With the ever increasing number of brands adding MMS capabilities to their RFP’s I thought I would chime in and provide some information that may help in your MMS vendor selection process and/or your response to an RFP if you are a vendor.
First, any vendor who says you should not care about MMS because it does not work on all phones is simply telling you that because they either are doing it wrong or do not have the proper expertise or trans-coding capabilities. MMS works on every phone in market today. There are a small number of phones with MMS video playback problems or video file size limitations but those problems are handled with proper device detection technologies.
Second, any vendor who says that your SMS platform vendor needs to be the same as your MMS platform vendor is misinformed. While your SMS and MMS need to be run on the same short code the technologies use completely separate binds. Its like saying your SMS vendor and your Email vendor needs to be the same.
Third there are significantly more ways to differentiate MMS capabilities. Be sure to evaluate them all
1) Trans-coding capabilities
2) File sizes and dimensions
3) Throughput Averages
4) Latency Averages
5) Device Discovery capabilities
6) API flexibility
7) MMS Templates
8) Reporting & Scheduling
9) Campaign size & performance.
10) Integration with other Vendors
11) PROOF! Ask them to send one to your entire teams phones.