Businesses, thinking of incorporating SMS marketing in their core marketing modules, often ask: isn’t SMS marketing too old fashioned in a world taken over by smartphones, app and emails? My answer remains a straightforward–No. The same answer I have been answering for the past ten years, an answer I’ll stick to 10 years down the line.
Actually, if you look at the current state, the way we receive or send texts, nothing has changed. You don’t need a Smartphone costing hundreds of dollars to receive or sent texts. A sub $50 phone reads and replies texts the same way a $1000 iPhone does.
With SMS marketing, you’re hitting a quite a jackpot: targeting affluent and everyday customer with the same marketing strategy. While, over the years, many technologies proclaiming to be “the next big thing in mobilosphere” emerged, not many survived. In fact, the surviving members—email, push notification, and instant messengers still look at the old horse jealously. With 98% open rate, 20% percent conversion rate, and offline delivery of content, they have fair reasons to be.
In 2014, many mobile and market research companies collected SMS data to determine its relevancy in today’s world. Here is what they believe:
1. Everybody uses SMS
As I said, everybody regardless of his mobile’s operating system, price, type, or built, uses SMS. Even people who are 24/7 connected to the internet, checks a text as soon as it arrives. They may delay reading a Facebook notification in the meanwhile.
SMS is the one of the top 3 things users do on their Smartphones according to the SalesForce 2014 Mobile Behavior Report. The other two were “searching the internet” followed by “checking emails”.
2. Texts are fast
According to Frost & Sullivan, on an average a text is read within 5 seconds. What can be faster? Looking at the fact, an email itself takes more than 5 second to load properly, let alone to read. Even opening an IM app like WeChat or WhatsApp takes more than this.
3. Almost every texts is read
| Medium | Open Rate |
| SMS | 98% |
| 22% | |
| Tweets | 29% |
| 12% |
98%, that’s hell lot of numbers. Yes, more than the open rate of other mediums combined. While many may agree that SMS survived over the years, I would go one more step and say, “it not only survived but beat the competition to the bottom and emerged as a winner”.
4. Untapped Potential
Salesforce research also showed most people love when their favourite brand texts them. Despite the fact, only 48% of surveyed brands were into SMS marketing. Some, in spite of having a SMS marketing channel, were not using it to the fullest.
In addition, less than half were signed-up to receive SMS based alerts from their favourite brands. Those who signed were for the following reasons:
|
Related Content |
Positive Reaction |
| Coupons, discounts and deals | 77% |
| Alerts | 50% |
| Being in the loop | 48% |
| Engaging content | 33% |
| Don’t want to visit app/website for data | 31% |
| Quick/ hassle free information | 29% |
Conclusion:
The time when SMS used to be merely a medium for individuals to have a casual chat is long gone. Today, businesses are more considerate about the true potential of this rediscovered messaging medium. They are looking at new ways to harness its true potential.
SMS is far from becoming obsolete, in fact, businesses increasingly switching from a pure email based marketing to a mixed bag. SMS is the medium for reaching masses.
SMS, and the way we use it, will keep evolving at its own pace. Only time will tell “How”. In the time being, let the end users be the time bearers.
