Holly Depies is also known as The SMS Queen, because that’s what her customers have crowned her. She’s often the largest individual account for aggregators. The SMS Queen brings expertise and carrier options to help Contact Centers, BPOs (Business Process Outsourcing), and digital marketing teams adapt to today’s delivery and compliance challenges.
Her clients cover voice, leadgen, and marketing. She continues to use Zipwhip, while other CSPs (Campaign Service Providers) believe it has closed down. Her preference is 10DLC than short codes or toll free SMS. Often only 5-10 numbers are required. Her experience and relationships enable Holly to get SMS campaigns working for personal finance or loan quotes. Her motto is, ‘let the traffic do the talking,’ in demonstrating the lack of spam.
The reality faced by many brands and CSPs (Campaign Service Provider) is they take the blame, while there are many more malignant sources of spam and robocalling.
Between Johnny and Holly there’s a heated discussion on the impact of Google and Apple as they shoehorn into the messaging business. Holly is strident that the spam whose purpose is to harm must be stopped as a matter of urgency.
The current situation in the A2P SMS business is rather chaotic, and her edge comes from understanding both sides, carriers and aggregators. Carriers are now making money from businesses with A2P SMS, but lack the understanding of what those customers need.
Given the dispersed fragmented nature of A2P SMS in the US, it’s like a stack of 100 sheets of fine paper, all trying to take a toll. Carriers must KYC (Know Your Customer) beyond the telephone number and monthly charge, but as an A2P brand with multi-channel requirements.
Johnny’s view is Apple and Google can simply extend their existing enterprise relationships to deliver on the multi-channel communications needs. Holly sees the existing ecosystem is already multi-channel and must rationalize the current complex mess.
I’m on the fence about this. Carriers should be able to deliver a multi-channel A2P solution, with an identity based solution, not the current TCR (The Campaign Registry) farce, and flush out all the ‘friends of’ deals. As a simple example, is Zipwhip closed down or not? Holly and several other people think it continues to operate. The frustration and inconvenience businesses have been put through this year, for something as mature as A2P SMS shows the industry is not in a healthy state.
We’ll be continuing this discussion at TADSummit, 22-23 Oct, NYC (location coming soon).
What a pity the Queen didn’t get the opportunity to talk.
I wanted to turn it off because she was being interrupted .
But I wanted to hear her.
Johnny overpoweringly negative