What if you could reach your customers, whenever and wherever they are, with relevant information and get an immediate response? That’s the kind of power and measurability that appears in marketers’ dreams.

As it turns out, dreams do come true, and the answer has been in our collective pockets for decades.

Though it’s not new, SMS marketing has seen a surge in popularity recently. Companies like Disney and Amazon take advantage of its power and use it to connect with their customers in ways they never could before.

If you’re not already using SMS marketing to reach your customers, you should give it strong consideration. If you are using it, there’s always room for improvement. In either case, this guide gives you what you need to know to take your SMS marketing to the next level.

Why use SMS for marketing?

Why SMS? The simple answer is that it just works.

For proof, you need only to look at the 90% open rate SMS marketing enjoys and compare it to email marketing, which gets about a 20% open rate on the high end of the scale. SMS is so effective at reaching people because it’s immediate, ubiquitous, and mobile-first.

With SMS, you’re reaching consumers on a device that’s in their pockets and that buzzes to let them know when they receive a message. While smartphone notifications can also signal incoming email messages, people tend to put off reading email until later — but we’ve all been conditioned to view text messages as soon as they arrive.

Another feature that makes SMS unique is that in both iOS and Android devices, messages can be displayed over other apps, so even if someone is playing a game, reading news, or watching videos, they won’t miss your message.

But open rates are just the beginning of what makes SMS so powerful. It also allows you to be ultra-relevant to your customers, reaching specific people at specific moments. For example:

• You can send messages to conference attendees during a presentation to prompt them to sign up for a speaker’s newsletter or buy their book.
• After a consumer leaves a restaurant, you can send them a message thanking them for coming and offering them a coupon for their next visit.
• In ecommerce, you can send messages to customers who abandon their shopping carts, or, when their payment fails, help them complete their purchases.

These examples demonstrate the transactional power of SMS marketing to build an opt-in audience and facilitate purchases. But it’s even more versatile than that and can support a variety of marketing goals.

SMS marketing can help you build awareness of a brand or even an issue. By integrating SMS marketing with other marketing tools, including social media, events, email, and sales promotions, you can increase the effectiveness of your entire marketing program. We’ll share some examples of how some well-known companies have done that later in this article.

Most importantly, SMS marketing can give you a high return on investment, in part because the upfront creative and development costs are lower than most other marketing methods. SMS marketing doesn’t require video production, graphic design, actors, models, printing, web design, or photography.

And, depending on how you use it, SMS marketing can actually generate revenue. One ecommerce marketer saw an increase in revenue as high as 10% with their SMS marketing program.

Try these strategic tips for SMS marketing

As we said, SMS is one of the most effective tactics you can add to your marketing mix — but to get those benefits, you need to be smart and strategic. Here are some tips to get the most out of your SMS marketing program.

Look for trigger moments

The immediacy of text messages allows you to reach your customers, individually, at precise moments — something no other marketing channel can do. To maximize that power, you should look for trigger moments when customers will be most receptive to your messages.

One of the most obvious moments is right after a customer takes some kind of action, like opting in to receiving a newsletter or making a purchase. In those moments, you can use SMS messages to welcome customers into the community, thank them for their purchases, or give them updates on shipping.

Other trigger moments include birthdays and holidays, flash sales and promotions, and new product introductions. All of these present opportunities for you to connect with your customers and create a sense of urgency around taking some kind of action.

Segment your audience

Because SMS marketing is so simple, it’s tempting to just blast messages out to your entire list. But the power of text messaging is that you can use it to reach specific people — and that’s why segmentation is so critical.

How you segment your audience depends on your business and your customer base, but the options are many. Age, income level, and other demographics are obvious choices, but you can also sort them by where they are in the customer journey, what product or services they buy, or their hobbies, interests, and goals.

By segmenting your audience, you can be sure to serve relevant messages that spur action, and, equally importantly, minimize unsubscribes.

Follow the rules

As with email marketing, SMS marketing comes with certain rules and regulations. You’re contacting customers using their personal phone numbers, so you should be clear and transparent when they opt in to your program. You also need to protect private data and make it easy for customers to opt out.

Every country has its own set of laws and regulations that you’ll need to be aware of. But as important as following the regulations is maintaining customers’ trust. Running afoul of the rules is one thing, but if customers lose trust in you, they might never forgive you.

To maintain customers’ trust, be sure to be transparent about why you’re contacting them, have a clear opt-in process, and make it easy for them to opt out. And, above all, don’t wear out your welcome by spamming them with frequent messages.

