Strava Beacon: Keeping athletes safe with SMS location updates sent from wearables

Strava is so much more than an activity-tracking social app. It’s relied on by athletes the world over to help keep them safe too. 

Beacon is a Strava feature that lets athletes send a text message containing location updates while they’re exercising to up to three safety contacts. The message includes a link to a live GPS-tracked map so it’s easy for friends or family to track their progress. 

Beacon gives Strava athletes the confidence to take longer rides, runs or walks in remote areas — safe in the knowledge that someone has an eye on them.

For Strava athletes who carry their phone with them on a run or ride, Beacon is easy. Their phone’s native messaging and GPS functions work with the Strava app to send out messages and locations.

But what about the growing number of people who, instead of carrying a phone, use a wearable device like a watch tracker or bike computer linked to Strava? How do you send a text message from a device not designed to send text messages? And just as importantly, how can you guarantee that one of these messages could be sent reliably to and from anywhere in the world? 

With over 40% of members using fitness devices like watches or ride computers, Strava knew they had a growing segment of athletes they needed to support. Strava needed to work with an omnichannel innovator with a truly global communications network. 

Infobip was the obvious choice.

Strava’s developers worked with our solutions team to integrate our omnichannel communications API into the app. Once athletes had chosen the three contacts they wanted to keep informed about their route, all they had to do was press start on their fitness device. 

Strava had experimented with using different SMS providers for Beacon. But when messages were sent via the wearable device, the message came from a range of different phone numbers. This meant that emergency contacts might receive a message from an unknown number and possibly ignore it.

But thanks to intelligent number pooling built into our omnichannel communications API, each message sent by the user is from the same number every time. Contacts can then save that number into their address book as something like “Sandra’s Strava Beacon”

Strava needed complete global coverage for its Beacon feature. Therefore, by using an omnichannel approach resulted in delivering safe adventures across more than 195 countries worldwide.

Whether an athlete was jogging in New York’s Central Park, cycling the first marathon route in Greece, or hiking by the Great Wall of China, our worldwide SMS coverage meant the updates would always get to their contacts back home. As a result, Strava was able to achieve a 95% delivery rate.

Now fully implemented and sending tens of thousands of messages a day, Strava and Infobip are helping people exercise more safely.