Missed Call Subscription

Missed Call Subscription is a cost-free method for users to subscribe or enroll in your program. When a person does a Missed Call (a.k.a. Flash or Beep) to a phone number, it triggers a voice call back or an SMS to her.

Advertise to your audience (e.g. flyers, radio, billboards) that they can make a free missed call to sign up for your SMS or IVR campaign, retrieve information, or take a survey.

How to set-up a Missed Call Subscription

To activate this feature, a Virtual Phone Number or the Android Relay App is required to receive Missed Calls—to give people a local phone number to dial in.

In order to launch engagements with Missed Call Opt-in and other two-way, interactive campaigns like Polls, Auto Replies, and to allow end-users to subscribe (via Missed Call or SMS Opt-in), a local phone number must be linked. Once a local phone number is linked to an existing engagement, end users can dial the phone number and the system will intentionally not answer the call – it will automatically hang up after two to three ringtones. Within a minute, it will trigger the system to send the corresponding SMS or Voice engagement.

After adding the content of your message on Step 1 of Create an Engagement, follow these steps:

1. Go to the tab “Allow anyone to opt-in via a Missed Call or SMS in Step 2.
2. Click the checkbox for Missed Call Opt-in.
3. Assign a Virtual Phone Number or link your Android phone after clicking the Add Phone Numbers button.
4. Optional: Create an SMS automatic confirmation message OR leave blank if you don’t want to add any.
5. Click Continue button to proceed to Step 3.
6. On Step 3 make sure to set the Start Time to “Immediately and the End Time to “never (only if I stop this engagement)“. Click Launch to make the engagement live.


Virtual Phone Number vs Android Relay App for Receiving Missed Calls

Virtual phone numbers can receive an unlimited number of simultaneous Missed Calls, while an Android Phone (with our Android Relay App installed) can receive only one call at a time.

However, the Android App will disconnect the call immediately, so the likelihood of multiple people making a missed call at exactly the same time is fairly low.  If they get a busy signal, they can always call back.

Note: In some countries, prepaid users must have a minimum amount of airtime or phone credits to initiate a Missed Call. The airtime needed varies per country and may also vary per mobile network. Although users need airtime credits to initiate a Missed Call, no airtime will be actually deducted from their balance because our system will not answer the call. To this extent, using Missed Calls is an easy way to eliminate the cost barrier for low-income participants to self-subscribe to your campaign.



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