Podium offers Australian businesses marketing solutions, from SMS marketing, review management, and webchat to capturing feedback. View the 2024 Podium review that primarily focuses on their SMS provider offering.
By Alain Grossbard / Updated: Tuesday, February 27th, 2024
Podium has expanded its operations to Australia. They offer a comprehensive set of services including SMS marketing, review management, web chat, and more. Their platform is designed to help local businesses in Australia enhance their customer interactions and marketing efforts.
With a focus on product innovation and deep partnerships in key verticals, Podium aims to provide a holistic platform for businesses to manage their front-office operations. Podium is a cloud-based software enterprise related to text messaging (SMS) over the Internet as a paid service.
As of 2024, the pricing for Podium’s SMS marketing software for Australian businesses varies based on the number of contacts and features included. Initially, Podium’s subscription starts at approximately AUD $189 per month, which includes up to 1,000 SMS contacts. Other subscriptions are available at higher price points, such as AUD $499 and AUD $649 per month, offering unlimited contacts and additional features.
SMS Provider Podium pricing is based on an annual subscription option rather than on a volume of SMS per month basis. It varies between A$2000 to A$10000. Their pricing is based on the number of contacts. There is no further detail provided on their website. For additional information on their costings, you will need to contact Podium.
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The overall rating is based on review by our experts
Podium’s SMS services in Australia are notable for their high open rates, attributed to their effective SMS marketing campaigns. Their platform is designed to be user-friendly, providing an omni-channel solution for managing interactions across multiple locations.
One of Podium’s claims is that their SMS offers a 98% open rate with SMS marketing campaigns ensuring that customers can receive and reply to, with measurable results. This is attributed to their software built to manage every interaction, whether it is to ten locations or hundreds across Australia to meet business needs.
Not only is their platform an omni-channel and multi-source solution for every interaction, but it also provides enterprises and organisations with a high-level user-friendly view of operations within each location across their business.
Podium uses a range of social media platforms and basic tools for promoting the business. The business can learn about the nine basics of promoting a local business on social media and discover the top social media platforms, basic tools and templates for promoting your business.
Podium is designed to meet the unique needs of a business regardless of the nature of the industry or the number of locations. Podium powers over 100,000 businesses worldwide.
Podium prides itself on its reliability, offering a Service Level Agreement with a 99% uptime, which is comparable to other reputable Australian SMS providers. They offer a Service Level Agreement (SLA) with a commitment between them as a service provider and a client with a real-time 99% uptime, which sits well with other reputable Australian SMS providers who state that 97% of SMS are read within the first 15 minutes of delivery.
Podium agrees to maintain physical, technical, and organisational measures designed, at its discretion, to secure its systems from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure.
There appears to be no obvious detail provided on their compliance regarding advocating an anti-spam policy for all its communication. This means that there is no indication that Podium does not condone unsolicited messages, notifications, alerts or any message that may be received from someone who should not have addresses or mobile numbers.
Podium prides itself in not just meeting the letter of the law but exceeding and actively responding to the sentiment of the market. They aim to make all aspects of their role as an SMS and MMS provider as transparent as possible to resolve issues before they occur.
Their customer service includes a dedicated support representative for businesses, and their platform integrates with over 200 apps, offering a range of tools for businesses to manage leads and drive repeat business. Podium’s services are used by over 100,000 businesses worldwide, indicating a strong global presence and a reputation for effectiveness.
Between their world-class customer support of team members and the Help support team in Utah (phone call on 1-833-276-3486) with online ease-of-use website and resources, supported by its functionality, you should be able to track down the answers to most of the questions you might run into while using Podium.
Apart from their call centre, their customer service is limited to their website only with an insert by Podium for the business to ask questions and Podium webchat. There is a video available that covers the services of Podium but you must apply with all your details to be entitled to screen the video.
They have an office at Level 22, 376-390 Collins Street, Melbourne, Australia but no phone number is available.
When signing up for Podium, the business will have a dedicated support representative whose job is solely focused on delivering top-tier, local service and support.
There is a range of review sources, and review sites for review generation including online reviews, customer reviews and customer support reviews with the ability with review invitations to contribute available on their website. No Google or Trustpilot review star rating is noted.
Podium powers every step of the customer journey to enhance potential customers, new customers and business owners. Easily integrating with the systems that businesses already use, it powers over 100,000 businesses.
One of its great assets is that it has customization to utilize its unique collect payment technology in its product suite. This move develops a new income stream for the company’s quickly growing annual recurring revenue. This means you can send a simple link to close deals before the customer loses interest or re-engage customers who have already walked out of the store. By requesting payment in an existing Podium text conversation, the business will see a much higher response rate than the traditional methods. So faster payment could help smaller businesses better manage their cash flow.
Podium is very much focused on the promoter of small business and customer interactions. The majority of small businesses operate from a physical location, from dentist surgeries, automotive workshops, healthcare and home services companies to larger retailers, all have very specific needs to collect payment that haven’t been met by traditional card present or POS systems. As a result, many of them rely on mailing paper invoices or someone giving their card information over the phone. Putting Podium platform technology will cut back on the wasted time and resources associated with gathering payment.
Published by Alain Grossbard
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