What Is MMS?

The text message that carries a picture, what it costs a dealership to send one badly, and why a photo of the actual car outsells a paragraph.

Multimedia Messaging Service. It is the extension that let text messaging carry something other than characters: a photo, a short video, an audio clip, a contact card, or a body of text too long for the 160 character limit a plain SMS lives under. The message travels over the carrier's data path rather than the plain text channel, but it arrives in the same thread on the same phone, which is why most people have never thought about the distinction at all.

Two behaviours surprise businesses that start sending it. The first is compression: carriers shrink media aggressively to keep message sizes small, so a beautiful photograph can arrive soft. The second is group messaging, where a text addressed to several people is usually upgraded to MMS automatically, because plain SMS has no concept of a group thread. The initials turn up in other fields entirely, on ships and in medicine, but in a phone conversation MMS means this and nothing else. Neighbouring terms are defined in the automotive sales glossary.

Because used cars sell on photographs. Say a shopper submits a request on a Thursday evening asking whether the silver crew cab is still available, illustrative example only. A reply that says yes it is, come see it, is a sentence. A reply that says yes, here it is, with three pictures of that exact truck, the bed liner, the odometer and the price, is a walkaround the customer can hold. One of those gets an appointment and the other gets read and put away.

The same format carries the rest of a store's daily picture traffic: a photo of the trade the customer is asking about, a window sticker so nobody argues about equipment, a picture of the paperwork a customer needs to bring, a short clip of a start up on a classic. Every one of those is a question answered in a form the customer can forward to whoever is helping them decide, which is usually the real audience for the photo.

Leave your number and a lead specialist calls you back to answer your questions about pricing, coverage, and setup. Mon - Sat, 9:00 AM - 6:00 PM Pacific.

Prefer to talk right now? Call or text 844-376-2274.

Three ways, and all three are habits rather than technology. The first is volume: fifteen photos in a row is not a message, it is a flood, and it arrives as fifteen notifications on a phone the customer is holding at work. Two or three of the right pictures with a line of text beat a gallery every time. The second is sending a video too large to travel, which fails quietly and leaves the rep believing the customer ignored them.

The third is the expensive one: sending from a personal cell phone. The photo goes out, the customer replies to the rep's own number, and none of it exists anywhere the store can see. When that salesperson leaves, the conversation leaves with them, along with the record of what was promised about the vehicle. A picture message is part of the deal file, and it belongs where the deal file is.

Picture messages are ordinary traffic in the two way texting inbox of LeadLocate CRM. A rep attaches one or several files to a message, the images render inline in the thread on both the desktop and the phone app, and every bubble carries its own delivery status, sent, delivered or failed, so a failed picture is visible rather than assumed. Inbound works the same way: a photo a customer sends back, a picture of a trade or a document, opens in the thread and stays on the lead record.

The fastest way to send the right pictures is the vehicle button in the composer. It attaches a unit from the store's inventory with its photos and price already assembled, described on send vehicles by text and walked through in how to send a vehicle in a text. Everything sent or received, text, picture, call, email and voicemail, lands in one communications log on the customer's record, so the manager who asks what did we actually promise this customer gets an answer from a screen instead of a memory.

SMS is the plain text message: 160 characters to a segment, no media, delivered to every phone ever made. MMS is the older attachment format that carries a picture, a clip or a long body and compresses media to get it there. RCS is the modern standard that does all of it properly inside the phone's own messaging app, with higher quality images, read receipts and typing indicators where the handset and carrier support it.

A store does not need to manage the difference. The right arrangement is one inbox where a rep writes a message and attaches what the customer should see, and a platform that sends each message in the best format the receiving phone can handle. What a sales floor should care about is whether the photo arrived, whether the customer replied, and whether both are on the record afterwards.

What is the difference between MMS and SMS?

SMS carries plain text only, in segments of about 160 characters. MMS carries pictures, video, audio, contact cards and longer bodies of text. Both arrive in the same conversation thread on the customer phone, so the customer rarely notices which one was used.

Why do pictures sent by MMS look soft?

Carriers compress media hard to keep message sizes small, so a high resolution photo can arrive looking softer than the original. Sending two or three well chosen images rather than a gallery, and using RCS where the phone supports it, is how a store keeps a vehicle looking like itself.

Can customers send pictures back to the dealership?

Yes. Inbound picture messages open inline in the same thread and stay on the lead record, which is how photos of a trade, a registration or a driver license reach the deal without anyone emailing them around.

Is MMS an extra charge on a LeadLocate plan?

Texting, picture messages and the inbox they live in are part of the platform. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page.

See a unit with photos and price go out of the inbox, come back as a reply, and sit on the lead record where the whole store can read it.

Prefer to talk right now? Call or text 844-376-2274.