Receive 5 free credits.
Easy to try, simple to use.

Wendy Windblows wins the BulkSMS UK Messaging Awards

The 2010 BulkSMS Messaging Awards were won by Wendy Windblows, coming out ahead of many of other worthy entries from commercial and non-commercial organisations that use text messaging for innovative services or their day-to-day communications.

The BulkSMS Messaging Awards were run in October of this year as part of BulkSMS.com’s tenth year anniversary celebrations. Clients were invited to submit entries detailing their use of text messaging and the top three finalists were awarded with BulkSMS credits as prizes.

The winners were contacted on 2nd December after a judging panel had reviewed all shortlisted submissions. The panel of judges consisted of Mike Grenville of 160 Characters, Ken Banks, founder of kiwanja.net, and Dr Pieter Streicher, a founder and managing director of BulkSMS.com

The first prize winner, Wendy Windblows, uses text messaging to update subscribers as to the weather conditions at their favourite paragliding or hangliding site. A subscriber can set wind or weather condition preferences and Wendy Windblows sends email or text alerts when weather conditions are favourable to that subscriber. Rod Buck of Wendy Windblows says that “BulkSMS is at the heart of this sort of service, and we look forward to making much further use of them in the future”.

The other finalists were Checkatrade in second place, and AdInfa, in third place.

The second prize was awarded to Checkatrade, which has text message-enabled aspects of its trade member feedback for registered traders. Kevin Byrne, MD of Checkatrade says, “We believe we do a fantastic job protecting the consumer from rogue trades and keeping work firmly in the hands of the honest and reliable trades. Coming second is a very welcome recognition that our procedures in keeping our trades and services informed of their customer feedback has been recognized as one of the most innovative uses of SMS messaging”.

The third prize went to AdInfa, for developing InSite which is used by corporates for monitoring and managing core data centre infrastructure and which sends automated messages to individuals via text messaging. “Using text messaging to deliver automated alerts has meant our customers have been able to save many £000s in preventing unscheduled system downtime and in avoiding breaches of customer SLAs. We have found BulkSMS to be a very reliable service provider partner which is vital part of delivering a great customer experience with InSite,” says Philip Peterson of Adinfa.

Several other entries came close to a final placing and received special mention from the judging panel. Eastney Cruising Association and Slim and Save both demonstrated innovative commercial applications of text messaging services and communications. “The entries we received for the UK BulkSMS Messaging Awards are testimony to the uptake of text messaging within the United Kingdom and shows that text messaging is here to stay. We are very encouraged to see how many of our clients who entered the awards showed how they have been able to build upon our messaging platform to SMS-enable their organisations’ services or communications,” says Dr Streicher.