Use your creativity

Because it’s so simple and versatile, SMS marketing can be used in almost limitless ways. If you have a need to reach your customers, and if your customers have phones (which describes pretty much everyone), you can likely create an SMS marketing program that will meet your needs.

Here are a few examples for inspiration:

• Fast-food chain Arby’s used SMS marketing to engage customers in their No Kid Hungry philanthropic campaign, raising brand awareness and building goodwill.
• Jim Beam ran a sweepstake by encouraging consumers to opt in to their SMS program, building their database and supporting a charity at the same time.
• The National Cancer Institute used SMS marketing to reach young people and guide them through the difficult process of quitting smoking.
• TULA Skincare reached out to its mobile-first customer base through SMS to build a community around important social issues.
• Few companies use SMS marketing more effectively thanStarbucks, which keeps customers engaged in the brand and aware of ongoing promotions and offers.

Understanding the technical side of SMS

Once you have a campaign up and running, SMS marketing can be a smooth, seamless experience that only needs occasional tweaking and maintenance.

But getting to that point can be a challenge, especially if you’re not familiar with all of the technical nuances. A lot can go wrong, and if you’re not prepared for it, your campaign may get derailed.

Sending messages overseas and to multiple countries can be especially challenging. It’s not unusual for messages to be delayed or go undelivered, lessening the impact on your customers. What’s more, reporting can be inaccurate, so you may not even know your delivery rate. The situation is further complicated by layers of regulations in different countries and regions.

And following those regulations is vital. The UK’s Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, for example, give people certain rights when being contacted by text message. Violating those regulations can result in your campaigns being shut down.

Also, when sending overseas, you may be dealing with local languages and special characters. Some countries allow, or even require, sender identification codes so customers know who is sending messages to them. Getting the technicalities right goes a long way toward building trust among your customers and maximizing your open rates.

A lot goes into setting up and maintaining SMS marketing campaigns. But you can make the task easier if you partner with an SMS API provider that can help ensure your campaigns are successful.

At Plivo, we’ve set up our APIs and services to ensure your SMS programs are reliable. We partner with only premium carriers in each country and use a redundant carrier network to ensure messages always get through. We also provide easy-to-manage sender IDs and special character support, helping ensure your messages are opened and read by your customers.

Finally, our SMS API includes accurate reporting, so you can evaluate campaigns in real time and make adjustments to optimize them for success.

SMS marketing is a great opportunity — if you do it well

We cited some examples of top brands that use SMS marketing well. Companies are catching on, and in 2020, 56% of US retailers planned to increase investment in SMS marketing.

If your industry haven’t caught on to SMS marketing yet, you can take a leadership position and get a jump on your competition. If your competitors are doing SMS well, you need to catch up.

Either way, SMS offers a unique marketing opportunity to reach your customers. To learn more about how SMS marketing can work for you, contact us.

Making an outbound phone call using the Plivo Voice platform is easy, but communication should be a two-way street. Customers should be able to call you back, and you should answer the calls and address their concerns. This guide shows you how to receive incoming calls on Plivo numbers and manage the call flow once a call reaches the Plivo voice platform. To see how to do this, we’ll build a Python Flask application to receive an incoming call and greet the caller with a text-to-speech (TTS) message.

Prerequisites

Before you get started, you’ll need:

• A Plivo account — sign up for one for free if you don’t have one already.
• A voice-enabled Plivo phone number if you want to receive incoming calls. To search for and buy a number, go to Phone Numbers > Buy Numbers on the Plivo console.
• Flask and Plivo Python packages — run pip3 install plivo flask to install them.
• ngrok — a utility that exposes your local development server to the internet over secure tunnels.

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Create a Flask application to receive incoming calls and play a TTS message

Once you’ve installed Flask and the Plivo Python SDK, create a simple Flask application to handle incoming calls on a Plivo number. To handle an incoming call, you need to return an XML document from the URL configured as the Answer URL in the application assigned to the Plivo number. The Python SDK can manage the XML document generation, and you can use the Speak XML element to play a text-to-speech message to the caller. Use this code:

from flask import Flask, request, make_response
from plivo import plivoxml

app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route('/receive_call/', methods=['GET','POST'])
def speak_xml():
    # Generate a Speak XML with the details of the text to play on the call.
    response = (plivoxml.ResponseElement()
            .add(plivoxml.SpeakElement('Hello, you just received your first call')))
    return(response.to_string())

if __name__ == "__main__":
    app.run(host='0.0.0.0', debug=True)

Test the code locally

Save the code in any file — we named the file receive_call.py. To run the code on the server, go to the folder where the file resides and use the command

$ python receive_call.py

You should see your basic server application in action on http://localhost:5000/receive_call/.

