Bulk Sms Voting for Digital Communication – Connecting people in real-time

In digital marketing solutions in the country is of the opinion that digital marketing tools can play a genuine role in extending the government’s service delivery capabilities. Abhishek Srivastava, Vice President – Sales, netCore, began by highlighting the growing number of people with access to the Internet and the ever expanding mobile subscriber base in the country. He said that, slowly but surely, e-mail marketing is starting to replace direct marketing strategies of the old days and although the digital marketing budgets in India are only about 10% of the overall marketing budget as of now, traditional methods are fast losing their charm for enterprises.

“In recent times, the concept of e-mail marketing has matured to a great degree. Today, we are seeing movement towards e-mail marketing based on the profile and needs of the consumer. Similarly, on the mobility front, companies have realized that simply sending out bulk SMS doesn’t quite work. There has been an effort to make it more targeted. Plus the SMS channels are being used for two-way communication with the help of tools that facilitate rapid responses and greater interaction between the service provider and consumers,” said Srivastava.

Srivastava went on to cite some potential use cases for digital communication in the government space and said that entities like the Election Commission of India can use mobile communication for a variety of tasks including voter registration, spreading awareness of voting rights, information about candidates etc. Similarly, he said that the police could use the digital channel for sending information to citizens about traffic updates and diversions in case of political rallies or traffic bottlenecks, terror alerts, missing persons, domestic violence, safety alert messages etc.

Citing some more use cases, he said that the ministry of health & family welfare could use the mobile channel for educating and creating awareness about a variety of diseases, the hazards of tobacco, polio drives, alert messages for important dates like free health camps for check up and even announcements of health schemes etc.

“Ministry of agriculture can provide farmers with daily updates on commodity prices in their regional languages, weather updates during the harvest time and even run digital campaigns for any farmer-related schemes,” said Srivastava.

He ended his presentation by saying that although the majority of people in India have not been able to utilize e-mail and SMS-based marketing successfully enough, both the channels are highly useful and can deliver results when used correctly. It is much more than product and technology. It is actually about building an ecosystem where marketers identify a class of curious buyers, qualify them as prospects and engage with prospects with an appropriate pitch to convert prospects to customers.”