How to launch a premium rate SMS service in Kenya using bulk SMS
Why you should start a premium rate service by texting subscribers
More than 16 million people use mobile phones in Kenya. You can reach millions of people who are looking for information and are willing to pay you through Bulk SMS . You’d be earning over 2.78 Keshs per SMS, which, when you add up the numbers, is a great return.
How to send SMS using premium rate SMS How to send text messages using premium rate SMS
Let’s say we’ve set it up for you and show you how to send Gujarati language lessons by SMS to your subscribers:
(a) To introduce a customer to your service, simply ask them to send an SMS with the chosen code word, say “Gujarati”, to 5242.
(b) Once your customer texts the word “Gujarati” to 5242, they will automatically sign up to receive the daily Gujarati text messages you provide;
(c) You will have provided us with a list of Gujarati lessons SMS text messages (let’s say 30 SMS text messages, 1 SMS text message lesson per day for 30 days);
(d) Every morning, your client will receive a lesson via SMS text message for the rest of the month;
(e) Depending on the volume of SMS text messages per month, you will get more than Kes 2.78 for each SMS text message your customer receives;
(f) For example, if you have 5000 customers, you will send 5000 SMS text messages per day. At a rate of Kes 3 per SMS text message, you will be earning Kes 15,000 per day or Kes 450,000 per month. Kenya has 16 million more mobile users. It is not difficult to secure more than 10,000 users for your service. Do the math;
How to send SMS with business advice using a premium rate service or bulk SMS
Market for Business Tips
Kenyans are becoming more enterprising with what is sadly called “the informal sector”, dwarfing the corporate business in the sheer volume of transactions and the claim on the Kenyan population.
With an unemployment rate of 40% (a figure that I think is a huge understatement, especially when the authorities consider self-employment to be unemployment), many Kenyans want secondly just to get a job, to get an education.
The richest Kenyans are not employees but politicians with business interests and entrepreneurs with or without political interests. Therefore, Kenyans are in love with business in one way or another. This makes them very eager for advice on how to be successful in business.
Outside of formal education books, the best-selling titles on the book market are the so-called management and self-help literature. As Kenyans get busier, advice on what they would have read from these books. There is a huge gap between desired and possessed business knowledge. You can fill this gap using premium rate SMS.
SMS channel configuration with premium rate
1. The first step is to contact a premium rate service provider.
2. In the early stages of completing the online registration form, you will be asked to provide a keyword of your choice. If you are going to send premium rate text messages that contain business suggestions, you must select a relevant keyword such as “Biz” or “Tips”, or something that indicates what the service is about. This is the word that subscribers would send by SMS to the short code that we will provide them if they want to subscribe to your service.
3. The second stage of the online registration process would be to read and understand the Premium Rate Service Provider’s terms and conditions. These are very important as they establish how you will interact as an agent with Viva. It is important to note that at the end of these terms and conditions you will find the table that details the participation in the income that you would receive. Section 4 of the terms and conditions establishes two forms of payment. Please read them carefully so that you can understand them.
4. The third stage of the online registration process involves contacting the Premium Rate Service Provider.
5. Once the Premium Rate Service Provider confirms that it is available, you will pay the monthly rate for the first month.
6. Once the payment is made, Viva will proceed to contact our premium rate service provider to set the keyword in our shared short code. Settings are generally made on Mondays and Thursdays.
7. Once the keyword is configured in the short code, we will send you an email confirming that the keyword has been configured. We will also ask you to send us an email message in MS Excel with a text message of 14 to 30 SMS that you want us to start sending from the short code. Each message must not exceed 160 characters (including spaces). We will also provide you with an online platform from which you can monitor who has subscribed to your service, the number of subscribers, the number of SMS text messages sent daily, and other important data.
8. The next step is marketing. You should start advertising your shortcode and keyword to the public. For example, you can place print ads that say “SMS Biz to 5242 for Inspirational Daily New Testament Teaching.”
9. There are many forms of advertising, including radio, newspapers, classifieds, television, or pay-per-click advertising.
10. When people see your ads, they will send an SMS with the keyword to the short code and the short code system will record their numbers.
11. Every day, the system will send a text message (or two, depending on how you want it) to all the numbers registered in the premium rate SMS system.
12. At the end of the month, you calculate the amount of money owed to you by visiting the section of your online platform on messages delivered successfully. Once you get the number of messages successfully delivered for the subject month, multiply it by the amount per SMS that is owed to you. This amount per SMS varies from 2.78 Kshs to 3.89 depending on the volume.