Expose the local server to the internet using ngrok

Once you see the application working locally, the next step is to connect the application to the internet to return the XML document to process the incoming call. For that, we recommend using ngrok, which exposes local servers behind NATs and firewalls to the public internet over secure tunnels. Install it and run ngrok on the command line, specifying the port that hosts the application on which you want to handle incoming calls (5000 in this case, as our local Python application is running there):

$ ./ngrok http 5000

Ngrok will display a forwarding link that you can use as a webhook to access your local server over the public network.

Test the link by opening the ngrok URL (https://b51dbc9d904c.ngrok.io/receive_call/) in a browser. We used HTTPie to check the XML response from the ngrok URL.

Connect the Flask application to a Plivo number

The final step is to configure the application as a Plivo voice application and assign it to a Plivo number on which you want to receive incoming calls.

Go to the Plivo console and navigate to Voice > Applications > XML, then click on the Add New Application button in the upper right.

Provide a friendly name for the application — we used “App-Incoming-call” — and configure the ngrok URL https://b51dbc9d904c.ngrok.io/receive_call/ as the Answer URL. Select the HTTP verb as POST, then click Create Application.

Now go to Phone Numbers > Your Numbers and click on the number to which you want to assign the application. From the Plivo Application drop-down, choose the voice application you just created. Finally, click Update Number.

Test the application

Make a phone call to the Plivo number you selected. You should see that the Flask application automatically greets the caller with the text-to-speech message configured in the app.

And that’s how simple it is to receive an incoming call on a Plivo number and handle it using XML documents using Plivo’s Python SDK and a Flask application. You can implement other use cases on the Plivo Voice platform, such as phone system IVR, call forwarding, and number masking, as your business requires.

Haven’t tried Plivo yet? Getting started is easy and only takes five minutes. Sign up today.

Sending an outbound message using the Plivo SMS platform is easy, but communication should be a two-way street. Customers should be able to text you, and you should acknowledge their messages and address their concerns. To do this, you can build a Python Flask application to receive and respond to incoming SMS messages on a Plivo phone number. In this post, we walk you through how to implement this.

Prerequisites

Before you get started, you’ll need:

• A Plivo account — sign up for one for free if you don’t have one already.
• An SMS-enabled Plivo phone number as you want to receive incoming SMS messages. To search for and buy an available number, go to Phone Numbers > Buy Numbers on the Plivo console.
• Flask and Plivo Python packages — run pip3 install plivo flask to install them.
• ngrok — a utility that exposes your local development server to the internet over secure tunnels.

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Create a Flask application to receive SMS messages

Once you’ve installed Flask and the Plivo Python SDK, create a simple Flask application to handle incoming SMS messages on a Plivo number. Use this code:

from flask import Flask, request

app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route('/receive_sms/', methods=['GET', 'POST'])
def inbound_sms():

    from_number = request.values.get('From')
    to_number = request.values.get('To')
    text = request.values.get('Text')
    print('Message received - From: %s, To: %s, Text: %s' %(from_number, to_number, text))

    return 'Message Received'

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run(host='0.0.0.0', debug=True)

Return a Message XML document to reply to incoming messages

To reply to an incoming SMS message, you need to return an XML document from the URL configured as the message_url in the application assigned to the Plivo number. The Python SDK can manage the XML document generation, and you can use the Message XML element to reply to incoming SMS messages. Use this code:

from flask import Flask, request, make_response, Response
from plivo import plivoxml

app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route('/reply_sms/', methods=['GET', 'POST'])
def reply_sms():

    from_number = request.values.get('From')
    to_number = request.values.get('To')
    text = request.values.get('Text')
    print('Message received - From: %s, To: %s, Text: %s' %(from_number, to_number, text))

    response = plivoxml.ResponseElement()
    response.add(
        plivoxml.MessageElement(
            "Thank you, we have received your request.",
            src=to_number,  
            dst=from_number))
    print(response.to_string())  # Prints the XML
    # Returns the XML
    return Response(response.to_string(), mimetype='application/xml')

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run(host='0.0.0.0', debug=True)

Test the code locally

Save the code in any file — we named the file reply_sms.py. To run the code on the server, go to the folder where the file resides and use the command

$ python reply_sms.py

You should see your basic server application in action on http://localhost:5000/reply_sms/.

