As I write these lines it is -finally- cold outside. Outside our office, the Christmas market is in full swing and one or two candied almonds have found their way into our office. If you don’t know these, trust me, they are a winter essential in Germany– and very delicious. Anyways, it’s quite clear: It won’t be long until 2022 is over. This year, SMS was still really relevant in A2P communication – and recently celebrated its 30th birthday. Let’s take a look at the past year together.
Happy Holidays and Thank You – Our Year 2022
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Thank you for your loyalty and trust
First things first: We would like to thank you wholeheartedly for your trust. We are always happy to see new projects that you implement with our service and we can’t wait to see what the coming year brings. Thank you also for your numerous suggestions, ideas and criticism, which help us improve.
The whole team here at seven wishes you, your colleagues and employees, your friends and family happy holidays, good health and a great start into the new year.
What was new at seven in 2022?
A lot happened behind the scenes in 2022 – and we can’t reveal everything just yet. Just this much: In a few weeks, a change is coming that we have been preparing for quite a while!
There have also been changes in our team, which we are very happy about.
Since September, Niko is our new Inside Sales Manager and thus takes on the important task of advising and supporting you in making your ideas come true wherever he can. If you have any questions about our products, Niko will be happy to advise you in a personal meeting.
We are also pleased to announce that David has been supporting us since November. As our IT system administrator, he takes care of “making sure everything is up and running”… and that it stays that way 🙂 He is our technical advisor and also helps us to implement our future plans.
We are happy that they are here, that our team continues to grow and that we have the opportunity to develop further. We know that the future holds exciting changes for us and we hope you will find them very useful.
Want to learn how our products can help your business?
Book a meeting with us!
New features and other changes
As I said, many changes took place behind the scenes for us this year. However, some other features have been implemented for you this year, too.
For example, operators of third-party applications now have the option to have the application authenticated via OAuth 2.0. Initiating our service via OAuth is not only more secure than using it via API Keys, but also easier for your end users. They no longer need to create API Keys and insert them into your application, but only authorize the usage via OAuth. You can find details in our OAuth documentation.
By the way, you can also use IFTTT to integrate our service into your project. Easy integration of our products is a priority for us – we want companies of all sizes and experience levels to be able to use our products. Automation platforms and other integration options help achieve this. That’s why we’re continually expanding these options.
In addition, we can now offer virtual numbers for certain country codes that can receive SMS from alphanumeric senders. This means you can also receive 2FA codes on these numbers, for example. If you need such a number, please contact us directly. We will then provide you with the respective number.
Other minor changes can be found – as always – in our changelog.
The industry in 2022
The sharp increase in SMS sent in 2021 has not been repeated to the same extent, but the usual increase in SMS sending has still occurred. As a reminder: we had about 150% more SMS sent in 2021 than in 2020. Incidentally, it has since become clear that the sharp increase has not only affected the A2P industry. The total number of SMS sent in Germany was also up on the previous year for the first time since 2012.
But back to the year 2022. It was to be expected that the numbers would not continue to rise just as strongly. Nevertheless, we saw an increase of more than 50% compared to the previous year, which is still very pleasing precisely because of the strong increase in 2021. Quite clearly, even in their 30th year, SMS are still not ready to disappear from the scene. On the contrary.
We did some calculations on which factors contributed to the fact that text messaging was so much higher in 2021. You can find out more in our blog post.
What do we expect for 2023?
Predictions for the coming year are not so easy to make – the situation around COVID-19 may stabilize, but now it is other factors that strongly influence the behavior of companies and their messaging, as you surely know. However, usually the need for communication tends to increase in times of crisis, and SMS is always popular here as a reliable and easy-to-use medium. We therefore expect normal to slightly increased growth as far as the sending of SMS is concerned.
But other areas will also remain exciting for us in 2023, and we look forward to discovering new opportunities with you.
All the best for the new year
The challenges from 2022 are now almost behind us and we look to the future. We hope that 2023 will be a positive year for you and your company and that you will continue to decide to place your trust in us.
Do you have any questions, suggestions, ideas, requests, criticism or other feedback? Do not hesitate to send us a message!
We look forward to a new, successful year with you.
Happy holidays
