Developing an Android Messaging App?

Here is the list of 10 must-have features for you!

Instant messaging is oh so popular but did you know it is the plain old SMS that people prefer for their professional as well as personal lives. SMS is still the number one choice for business communication as it has a whopping 98% open rate and works on every single mobile phone.

But how do you get the best SMS experience on Android?

You’ll obviously need a great text messaging app, but there are add-ons that can bring functionality and features you always wished for. To enhance your texting experience we bring you a list of features:

• Identify Unknown Numbers

Does your texting app identify unknown numbers? Relying on crowd intelligence to block spam, your android SMS app can identify unknown numbers and block messages coming from them.

• Identify Sender IDs

A sender ID is the simplest way to let people receiving the SMS know who the SMS is from, but do you know what is simpler? Replacing the sender ID with the name of the brand makes it easier to search the SMS.

• Smart Reply Suggestion

Anticipating a user's needs and catering to them is what makes an app successful. A smart reply feature suggests pre-generated replies and all a user would require to do is click the reply and it’ll be auto-inserted saving you the trouble of typing.

• Autoresponder/SMS Scheduler

With an autoresponder, you can set profiles and compose replies that will get automatically sent when you activate a profile and for scheduling, you just need to select the date and time, write the message, and add contacts from your address book.

• Sync, Read and Send

Syncing your texts across devices allows you to even send and receive SMS from your computer, tablet and other devices.

• Customization

Everything from the background, notifications, contacts, emoji and bubbles can be completely customized. You can give individual conversations custom themes as well. Also, you can pick the notification icon colour and alert tone that plays when you get a new message.

• Switch Conversations

Creating tabs for each of your conversations allows you to easily switch between them.

• Check The Delivery Status

The ability to check the status of a text message to see if it was delivered to the recipient is a feature found on most mobile phones. On the Android OS though, you have to enable the feature that provides this information as it is usually disabled by default.

• MMS For Longer Messages

A great power user feature is the ability to force the texts to go from SMS to MMS for longer messages. This avoids the garbled message groups that sometimes happen with long conversations.

• Enhanced Privacy

A lot of people have taken a greater interest in privacy these days. Over-the-top end-to-end encrypted messaging offers that. The app can be your default android SMS app so it can receive both encrypted messages through the service and standard texts.

Life as a green bubble can be tough but putting in some extra efforts always works. Peruse the Play Store to find the SMS app that will deliver the experience with features and functionality you’re after.

How businesses can leverage SMS marketing

Big brands have been leveraging SMS marketing for decades now, and it continues to be a strong tool for businesses to reach out to their existing customer base. While there are many arguments against unwanted messages flowing in, on a daily basis, there is substantial evidence to prove that SMS marketing results in meaningful interactions with consumers and sales conversions. Today, businesses are even able to geo-target customers, customise messages and schedule SMS with SMS apps for mobile phones. Some of the best apps for SMScan help plan the campaign in such a way that the right content reaches the consumer at the right time. Here's a list of the seven most powerful ways businesses can have meaningful interaction with the consumer:

• Promotional activities: When running sales campaigns and other promotional activities, SMS marketing serves as a powerful tool to let the consumer know about what the business has to offer, and how they can make use of this opportunity. In this case, timing is really important, and SMS marketing allows the business to target consumers when they are most likely to read the message and make a purchase. Further, customers can be segmented into categories based on their preferences and past purchase records, and the message can be customised to suit their taste. Partnering with a
• Contests and competitions: When engaging customers through interactive contests and competitions, SMS campaigns can help reach a wider audience, on a personal level, thereby improving participation rates.
• Customer service: SMS is an effective tool to provide the consumer with transactional communication regarding sales-related services like invoices, order confirmation, order shipping details, and post-sales services like periodic service reminders, communication about a new product launch, etc. This helps the business keep the consumer in their information loop.
• Advice and notification: Crisp SMS content is a feasible and effective tool to notify large customer bases regarding business developments that may pertain to them, for eg. Government sends notifications and advice to citizens regarding important social and economic developments such as taxation, emergency situations, etc
• Feedback loop: Today, businesses can get feedback from customers through SMS, by sending them a web link to collect their opinions. Customers can take up this activity when they are free to do so, and thus the scope of people responding to feedback queries is larger.

Lately, it has become easier for businesses to use the SMS tool with the advent of SMS apps for Android and iOS. The best SMS applications for Android offer some advanced features like SMS scheduler, targeting, customising and so on.

MSG91, an SMS app for Androidoffers salient features like:

• SMS to all your contacts, or phonebook created from web panel
• SMS delivery to any mobile in any country, instantly
• Create comprehensive SMS campaigns
• Edit phonebook to help to target
• Manage your activities through a detailed summary

It is really quite simple to plan and execute SMS campaigns with just a tap. So download the MSG91 app and discover how messaging can benefit your business.