STOP reply. The customer texts STOP, they come off the list, and it happens without anybody on your side having to action it. It is simple, it is what customers already expect, and it only works if the message came from something that can receive a reply.
Which is exactly where branded sender IDs need help. Because the name cannot receive a STOP, a send from a branded sender ID carries a hosted opt out page instead, a link the customer taps to remove themselves. Same outcome, different route, and it is the reason this detail is worth settling before your first campaign rather than after it.
Either way, honour it quickly and completely. An opt out that does not stick is the fastest way to turn a useful channel into a complaint.
What This Costs
Bulk SMS through Ozetel is 6c per SMS outbound and 2c inbound, per segment, excluding GST. Full detail sits on the Bulk Messaging page.
Two things worth knowing before you budget.
- A "message" is a segment, not a text. A standard SMS segment is 160 characters. Use an emoji, a curly apostrophe or any other non standard character and the whole message drops to 70 characters per segment. A message that looks like one text can quietly be billed as two or three.
- Any figure you see before sending is an estimate. The platform can tell you what a campaign looks like it will cost. The billed amount comes from the billing system, and multipart or non standard character messages will move it.
Inbound at 2c is the part people forget to price in, and it is also the part that pays for itself. A reply is a customer doing your admin for you.
Honest Limits
A few things Ozetel's Bulk Messaging deliberately does not do, so you can decide upfront rather than discover later.
- No MMS or picture messaging, and no international sending. Text to Australian numbers.
- One login per customer. There are no per agent seats or per user assignment inside the inbox.
- No CRM connectors, no automation platform integrations and no public API. If you need SMS wired into another system, raise it with us before you plan around it.
- Broadcast sending runs from capacity checked numbers, not from any number you happen to have. One to one messaging does not have that restriction.
- The service is enabled per account rather than switched on for everybody by default.
- Reports show what the carrier accepted, which is not the same thing as what landed on a handset. Anybody promising you delivery confirmation on SMS is overselling it.
None of these stop a clinic sending reminders or a trades business confirming a job. They are just the shape of the thing, and it is better to know the shape.
Before You Send Your First Campaign
- Decide who the sender is. Branded name for notices, mobile number for anything you want an answer to. This is the decision everything else hangs off.
- Work out who reads the replies. A two way channel with nobody watching it is worse than a one way one, because now the customer knows you saw it.
- Write the message so a reply is useful. "Reply Y to confirm or call us to change it" beats a paragraph that ends nowhere.
- Check your character count. Keep it plain text and under 160 characters and you pay for one segment.
- Test the opt out. Send to your own phone, reply STOP, confirm it works before five hundred customers try it.
- Send at a human hour. The reply you want arrives when someone is awake enough to type it.
Business SMS earns its reputation as the highest read channel a business has. The businesses getting real value from it are not the ones broadcasting hardest. They are the ones who left the door open, and put someone behind it.
Thinking about SMS your customers can actually reply to? Talk to us about Bulk Messaging and we will walk you through the sender options, the opt out setup and what your first campaign should look like.
