SMS reporting's latest enhancements enable you to track and monitor how click traffic is counted of your SMS campaigns.
Traditional SMS vs. SMS applications
SMS applications are becoming more feature rich, as the mobile industry is trying to close the gap between the traditional SMS message and the numerous instant messaging applications. SMS continues to be more efficient and reliable where recipients only need a cellular service to receive your message.
In the last years we have seen efforts from application developers and operators not only to improve our security from spam recognition, or spam reporting features for SMS, but also many features to enrich the SMS messages like URL previews, stickers, and of course emojis.
Today, the popularity of SMS is also reflected in many applications available in the mobile applications stores with different integrated functionalities developed to attract users.
Tracking SMS messages with web links
Generating reports of SMS messages with web links is the main pillar of SMS analytics development. Our SMS team members have been analysing that traffic to continue to improve SMS reporting.
Invoking clicks in an SMS message
Click is when the information - associated with the web link (or URL) in the SMS - is processed. Basically, every time a URL is invoked it produces a click. However, the URL is no longer invoked manually all the time and there are essentially two ways to trigger that click:
- User invocation: When a recipient opens the SMS and manually clicks on the URL.
- Automatic invocation: When the SMS is delivered to the recipient inbox and the SMS application automatically invokes that URL. This can be done for security features or even a simple preview of the URL. We call these bot clicks.
Processing bot clicks and manual clicks
Depending on the applications used by your recipients, you can have more or fewer bot clicks. It all depends on the applications your recipients are using and how feature-rich they are.
In the last couple of years, many new device manufacturers and mobile operators have begun adopting these feature-rich SMS applications (e.g. Google messages) by default in their devices. As a result, bot click traffic is increasing and will continue to grow. As this happens, senders cannot differentiate between a manual click or a bot click.
The solution is to implement some additional logic at the time the click is processed. We have implemented some changes to enhance the click reporting for your SMS campaigns.
From the beginning of March 2023, we are doing that differentiation when a click is processed, and because bot clicks do not represent a genuine interest coming in from your recipient, those are excluded from your reporting.
Depending on what applications your recipient base uses, you may notice a drop in clicks in your SMS campaign reports, but that only means the bot clicks are no longer there.
You can use that information and data to understand the size of your recipient list that has feature-rich SMS applications. If the segment is big enough, you can use that knowledge and make your URLs more appealing for these applications by using the Open Graph protocol and draw even more clicks.
Further SMS reporting enhancements
Our next step after the SMS clicks reporting enhancement is with the Revenue Attribution Services rerunning the campaign attribution with the bot traffic removed, so your previous campaigns are consistent with this update.
We continue to analyse the traffic and address any other outliers or trends, including those from other minor applications with less market share, that can use this method and can significantly change your click rate.
If you have any questions or feedback regarding the development status of a product or feature, please speak to your Success Manager.