How WINGS Notification Server saves money

SMS messages account for the bulk of the money spent on sending out communication to customers. So, in order to reduce messaging costs, you need to reduce the amount of SMS you send. The WINGS Notification Server easily solves this problem. It compares favorably to solutions from competitors, service providers or even your own in-house developments.

You cut costs because you’re able to send as many messages as possible via free channels. Messages that could not be delivered through these free channels are forwarded through channels that are cheaper than SMS. The remaining messages are then sent via the standard way – by SMS. Such messaging strategy is called fallback. Examples of notification chains are: Push → Viber → SMS or Push → SMS.

In addition, the Notification Server also saves on SMS itself by detecting inactive numbers that are unable to receive SMS messages; the server interacts directly with mobile operators, and routes SMS via the cheapest channel. But the main cost-cutting measure is still the free mobile Push messages, so that's where we'll focus on first.

The potential cost savings from using Push depends on two metrics:

• The percentage of app penetration among users:  the percentage of your audience that has installed the app and enabled Push reception.
• Push delivery rate - the percentage of Push notifications sent that will be delivered.

The app penetration percentage among users does not directly depend on the software solution used to send messages, but on the quality and usefulness of the app itself and its promo activities. But this is only partly true. The fact is, users are much more likely to opt out of Push notifications in apps in cases where Push is not delivered consistently. This applies to Push notifications containing important information for users, such as bank transaction notification. When important notifications come via different channels (some in Push, some in SMS), this could be annoying to users, and they may simply disable Push so as to be receiving all notifications via one method – SMS.

If you understand how mobile Push notification works, it would seem at first glance that Push delivery rate cannot be influenced because messages are delivered by mobile platform services. In fact, this is not the case, and there are a myriad of reasons why Push notifications don't get delivered. Fixing these reasons would require lots of different actions on both the server side, from where Push notifications are sent, and on the mobile app side receiving the messages. Companies spend huge resources to improve their own delivery rate, but the rate usually doesn't get past 70-75%.

WINGS Notification Server would increase your Push delivery rate by 20-30%, resulting in significant cost savings.

WINGS Notification Server allows you to enjoy the full potential of the Push channel right "out of the box" without having to spend man-years developing your own solution and paying providers for each message you send. The Server is a replicable software product that is constantly being developed by a team of experts with vast experience in the field.

The Notification Server is an on-premises solution. It’s installed and runs on the customer's infrastructure. Push messages are free, they don’t pass through any third-party servers. So, there is enhanced customer data security.

Deploying the Notification Server would take your mobile Push notification delivery rate above 90%. This is achieved owing to the fact that all the necessary practices have already been applied on the server side, and an SDK is provided to boost the delivery rate on the mobile app side.

In addition to the obvious benefit of saving on SMS messages, there is another benefit you get from having a high delivery rate, which is not easy to calculate, but should not be ignored. There are messages that are sent only to Push, which can’t be re-sent via other channels in the event of non-delivery. Increasing the delivery rate for such messages by 20-30% can boost the effectiveness of ads and consequently increase your sales.

What's more, Push is continuously evolving, new features are regularly coming up , new devices and OS versions are being released, device manufacturers are launching cloud services to deliver notifications to their devices, etc. All of this can bring down delivery rates in the future. We have a whole team working on Push, and you can be sure that the new version of our Notification Server would support important new developments and innovations. WINGS is ready to guarantee at least 90% Push delivery rate under an SLA.

Some providers offer customers their Push services, promising them high delivery rates. The main disadvantage of such services is that the customer would have to pay for each message sent. This significantly reduces the cost savings that Push channel would have provided. Other disadvantages are:

• Reduced security because messages containing sensitive information pass through third-party servers;
• One might get dependent on such a provider since it would be extremely difficult to change the provider to another one.

The second biggest cost-cutting measure is the use of cheaper communication channels in a fallback strategy, along with Push and SMS. Some of such communication channels include various messengers and social networks. In some of them, you can send messages to users at a cost lower than SMS. So, one or more channels can be built into the fallback between Push and SMS, thereby further reducing the number of SMS sent and consequently, the overall costs.

Thirdly, the WINGS Notification Server allows you to reduce the cost of sending SMS. This is achieved through an intelligent mechanism that constantly monitors the delivery status of messages. The mechanism detects inactive numbers that cannot receive SMS messages. Sending messages to such numbers makes no sense since the SMS message will not be delivered, and you'll still have to pay for sending such messages because you’re usually charged for sending the SMS, not for delivery. The Notification Server automatically generates a database of inactive numbers at no additional cost and rejects sending messages to such numbers. Of course, there are criteria by which numbers are considered active again. Moreover, exceptions are made for critical SMS messages such that they don’t get rejected even if the number is considered inactive. With this approach, you’ll avoid sending up to 2% of SMS to inactive numbers.

Also, the WINGS Notification Server has everything you need to work directly with operators. So in cases where you send so many SMS messages, you will be able to reduce third-party commissions. Besides, SMS routing is based on selection of the cheapest channel (least cost routing), i.e. from all available operators and providers, the one that allows you to send a particular SMS at the lowest cost is selected.