Difference between Promotional and Transactional SMS Print

Transactional SMS

What is Transactional Messages ?

• Information sent to its customer(s) by the Bank or financial institution or insurance company or credit card company
• Information given by Airlines or Indian Railways or its authorized agencies to its passengers regarding travel schedules, ticket booking and reservation
• Information from a registered educational institution to parents or guardians of its students;
• Information sent by e-commerce agencies in response to ecommerce transactions made by their customers
• Information sent by a company or a firm or depository participant, registered with Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) or Insurance Regulatory Development Authority (IRDA) or Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI) or National Commodity & Derivative Exchange Ltd. (NCDEX) or Multi Commodity Exchange of India Ltd. (MCX) to its clients pertaining to the account of the client
• Information sent by a registered company to its employees or agents or to its customers pertaining to services or goods to be delivered to such customers

Who can send Transactional Messages ?

• Registered Companies
• Registered Banks & Financial Institution
• Insurance Company
• Credit Card Companies
• Registered Education Instituted (Only for sending critical information to parents)
• Airlines & Railway (Only for sending ticket & PNR details to passengers)
• Stock Market DP Info Alerts (Only to opted-in/subscribed customers)
• E-Commerce website sending response to ecommerce transactions made by their customers

Sender ID for Transactional Messages

Only 6 Character long Alpha sender ID is allowed for sending Transactional Messages. Sender ID must contain exactly 6 characters (neither less nor more) in upper case and must be convincing enough with respect to industry/brand/service

Example: LM-ABCDEF

‘L’ stands for the operator code here its “Loop Mobile” 
‘M’ stands for the service area here its “Mumbai”
‘-’ is the delimiter
‘ABCDEF’ indicates six alphabets for company or organization sending transactional SMS

Note: Only one Sender ID is allowed per account . Sender ID is subjected to approval.

Message Submission Timings Window

Transactional SMS Gateway is open for 24 hours 365 days

Message Templates

Transactional SMS gateway works with template based system, you can create any number of message templates from your account. Once your template is approved by us you can start sending transactional messages to all your opted in clients including numbers registered with NCCPR Registry (DND)

If the template and sender id does not match (including comas and space) with our records sms will not be processed and dropped.

Difference between Promotional and Transactional SMS

This is a very common question !! What is the difference between promotional and transactional gateway.

Last year TRAI has come up with a category called Transactional SMS to curb the unsolicited communication.  

Unfortunately, TRAI has not defined what is Promotional SMS category. Therefore, any message apart from transactional sms category is called promotional sms.

Over and above, its the content which decides the category of SMS apart from from who is sending SMS. For example, a registered Bank is eligible to send Transactional SMS as per TRAI, however they can can not send any promotional content to their registered customers through Transactional channel.

Example: The following example illustrates the two different type of sms sent by a bank

Transactional: Dear customer your account balance is Rs 55555. Regards. ABC Bank.

Promotional: Now get 4.5% interest on all your fixed deposit. Regards. ABC Bank.

Now that we have defined both the categories, we will compare the features of both the categories:

What are the precautions required while sending Transactional SMS

• Always maintain a database of your opted-in clients. This is required to be produced in case of complain is filed by recipient
• Do not send any promotional content to any one from transactional pipe.