Most businesses are still overly dependent on email even though, at best, they only see a 20 percent open rate – which in all likelihood means that their email wasn’t read. With text messaging, 95 percent of all text messages are read within three minutes of their delivery. That’s huge!

Surprisingly, there is still a significant disconnect between how people communicate with each other as individuals and how companies connect with customers. The difference is text messaging. Think about it, 95 percent of U.S. adults carry text-enabled mobile phones, and 98 percent of smartphone owners use text messages on a regular basis.

However, only 14 percent of companies communicate regularly with customers over text, even though a recent survey stated that 89 percent of consumers wanted to communicate with businesses via text. In fact, network traffic analysis shows that 150 million texts are sent to landline numbers every day, even though many of those lines are not text-enabled.

Which is why Flowroute announced the addition of multimedia messaging services (MMS) to its messaging platform to enable businesses to send and receive pictures, audio, and video using text-enabled toll-free and local phone numbers on the Flowroute network.

Flowroute’s expanded messaging capabilities give enterprises and developers the ability to:

Unify communications with one provider – Eliminates the need for businesses to change their contact information and unifies calling and messaging on existing long-code and toll-free phone numbers.

Offer comprehensive messaging capabilities – Send and receive SMS and MMS on any text-enabled phone number through any mobile carrier or text-enabled landline number in the United States and Canada.

Create more visual customer experiences – Use pictures, audio, and video attachments and build a richer and more interactive customer experience

Complete transparency of messages – Provides access to usage data, as well as cost and message details for any date range with real-time message detail records.

Frost & Sullivan’s Michael Brandenburg stated, “Consumer demand for both SMS and MMS interactions from businesses will continue to accelerate, but the lack of options on deployed communications platforms and services is limiting business adoption. Flowroute represents a way for businesses to take advantage of a currently underutilized channel, by message-enabling existing phone numbers to address the communication needs of their customers.”

It’s clear that most customers would prefer to receive a text message from a business rather than a voice call or email. When so many influential users agree across a number of different industries, it is time for companies to take notice. Today, text communications from businesses are a competitive differentiator, and it’s quickly becoming the standard way to communicate. Nearly everybody texts. It’s part of the fabric of our daily connected life, just like having an email address. Companies that choose not to support text messages are closing a door to customers who are actively reaching out to them.

As a result, most companies are missing connections, inconveniencing customers, and ignoring opportunities to build their brands. Until recently, business phone numbers, local and toll-free, could not send or receive text messages. That is no longer the case. For example, Flowroute provides businesses with the ability to unify calling and messaging on one phone number to deliver compelling customer interactions. This will ultimately help drive engagement, reduce costs, and increase customer loyalty.

To get started with Flowroute SMS & MMS, check out the Developer Resource Center.