SMS Broadcast Australia: What You Need to Know [2024]

85 million text messages.

That’s how many SMS Australians send per day according to one report.

And 85 million text messages per day translates to 31.025 billion text messages per year.

That’s a lot of texts!

With so much text messaging going on, it’s important for Australian businesses and organisations to jump on the bandwagon and make sure they’re taking full advantage of texting to reach the people they want to reach with SMS broadcasts.

In this guide, we’ll go over some of the in’s and out’s of sending an SMS broadcast in Australia, so that you can have a better understanding of how to reach your Australian audience.

What Is an SMS Broadcast in Australia?

SMS broadcasting, also known as SMS blasting, bulk SMS messaging, mass texting, or various other related names is a communication and marketing channel that allows Australian businesses to reach a large audience of mobile phone users with text messages.

Unlike 1-on-1 SMS, which would only involve sending one message to one recipient at a time, SMS broadcasting enables you to send the same message to multiple recipients simultaneously. This makes it an ideal solution for sending announcements, promotions, reminders, and other time-sensitive information.

And unlike group texting, in which all of your recipients can see the phone numbers of all the other recipients, with an SMS broadcast, everyone receives the message individually. So any replies that your recipients send in are only seen by you and are not sent to all of the other recipients.

Why You Should Send SMS Broadcasts in Australia

In Australia, businesses of all sizes can use SMS broadcasting to achieve various goals, including:

• Increasing customer engagement: SMS messages have a general open rate as high as 98% by some accounts—which means your messages are highly likely to be actually seen and read by your intended audience. More people seeing your messages means you can encourage more customer engagement.
• Driving targeted marketing campaigns: SMS broadcasting allows you to segment your customer list based on demographics, interests, purchase history, and other relevant factors. This kind of segmenting enables you to send personalized messages that resonate with specific segments of your audience. And the more relevant you can be, the more effective your marketing efforts will be.
• Promoting new products or services: SMS broadcasting is a great way to introduce new products or services to your existing customer base. You can send targeted messages highlighting key features, benefits, and special offers, driving interest and generating sales.
• Sending timely reminders and alerts: SMS messages are perfect for sending reminders about appointments, events, deadlines, and other important information. Real-time communication via SMS helps you stay connected with your audience to ensure that they don't forget important information.
• Collecting customer feedback: SMS broadcasting can also be used to gather valuable feedback from your customers. You can send surveys, request reviews, or simply ask for their thoughts on a recent purchase or experience. As with any feedback, this feedback can help you improve your products, services, and overall customer experience.

With all of those benefits in mind, SMS broadcasting has become an essential tool for Australian businesses looking to connect with their customers effectively and drive business growth.

How to Send an SMS Broadcast in Australia

To send an SMS broadcast in Australia, there are a few steps you’ll need to follow:

Choose an SMS Broadcast Provider that Serves Australia

Not every SMS provider offers services in Australia, so you’ll want to make sure to select a service provider such as Mobile Text Alerts that is able to deliver messages to Australian phone numbers.

Set Up Your Account and Sender ID

Once you’ve determined what service provider you’ll use, you can create an account and set up your alphanumeric sender ID (i.e., your company name) or the phone number that will be used to send your messages.

Get Permission from People to Send Them Texts

Australian law requires that you have either direct or inferred permission from a recipient before you send them texts. You have inferred permission from people who have enacted transactions with your company (i.e., your customers).

If you want to cover all of your bases, you can collect direct consent from everyone that you want to text before sending them any messages.

Load In Your Contact List

You can load your contacts into the SMS platform’s online dashboard manually via a spreadsheet import, or you can set it up to load in automatically via API or integrations. Once you have people loaded into your account, you’re ready to send out a message.

Send Your Message

Navigate to the “Send Message” section of your online platform. From there you can select the recipients of your message and type out the content of your message. Note that Australian law requires that opt-out instructions be included on every message, so you’ll need to include that. It can be something along the lines of “Reply STOP to opt out” (and note that when people reply STOP, their phone number will be automatically removed from the system).

Best Practices for Sending SMS Broadcasts in Australia

Here are some particular considerations to take into account for sending an SMS broadcast in Australia.

Follow Legal Requirements

As mentioned above, there are some legal requirements. So you’ll want to be sure to follow the regulations required by Australian law. The two biggest considerations would be to make sure you have either direct or inferred permission from all your recipients, and to include opt-out instructions on every text message you send.

Complement Your Other Marketing Strategies

According to Medium, the three most popular marketing strategies in Australia are content marketing, social media marketing, and email marketing.

You can use SMS marketing as a way to complement and supplement those other marketing strategies so that you can maximize the potential of your marketing campaigns.

Use a Consistent Sender ID

Maintain a consistent sender ID for your SMS broadcasts so that people can easily recognize your brand. The sender ID is the “sender” from which your messages come.

Unlike in the United States, where the sender ID has to be a phone number, in Australia the sender ID can be alphanumeric (meaning, it can contain both letters and numbers). It’s best if you find a sender ID you’re happy with and try to stick with it. This would most likely be your brand name, or an abbreviated form of it.

Take Advantage of Automation

SMS platforms such as Mobile Text Alerts give you automation tools so that you can set up automated campaigns or trigger auto-responses to recipients. You’ll want to take full advantage of these tools so that you’re not spending unnecessary time on manual efforts.

And if you have developer capacity, you can use API to create and customize your own automations and integrations.

Ways You Can Use SMS Broadcasts in Australia

We touched on this above, but there are a number of different ways you can use SMS broadcasts in Australia.

Here are just a few examples.

• Marketing and Sales: You can send SMS to promoting your product or service, such as by sending flash sales and discounts.
• Important Updates: If there’s some kind of update you want your clients or customers to know, SMS can be an easy way to get the word out.
• Company Communication: SMS can be used not only to get in touch with your customers but also your employees in regards to announcements, meeting reminders, or other communication needs.

SMS Broadcast: Australia - Getting Started

To get started with sending SMS broadcasts in Australia, you’ll first need to get set up on an SMS platform.

Get a free trial with Mobile Text Alerts here and then contact support to get 50 free credits added to your account so you can get a feel for how it works.