ZipDial was covered in a story in CIO magazine on how we are helping Telemarketers and other businesses in general  to be less dependent on only SMS as a two way medium to communicate. You can read the online version here.

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) recently announced that from 27th September 2011, businesses will not be able to send more than 100 mobile marketing SMSes per day.

While the law was enacted with the noble intention of protecting consumers from spams, and making telemarketing more consumer-friendly, it spells doom for companies who rely on SMS as an important medium for brand engagement and promotion.

But worry not, when one door closes, technology opens up another. Thanks to innovative services offered by Bangalore-based ZipDial, marketers can now engage with customers through missed calls.

ZipDial’s solution is based on dialing numbers – so there is zero dependency on SMS.   For the user the experience is as simple as giving a missed call. However the real innovation lies in the number of actions that a miss call can trigger.

Zip dialing is a request based transactional experience. When the users zip dials a number the business responds with the service requested. The service could be either a one-time update like cricket score, or bank information, or could a request to subscribe for a daily service like “the daily deal from Snapdeal.” It can extend to a whole host of services from playing games to giving customer service feedback.

ZipDial offers solutions for large and small business customers ranging from marquee companies such as LG, Cadbury, Kingfisher, Proctor & Gamble to small local businesses such as real estate agents, beauty salons and live event managers.

ZipDial came into the media’s limelight following the Times of India campaign for Anna Hazare’s “fight against corruption.” According to Valerie Rozycki Wagoner,Founder & CEO, ZipDial, while the whole of social media channels including Facebook and Twitter garnered one lakhs of response, the ten-day ZipDial service got 76 Lakhs responses across 46 lakh people.

Zip dialing shifts the focus from traditional push-based marketing to a more effective pull based strategy. “We never push SMSes or services to customers other than those they’ve Zip dialed for. It is an opt-in based service, therefore giving more flexibility to marketers while staying within the regulatory guidelines,” explains Wagoner.

Wagoner believes Zip dialing can offer a better response rate for businesses trying to engage customers or promote their products. “A special SMS costs Rs.3 for the consumer. Besides, surveys indicate that 75 percent of the population is uncomfortable with sending SMSes.”

Zip dial works as a light weight CRM for smaller and medium enterprises. For large enterprises however it integrates with their existing CRM solutions. “When a customer zip dials, he automatically gets logged to the CRM system. You can then use the lead for loyalty programs, or just brand engagement.”