Telemarketing costs for companies are expected to increase as of next month through telecom providers raising commercial text Messaging rates by 25-30 per cent despite the introduction of blockchain scam screening technologies.
Additional charges of 2.5 paise / SMS would be levied on third-party aggregators and resellers of messaging services that cost 9-10 paise / SMS to telcos currently.
Director of messaging services at Tata Communications, Anurag Aggarwal stated “This is a fairly steep hike by telcos and may directly impact marketing budgets in almost every sector such as banking, retail, ecommerce and delivery apps that send millions of transactional, promotional and service messages to their customersevery day.”
About 1 billion SMSes are sent out every day in India, of which 60-70% are transactional in nature and the remainder is promotional, Aggarwal also mentioned.
“Due to the added cost, ultimately, brands may either cut down their promotional traffic or — depending on cost viability — explore other feature-rich OTT platforms such as WhatsApp Business Messaging to send personalised marketing content,” he further stated.
The added cost is to meet operators’ expenses utilizing blockchain technologies in order to track the movement of unregistered text messages and advertising across their networks and to insure that consumers don’t breach their desires.
Minor telemarketers has said that the change is a “death knell” for all of them and related businesses in the aftermath of pandemic that are heavily reliant on tele-advertisement.