Expose the local server to the internet using ngrok

Once you see the application working locally, the next step is to connect the application to the internet to receive and reply to messages. For that, we recommend using ngrok, which exposes local servers behind NATs and firewalls to the public internet over secure tunnels. Install it and run ngrok on the command line, specifying the port that hosts the application on which you want to receive messages (5000 in this case, as our local Python application is running there):

$ ./ngrok http 5000

Ngrok will display a forwarding link that you can use as a webhook to access your local server over the public network.

Test the link by opening the ngrok URL(https://31123bc8f94e.ngrok.io/reply_sms/?From=14156667777&To=14156667778) in a browser. We used HTTPie to check the XML response from the ngrok URL.

Connect the Flask application to a Plivo number

The final step is to configure the app as a Plivo messaging application and assign it to a Plivo number on which you want to receive SMS messages.

Go to the Plivo console and navigate to Messaging > Applications > XML, then click on the Add New Application button in the upper right.

Provide a friendly name for the app — we used “App-Incoming-SMS” — and configure the ngrok URL https://31123bc8f94e.ngrok.io/reply_sms/ as the Message URL. Select the HTTP verb as POST, then click Create Application.

Now go to Phone Numbers > Your Numbers and click on the number to which you want to assign the application. From the Plivo Application drop-down choose the message application you just created. Finally, click Update Number.

Test the application

Send an SMS to the Plivo number you selected. You should see that the Flask application automatically sends a reply back to your mobile number.

And that’s how simple it is to receive and respond to incoming SMS messages using Plivo’s Python SDK and a Flask application.

Haven’t tried Plivo yet? Getting started is easy and only takes five minutes! Sign up today.

When you have notifications to send to customers, you want them to arrive as quickly as possible. Delays in important information about accounts, transactions, or appointments make customers unhappy, and can get them thinking about becoming someone else’s customer instead of yours.

The best communications channel for delivering notifications is SMS text messaging. SMS has a wider reach and more immediacy than options such as email and phone calls.

SMS is simple, quick, and cost-effective. Text messages get important information to your users when they need to know it, so they can act on it right away.

But while the technology is capable, you have to avoid some pitfalls to take best advantage of it. For instance, writing applications to deliver messages at scale requires a lot of code to ensure that correct phone numbers are being used for each recipient’s network and phone number type and the use case for the message. Writing and maintaining communications platforms and ensuring that messages are in complaint with the receiver’s country regulations is a time-consuming, expensive endeavor. This means increased development time and expenses.

Instead of writing the code in-house, you can turn to a communications platform as a service. But all CPaaS platforms are not created equal. Sending SMS messages can be similar to traveling internationally on an airline that uses a hub-and-spoke model. The airline decides what routes to operate, and you have to take those predetermined routes to get to your destination, which may involve transfers. Similarly, many CPaaS providers can’t provide a direct route from the sender to receiver. Sometimes, an international message may be transferred five or six times to get to its final destination. Worse, some CPaaS providers rely on aggregators to deliver messages on their behalf. In many cases, these aggregators utilize “gray routes,” sending messages to users in another country without paying the recipients’ networks for their delivery, which can result in low delivery rates.

For fastest delivery, your SMS platform should have direct connectivity with carrier networks in the countries where it operates. Going through aggregators is a sure way to slow things down. And if you have customers in multiple countries, you want to make sure your SMS platform has a global presence.

To minimize message delays as messages sent to customers across multiple networks, your carrier should employ automated quality checks and route around delays. Plivo deploys simulated handsets as test nodes across all the countries with multiple operators from the respective country, provisioned with real phone numbers from operators  local to each region. We send messages to these test nodes, and the results we receive back help our dynamic routing engine intelligently route messages to ensure speed of deliverability.

That helps keep our whole network speedy — but it’s not the only tool in our toolbox. Our Conversion Feedback API lets you update Plivo on conversions from two-factor authentication (2FA) and one-time password (OTP) SMS messages. Whenever a recipient successfully authenticates using the verification code they received, Plivo can make a post to an API endpoint. Plivo uses feedback to measure the reliability of the networks it uses so it can maintain high delivery rates in countries where carrier networks are sometimes unstable.

