The insurance industry is finding new ways to connect with clients. Text messaging is one way to improve an insurance company’s communication strategy. It can provide better client engagement by increasing trust in the company’s communications and increasing convenience for policyholders. SMS/MMS provides remarkable open rates, with as many as 98% of recipients opening text messages. MMS provides the advantage of sending and receiving text and media. For insurance companies, this can mean more visual and interesting advertisements and more convenient ways for customers to send photos, videos, and documents to support their claims.
As a developer for an insurance company, you may be asked to integrate SMS/MMS into an insurance company’s application or client relationship management software. An MMS API can simplify your work with a piece of software that is ready for use after a few lines of code. This blog will explore some of the primary benefits an insurance company can gain from an MMS API integration. We will also discuss buying an API and building one from scratch and what an MMS API can help you do for your client or company in the insurance industry.
The Benefits of an MMS API for Insurance Companies
Insurance companies can benefit from integrating MMS into their communications strategy with an API. Some of the most notable advantages of an MMS API include the following:
- Gaining more insight into customer habits and experiences. MMS is ideal for collecting data due to its higher open rates and ability to request text and media information from clients.
- Providing faster and more convenient services through SMS/MMS.
- Increasing trust. Text messaging is often considered more personal and trustworthy by clients and consumers, making it a preferred method of communication.
- Sending surveys and offers to clients to improve services and offer new services and products the customers will likely be interested in purchasing.
Building vs. Buying an MMS API for an Insurance Company
If you are developing a system or software for an insurance company, you can build an API from scratch or buy one from a reputable communication platform. When you build an SMS/MMS API for your company or client, you have complete control over the result. In many cases, this level of control may not be necessary and adds complexity that an MMS API can address. Buying from a reputable communication API platform can save you time and money compared to developing a solution from scratch.
In addition, domestic and international regulations have made navigating SMS/MMS traffic a challenge in recent years. When you partner with a reputable provider, most of the work is done on the platform’s end.
Text messages sent from an application, such as a customer relationship management (CRM) system or mobile insurance app, need to use a registered application-to-person (A2P) route to ensure fast and reliable delivery. If you build the API yourself, you’ll need to rely on a third party that may use aggregators and grey routes, masking your traffic as peer-to-peer (P2P), reducing its delivery rates, and possibly causing your messages to be identified as spam.
How Will an MMS API Make Your Integration Easier?
As a developer for an insurance company, you want to deliver the communication options your client or company desires without committing a significant amount of time and resources to the solution. An MMS API makes integration easy and provides a range of capabilities without requiring a major investment in on-site infrastructure and months of development and testing.
Simplicity
Integrating an MMS API into your client or company’s software is simple when you partner with a reputable communications platform. You can integrate the API in a few lines of code and have the service up in a few minutes. If you want to add microservices like e911, two-factor authentication, or proxy numbers, the ideal partner will offer microservices in a version-controlled repository or Docker containers.
You’ll also need minimal hardware to integrate text messaging into your client or company’s systems. The messaging network, rate centers, and API servers are managed by the platform and accessible in the cloud.
Capabilities
A text messaging API provider offers extensive capabilities for your client or company’s users. The ideal platforms allow you to provision numbers on-demand and access delivery records to confirm delivery from a simple web portal. Other features include sending messages from a proxy number to protect the identity of users and provide consistency, appointment reminders for payments and policy renewals, and surveys to understand clients better. As the developer, you can easily integrate these features into your company or client’s MMS API with microservices.
Maintenance
Telecommunications platforms offer a maintained MMS API and network to ensure user messages arrive with impeccable reliability. You won’t need to dedicate hours to maintaining and testing the software for your client or company. Reputable API providers offer frequent updates for function, compatibility, and security documented on a version control system like GitHub.
Security
An MMS API from a reputable telecommunications platform ensures the software and hardware resources that support your client or company’s text messaging capabilities are secured. APIs are an interface between an organization’s software and the internet and are a primary surface for malicious actors to exploit. Quarter over quarter, security experts saw API exploits grow by nearly 300% from the first to the second quarter of 2022. When you trust company and user data to an API, it is essential to provide robust security.
