The Octopush platform is specifically designed to make sending mobile marketing SMS as easy as possible. The SMS platform offers a feature that allows you to intercept responses from your user groups. In this article, we will introduce this highly innovative feature, as well as some practical use cases for intercepting data with the Apple Objective-C API solution.

Objective-C is a set of programs specifically designed by Apple for developing OS X/iOS software (its desktop/mobile operating system). It is a programming layer that enriches the C language to make software design easier on its OS. The documentation required to properly use this language is available on Apple's website. To simplify your application development, Octopush provides you with very comprehensive technical documentation on Apple Objective-C: detailed source code, as well as an introduction to the Apple Objective-C API.

What is auto-reply?

The SMS reply solution is a service that allows you to have a virtual number and intercept responses from your contact groups via callback. To do this, you will need to activate an option on your account; once validated, you will be able to intercept group responses via a URL that will be called for every reply.
Several rules must be followed to ensure this option is validated:

• the page targeted by the URL must not display anything;
• disable error reporting (warnings, etc.);
• for performance reasons, it is best to save the data to a file first, without any processing. Once extracted, you can then organize data processing using a cron job;
• for any errors encountered, save the results to a log file instead.

How do I use this feature?

To intercept responses to your marketing communication campaigns and manage them effectively, you must set the "with_replies" parameter to 1 for each text message. Responses (STOP, subscription confirmations, customer service replies, etc.) will be immediately forwarded to a specific URL.
To avoid losing any data, ensure the page called by the URL-callback is always available. This availability requires a high-end dedicated server (with sufficient RAM and high processing power) as well as proper server configuration. Regularly manage the maintenance of your SMS sending server for your campaign.

When should you use this option?

Auto-reply allows you to automatically respond to a message from a group of contacts to confirm information following your campaign: appointment confirmation, registration confirmation, appointment cancellation confirmation... There are no limits!

Registration confirmation (opt-in)

Your text message recipients can simply choose to subscribe to your channel by replying via text: a short message, such as "SUB" (for example). However, it is common practice to respond politely by sending a subscription confirmation.

Make your customer service more accessible and responsive!

Leverage your marketing platform to enhance your customer service and client engagement: send order confirmations, availability requests, appointment scheduling via SMS, and more.

Appointment reminders

Reduce no-shows at your business by automatically sending an SMS appointment reminder a few hours or days in advance. The Apple Objective-C SMS API offers a highly useful feature for this: scheduled SMS. The concept is simple: program an SMS in advance to be sent at a specific date and time. To use this option, simply provide the “sending_date” parameter, setting it to the timestamp (GMT +1) of your desired delivery time (this is an INT data type representing the number of seconds elapsed since January 1, 1970).

Thank you messages

Customers appreciate gratitude. Send them a message to thank them for signing up on your site, or on a periodic basis (during the holidays, on your company anniversary, etc.). Schedule these messages using the delayed SMS option for your marketing campaigns to simplify management.