All of the features work together for effective, timely communication, according to home-sharing platform Houst, a Plivo customer. Company founder James Jenkins-Yates says, “When a guest has booked a rental, we send a set of automated messages using Plivo. There are several different reminders sent, including payment, verification, check-in, check-out, and review requests,” most of which require timely delivery — and that’s what Plivo delivers for Houst.

Check out our blog on how we architect our platform for high reliability. It explains how Plivo’s infrastructure and global network ensure that all SMS traffic is sent via the fastest, most reliable route.

The more your business grows, the harder it is to reach all your customers. But among the many communications channels available to you, one stands out for immediacy, cost-effectiveness, and ease of use.

Everyone wants a growing business. Having more customers means more revenue and a chance to make the world a better place with your products or services.

Keeping customers means keeping in touch with them. Sometimes you want to send them notifications of new products or policies. Sometimes you need to send them alerts about essential services or time-critical events. And sometimes you just want to offer them new information.

The problem is how to stay in touch cost-effectively at scale. Businesses have multiple options, including:

• SMS
• Voice
• Email
• Postal mail
• Social media
• Advertising
• Word of mouth

They all have pros and cons when it comes to cost, immediacy, and reach. Email, for example, has low cost but only moderate immediacy. Word of mouth has no cost at all but very limited reach. The best combination of low cost, high immediacy, and almost universal reach is

SMS, a.k.a. text messaging. It offers global reach and immediate delivery at a low unit cost per message.

SMS can reach just about everyone. According to Pew Research, 96% of Americans owned a cell phone in 2019, and the mostly commonly used application for mobile phones is text messaging. That means your customers already have at their fingertips all they need to get your messages.

SMS messaging is the fastest messaging channel available. Most messages are delivered in less than five seconds — just what you want if you’re sending critical alerts and notifications, providing one-time passwords, or offering two-factor authentication. And with an SMS platform like Plivo, using Powerpack, you can automate sending high volumes of messages at one time.

Many people say text messaging is their preferred communication method. Other methods have shortcomings. People often decline to answer phone calls from numbers they’re not familiar with, and spam filters often catch bulk email messages before they reach recipients’ inboxes. By contrast, according to a widely cited figure, SMS open rates run around 98%. Sending your text messages from local phone numbers makes them even more effective.

Bottom line: SMS has the best reach for sending customized notifications and alert messages for cases such as

• Financial transaction statuses
• Order status updates
• Lead alerts for sales teams
• Password resets
• Delivery and shipping notifications
• Appointment reminders

Plivo is architected to leverage SMS potential reach, as Plivo customer Deckers discovered. “Plivo’s queuing system was a huge selling point,” says Jacob Martinez, Project Manager for Deckers’ ecommerce team. “The less we have to manage things like rate limits and batch sizes, the less burden gets put on the developers. If we have 50,000 text messages we have to send, we don’t have to worry about how those will get through. We just send them all and Plivo handles it.”

We’ve written a white paper on how to optimize your SMS communications. It offers information about the different types of SMS (long code, short code, toll-free), international options, and pitfalls to avoid. Read it to see how you can increase your reach by using SMS messaging.

Businesses use call forwarding all the time to route incoming calls to available agents, extensions, or departments that cater to the caller’s needs. Creating a call forwarding app is simple when you use Plivo High Level Objects (PHLO), our visual workflow design studio, which lets you build applications without writing any code.

Prerequisites

Before you get started, you’ll need:

• A Plivo account — sign up for one for free if you don’t have one already.
• A voice-enabled Plivo phone number if you want to receive incoming calls. To search for and buy an available number, go to Phone Numbers > Buy Numbers on the Plivo console.

Create a PHLO to forward calls

PHLO lets you construct your entire use case and build and deploy workflows visually. With PHLO, you pay only for calls you make and receive, and building with PHLO is free.

To get started, visit PHLO in the Plivo console and click on the Create New PHLO button. A pop-up window gives you a list of prebuilt templates to start with. Choose Call Forwarding and click Create Application to create a PHLO with the prebuilt components to build a call forwarding workflow.

Now click on the Call Forward node, then add configuration information for the node in the right pane. Remove the dummy numbers from the “To” field and use a valid phone number in E.164 format. The liquid tag `` in the From field will automatically pick up the Caller number and set it as caller ID to forward the call. If you wish to hard code the caller ID number, enter a valid number here. Click Validate to save the configuration.