As an insurance provider, your client or company values confidential user data. A reputable platform relies on the latest hardware and software-based security and hires expert security professionals who may be out of a small or medium-sized business’ price range.
Related: What’s the True Cost of Adding Messaging to Your App?
What Can an MMS API Help You Build for Your Client or Company?
An MMS API benefits your client or company as much as it benefits you as the developer. MMS communication is ideal for leads, allowing insurance companies to send visual advertisements and promotional content to their messaging list subscribers. Messaging provides some of the best response rates due to its more trustworthy and personal reputation. Insurance companies can use SMS/MMS for marketing, claims, and digital proof of insurance in some states.
Offer User-Friendly Support for Mobile Devices
When a policyholder or new customer messages your client or company from their insurance app, they can get a fast response and submit details using text, images, voice, and video. A picture or video can often provide more accurate details than a phone call or text message. MMS is supported by Android, iOS, and most feature phones, making fast support accessible to most customers.
Make Customer Registration Easy
On-demand registration via MMS is essential to gaining new customers in the post-pandemic world. A report in VentureBeat found that 3 out of 5 consumers prefer to communicate with a business using text, and allowing new customers to register using MMS can be the first step to building a positive relationship. Using MMS provides a simple way for users to provide their identification and vehicle information from their smartphones for fast and simple registration. It also allows fewer insurance agents to assist more customers.
Allow Users to Make Claims Using MMS
Integrating MMS into an insurance app allows an insurance agent to quickly collect details during a claim submission. The policyholder can send images or video from an accident and documents like police reports, the involved parties’ insurance cards, and a physician’s findings. MMS can be integrated into an insurance app using an API, making claims seamless. Policyholders can also get updates on their claims sent to their phones.
Remind Users of Payments and Policy Renewal
An MMS API allows an insurance company to integrate text messaging reminders into its CRM. Your company or client can set up text message reminders to remind users when a payment is due or a policy requires renewal. Text reminders help customers make their payments on time and allow insurance companies to encourage customers to renew their service rather than switch to another company.
Related: What is a Messaging API, and What Can it Do?
How Do You Choose a Cloud Communications Platform for Your MMS API?
Selecting the ideal cloud communication platform for your company or client’s MMS API will ensure they get the value they expect from the software. When you find a reputable partner, you can provide several advantages to an insurance company.
Scalability and Elasticity
Using an MMS API for your company or client’s communications provides the scalability and elasticity of the cloud. An organization can quickly provision numbers from a simple web portal. Provisioning MMS numbers from a traditional phone company can be costly, but a cloud-based provider allows a company to scale with minimal fees and infrastructure investment.
The cloud also offers elasticity, allowing your client or company to scale its texting capabilities to meet demand and back down when demand lowers without losing a return on costly infrastructure or fees for disconnecting phone numbers.
Reliability and Security
A cloud-based telecommunications platform offers 10-digit long code (10DLC) and toll-free numbers to ensure MMS traffic between your company or client’s apps is delivered with near-perfect reliability. Reputable communications platforms use physical failover networks to provide seamless service and up to 99.999% reliability. They also have rate centers worldwide and avoid grey routes and aggregators that can reduce delivery rates.
The ideal MMS API partner protects your data and traffic from malicious actors with fraud protection and the ability to restrict certain destinations. Cloud service providers offer world-class security expertise that may not be available in your locale and can be cost-prohibitive for many small and medium-sized businesses.
Payment Options
Communication platforms typically operate on one of two payment structures. Metered payments offer your client or company a pay-per-message solution, while flat-rate payment plans offer a limited number of messages for a monthly or annual flat rate. Metered rates are generally better for insurance companies that need flexibility. Since the organization will only pay for the messages they use in a given period, it can scale up or down without unexpected expenses.
SMS/MMS API for Your Insurance Company or Client From a Reputable Cloud Communications Platform
The right partner ensures your client or company gets reliable SMS/MMS deliverability and has the features needed to provide excellent customer service. Flowroute is a cloud communications platform with a worldwide network of fast and reliable messaging routes. Our APIs will have your text and media messaging services running in minutes. Get started with Flowroute today.
