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by tripue 1045 days ago
We use a combinaison of route that are are evaluated in real-time for their cost to conversion ratio. Our customers have the option to choose only « direct routes » if needed but those strategies are use at scale by players like Facebook, TikTok or Google we’re just making sure our customer have all the options, visibility and control on their conversion rate/price tradeoff. Another strategy that allows to lower cost significantly is the use of alternative channel when available and competitive : Google RBM, WhatsApp, Viber, line.. Last but not least we don’t do any margin on the sms price so we bill back exactly what we pay for and negotiate with aggregated volumes.
1 comments
fasteo 1045 days ago
>>> evaluated in real-time for their cost to conversion ratio

We tried that in the past, but our business (mostly OTP for banks) do not allow any margin of error at all. The thing is that we would get positive delivery reports which were fake.

We also tried some 3rd party testing tools (Testelium[1], TestMySMS[2], etc) but again, our hacky upstream providers were ahead of us and they would put those test number in white-list so that everything would look just fine when testing.

At the end, we settled for direct or 1-hop connection. Margins are tight, but this is the only way to offer a high quality service.

Of course, YMMV

[1] https://testelium.com/

[2] https://www.testmysms.com/

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toast0 1045 days ago
> We tried that in the past, but our business (mostly OTP for banks) do not allow any margin of error at all. The thing is that we would get positive delivery reports which were fake.

SMS delivery reports have a limited connection to reality (but IMHO, requesting them seems to improve delivery rates), but you can (and should) measure conversion and route based on that.

If you have no margin for error, you might prefer directs, but when the direct route stops working, you need an alternative.

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tripue 1045 days ago
Yes, it's hard to rely on delivery report, we don't rely on this to evaluate the conversion on a given route.

Thanks for sharing the testing tools super helpful !

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