That’s all we’re going to do for now — we told you it was simple. Give the PHLO a name by clicking on the pencil icon in the upper left, then click the Save button in the upper right.

Activate the PHLO on a Plivo number

Before you can receive a call using this PHLO, you have to assign it to a Plivo number. Go back to the Plivo console and click on Phone Numbers on the left nav bar. From the list of Your Numbers, click on the number you want to use. On the next screen, from the Application Type drop-down, choose PHLO. From the PHLO Name drop-down, choose the PHLO you just created. Then click Update Number at the bottom of the screen.

Guess what? You’re done! You don’t have to run a program for this PHLO to work. Just call the Plivo number you specified and you should get the call forwarded to the phone number specified in the PHLO.

Conclusion

And that’s all there is to build a call forwarding app using PHLO, Plivo’s visual workflow design studio. You can edit this PHLO app to forward calls to a series of numbers, route calls to different numbers depending on whether it’s during or after business hours, do timezone-based routing, or implement other call forwarding scenarios to meet your needs.

Haven’t tried Plivo yet? Getting started is easy and only takes five minutes! Sign up today.

Businesses that need to communicate with customers and prospective customers often choose SMS messaging. Just about everyone has a cell phone nowadays, and SMS comes native on all mobile devices. And everyone knows how to read and reply to text messages, so no training is required.

To streamline SMS communications, businesses use application-to-person (A2P) platforms like Plivo to programmatically tailor their messages to meet their needs. Some of the logic that drives those communications can be pretty complex, so it behooves companies to keep the tools they use to power their platforms simple.

Plivo comprises a set of APIs and tools that businesses can use to power their voice and messaging communications. One of our key principles is to keep things simple for our users while we allow them to build complex applications.

Simple from the start

The theme of simplicity starts right from our registration process. To try out Plivo, all you need is an email address.

That’s a big change from old-school on-premises communications platforms, which required that businesses buy hardware and telecom equipment and hire experienced administrators and the developers needed to write and maintain messaging applications. Plivo is hosted in the cloud, so you don’t have to worry about buying or administering hardware — you only have to pay for whatever resources you use.

Maybe you’ve already used another communications platform — many of our customers find us when they’re looking for a Twilio alternative, for instance. When you begin diving into our documentation and using our code, you’ll find our APIs look pretty familiar. We do all we can to make Plivo easy to work with, including for people who are migrating from other platforms or using Plivo as a second service for fault tolerance or higher throughput.

While we’ve made Plivo’s APIs simple to use, some organizations would just as soon avoid writing any code if they can. For them, we built Plivo High-Level Objects (PHLO), a visual design studio that lets you create custom communication workflows for both voice and SMS without coding. PHLO employs prebuilt templates for tasks such as alerting, IVR, surveys, and voicemail, so you can shorten your development cycle. Once you’ve created a workflow in the visual designer, you can modify the code and customize it if you like.

Tough questions, simple answers

As you build workflows with PHLO, write code with our APIs, or manage Plivo from our online dashboard, you may have questions. That’s where our documentation comes in. We have getting-started and how-to guides that explain concepts, walk you through processes, help you troubleshoot problems, and give examples so you can apply what you learn to your own use case.

If the documentation doesn’t give you the answers you need, you can turn to our support team. We have experts ready to help you seven days a week, 24 hours a day, so wherever in the world you are (did you know Plivo offers services in more than 190 countries?) we’re available to solve problems — including service issues. In most of the countries we serve, Plivo works directly with in-country, Tier 1 carriers with direct interconnectivity to local telecom network operators. That not only helps us provide high deliverability with low latency, it also lets us help you remove obstacles caused by carriers.

Ease of use? Verified!

Of course any company can claim their software is easy to use, so don’t just take our word for it. Check out the G2 Grid for Cloud Communications Platforms. Plivo is ranked number one in customer satisfaction among the leaders. That shows that our plan for keeping things simple is working.

No one wants to have to jump through hoops to make their communications software do what they want. We know that, and we want to make sure Plivo is easy for you to use — easy to get started with, easy to incorporate into your applications, and easy to administer. Sign up and check us out, and let us know how we’re doing for you.

Your company has settled on Plivo to handle its voice and messaging communications, and now it’s your job to start integrating Plivo into your company’s applications. As a first project, let’s write a cloud function in Node.js to send SMS messages through Plivo.

