SMS for Forex Brokers

SMS Messaging Services for FX Brokers:

Have you ever received an SMS from a company or website you registered with? Do you ever wonder what would change if your brokerage could send SMS to all your clients?

We can answer these questions because of our unique place in the market. We speak to a lot of brokers and we know their struggle. So we’re going to dive into the SMS sending services and the role they can play in your brokerage.

In this post we will explain the technology behind multiple messaging services.

• Using Phone Verification to boost registrations
• SMS as a security feature
• Using Messaging to boost Traders confidence
• And finally, as a Marketing Tactic

So first of all, just a brief description of the technology: SMS Sending services are basically a service that lets any application send SMS messages.

These services expect a full correct phone number with country code and the body of the message. Add to it a few limits such as maximum batch size, daily or monthly limits, and maybe the message length and that’s it – then it just sends it.

The major advantage of this type of messaging is that there there are no barriers for SMS because there are no SMS spam filters.

Also keep in mind that in addition to SMS there are also a few other types of messages you can consider: WhatsApp for Business has an API that can be easily integrated. You can also send Browser Alerts, or PUSH messages to Mobile Apps. 

Now, how can you use SMS Services to improve your Forex Brokerage? Let’s take a look at a few ways your Brokerage can use SMS Sending services:

1. It can boost signups and minimize abandoned registration forms.

You may have noticed that many new apps these days during the signup process ask the user to verify the phone number FIRST. They send and SMS to the number provided, and the user is expected to type in the random code from that SMS into the application before the user even gets to see the Registration form.

We posted about Registration Form types last month.

This is a very nice way to ensure the user finishes the registration. And if they don’t – you know the phone number to call or text to make sure they do.

Free bonus here: you just confirmed their phone number for KYC.

Just like that we improved our conversion rate. Of course you should consider the technical side.

It will be on your Technology Provider side to make sure that the phone number provided is in a correct format, and make sure the message queued for delivery as top priority.

If the message is not delivered right away your registrations stop altogether.

Your Development partner will also need to provide a way for users to change the phone number after the registration, but do so in a very secure and user friendly way to prevent any phishing attempts.

2: SMS as a security feature.

Since you verified the ownership of the phone number upon registration, you can now notify your traders via SMS when certain activity occurs.

We usually recommend limiting those messages to the most critical ones: Withdrawal confirmations and perhaps new login attempts after more than a month of inactivity.

You can also do a Two-Factor Authentication (2FA), BUT there are better ways to do it now without any messages.

3. Messaging to boost Traders confidence.

Every broker wants to seem transparent and boost customer loyalty in any achievable way.

Here are some of the things that you can notify your clients about:

• News about upcoming events that affect markets
• New Symbols becoming available for trading
• Maintenance and update periods
• Important warnings regarding margins on open positions
• Reminders to close the positions by certain days or hours

These can be automated and your traders will love that – you could use SMS or even one of the other available messaging services. It could be a WhatsApp message, browser alert, or just an email.

4. As a Marketing Tactic.

In our opinion, using SMS for mass marketing is not a good idea. There are many reasons for this. The main one is that your SMS API Gateway will not like you sending marketing messages.

The reason for that is that the SMS API Service that you use is directly integrated with cellphone carriers.

And since there are no spam filters, the majority of cellphone carriers simply limit or ban marketing materials altogether.If you abuse this, your account with API Service will most likely be closed on very short notice.

To conclude:

There are quite a few Web-to-SMS API Services available out there, but do check their pricing and deliverability. Make sure the region you will be sending them to is covered.

It helps that there are finally some leaders in this industry such as Twilio.

They allow you to send multiple types of messaging in in a unified API. That’s very effective and should make developers and project managers quite happy.

We caution against spamming and unsolicited mass marketing messages. If you do that, we are sure that you will see a spike in your conversions and levels of loyalty and trust.