Create a Firebase project

We’ll use Firebase, Google’s mobile app development tool, to implement the cloud function. To initialize a Firebase project, go to firebase.google.com and click Go to Console in the upper right corner. Create a Firebase account if you don’t have one already. Firebase has a free Spark plan and a pay-as-you-go Blaze plan. To make outbound networking requests, you must sign up for Blaze. From the Firebase console, click on the ‘Add project’ button to create a new project. Fill in the details on the next few screens and click Continue. Firebase will create the project and take you to its overview page.

Write and deploy a cloud function

Now we can start writing the cloud function in the Firebase CLI to send a message using Plivo’s SMS API.

Install the Plivo SDK and Firebase CLI

We’ll presume you already have your Node.js environment set up. Change to the directory into which you want to install the Plivo Node.js SDK and Firebase CLI and run

$ npm i -S plivo firebase-tools

Set up the Firebase CLI

Once the Firebase CLI and Plivo Node.js SDK are installed in your local project directory, you can set up Firebase locally and write a cloud function.

Run firebase login to log in to your Firebase account.

Initialize a new Firebase project in your local setup by running firebase init. You’ll be asked to select the Firebase features you want to set up. Use the down arrow key to navigate to Functions and press space bar to select it, then press Enter.

You’ll be asked to select whether you want to use an existing project or a new one. Select “Use an existing project” to use the project you just created in the Firebase console.

You’ll be asked to select the language you wish to write the function in. Choose “JavaScript,” and in the next step, choose yes to install the dependencies and complete the setup.

Write a cloud function

Once the setup is complete, open the project in a text editor to write the function to send SMS messages. Check the project’s folder structure to find the boilerplate code added by Firebase.

Before writing the code, we need to add Plivo as a dependency in the package.json file and run npm install to add the dependency to package-lock.json.

You can use the code below to replace the index.js file with a cloud function to send SMS messages using Plivo’s Node.js SDK.

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const functions = require("firebase-functions");
const authId = 'AUTH_ID';
const authToken = 'AUTH_TOKEN';
const Plivo = require("plivo");

// Initialize Plivo with API credentials
const client = new Plivo.Client(authId, authToken);

exports.sendSms = functions.https.onRequest(async (req, res) => {
    try {
        client.messages.create({
                src:"+14156667777",
                dst:"+14156667778",
                text:"testing firebase functions",
                method: "GET",
                url: "http://foo.com/sms_status/"
            })
            .then(function(response) {
                console.log(response);
            })
            .catch(err => console.log(err));
    } catch (err) {
        res.send('There was an error sending the SMS message');
    }
})

Find your Auth ID and Auth Token

You have to have proper credentials before you can use the Plivo API. We provide an Auth ID and Auth Token on the Overview page of the Plivo console. Replace the placeholders AUTH_ID and AUTH_TOKEN in the above code with the values from the console.

Choose a phone number

You need an SMS-enabled Plivo phone number to send messages to the US and Canada. Check the Numbers screen of your Plivo console to see what numbers you have available and which of them support SMS capabilities. You can also buy numbers from this screen and use it as the SRC number instead of “+14156667777” in the above code.

SMS regulations vary from country to country. For messages to countries other than the US and Canada, you might want to register an alphanumeric sender ID for your messages. You can learn more about the use of alphanumeric sender ID and register one from the Messaging > Sender IDs page of the console.

Deploy the cloud function

Once you’re done writing the cloud function and have replaced all the necessary placeholders with actual values from the Plivo console, you can deploy the function to the Firebase cloud by running firebase deploy --only functions, which makes it available to run via URL.

Send an SMS message

Now go to the Firebase console, navigate to your project, and click on the Functions option on the left navigation bar. Copy the URL assigned to your project into a new browser tab and press enter. Voilà! The phone number you specified will receive the SMS message body configured in the code.

Note: If you’re using a Plivo trial account, you can send messages only to phone numbers that have been verified with Plivo. You can verify a phone number using the Phone Numbers > Sandbox Numbers page of the console.

Next step: incoming messages

Of course sending messages is only half of the equation. You can use Plivo and Firebase cloud functions to receive incoming messages too. For your next project, give that a try — create an application to receive SMS messages using Node.js, following the instructions in our Quickstart Guide.

Haven’t tried Plivo yet? Getting started is easy and only takes 5 minutes! Sign up today.

Telecom fraud and scams are a fast-growing problem — Americans were hit by almost 46 billion robocalls in 2020 alone, costing $10 billion annually. As more businesses turn to IP telephony for their communications needs, and with mobile communication becoming an integral part of our lives, the obligation to address fraudsters and scammers has become increasingly urgent.

Telecom fraud comes in various forms — PBX hacking, toll fraud, robocalling, subscription fraud — and it’s detrimental to businesses and individuals alike. In recent months, the telecom industry has begun deploying new technologies to combat the surge of spam phone calls at scale, and CPaaS providers like Plivo are joining the fight.

Here are some policies and actions the telecom industry is taking to minimize the risk of telecom fraud, along with information about how Plivo plans to support these initiatives for its customers.

STIR/SHAKEN

To help prevent unwanted robocalls, the FCC has begun implementing the STIR/SHAKEN protocols. STIR (Secure Telephone Identity Revisited) and SHAKEN (Signature-based Handling of Asserted Information Using Tokens) encompass a framework of standards that aim to address the accuracy of caller ID information. They help consumers authenticate calls they receive by digitally validating calls passing through carrier networks. The FCC has directed carriers to implement robust call authentication by adopting STIR/SHAKEN standards by June 30, 2021.

Plivo is working on an authentication process to comply with the STIR/SHAKEN protocols. We’re already testing calls, and we expect to complete our implementation well before the June 30 deadline. This means that we’ll be able to start signing outgoing calls on customers’ behalf and ensure their calls get the right attestation so that call recipients can feel confident answering them. In the coming weeks, our customers will be able to submit to us their business information and the phone numbers they own and use as caller IDs so we can verify them.

Google Verified SMS and Verified Calls

Meanwhile, Google is adding a couple of security-focused features to its Android Messages app, including Verified SMS and Verified Calls, two tools to combat fraudulent text messages and phone calls. Verified text messages and incoming calls will display a business’s name, their logo, and a verification symbol that indicates that the communication has been verified by Google. For phone calls, Google takes it a step further by indicating why the business is calling.

Now that mobile communications is so popular and widely used, businesses need to stand out and provide messages and call recipients with greater confidence that their brand is reputable. Verified SMS and Verified Calls are great ways for businesses to enhance customers’ trust in their brands.

Plivo is partnering with Google to register businesses and implement the back-end technology to support the services through both our messaging and voice API products. Our customers will be able to enroll via Plivo. Implementation requires no additional engineering efforts and offers organizations a richly branded profile including the business name, description, and logo. We expect support for Verified SMS and Verified Calls to be available in beta sometime this year.

A2P 10DLC

On yet another front in the battle against spam, A2P 10DLC has shifted the landscape of business text messaging, providing new routes dedicated to high-volume text messaging in the form of 10-digit long codes. The objective for 10DLC is to provide stability, reliability, and security to both businesses and their customers. But before telecom customers can take advantage of these sanctioned routes, carrier networks such as AT&T and T-Mobile require an in-depth qualification process that verifies the legitimacy of the business. (Verizon doesn’t require businesses to submit themselves for qualification.) The qualifying process takes into consideration both business details and the use case of a messaging campaign, and yields a result that dictates the number of messages the business can send within a given day.

Plivo customers can register their brand — the business they’re creating a campaign for — through the Plivo website. Once the brand has been approved and has been assigned a “trust score,” campaign and throughput details for the AT&T network will be passed over to us, which we will then confirm with you via email. At this time, T-Mobile hasn’t disclosed throughput details; once this information is available, we’ll make it known to all customers via email.

A new verification tool to help give customers confidence

Through all of these scenarios you’ll notice the common theme of confirming that a business is who they say they are. To streamline this qualification process across the different protocols and features, we’ll be enabling a verification tool in the Plivo console, which will comprise of two parts:

The first part will be dedicated to the verifying business details. Plivo will confirm the legitimacy of an organization’s submitted details and apply approval at the account level, giving customers access to the products highlighted above.

The second part will be product-specific, with dedicated pages on our left-side menu detailing requirements for each (STIR/SHAKEN, Google Verified SMS, 10DLC), where you can submit the appropriate information.

We expect to roll out this tool sometime in 2021, and we’ll share more details once they’re available.

Brands that value building trust with their customers are likely to outperform those that don’t. Plivo is eager to help our customers implement measures to safeguard against telecom fraud. We believe that all of these initiatives will help businesses strengthen their conversations with users, build trust, prevent scams, and provide a safer space for mobile communications globally.