Text Messaging Featured Article

Obviously there is a major difference between email and SMS text messaging. Personally, I like the convenience that I have when I use my full keyboard, sitting at my computer writing an email. I can accomplish the task faster and send out something that is more detailed. I am a one finger, or should I say thumb, typer when it comes to sending text messages and while I am quite proficient at it, it takes a little more time.

Email will never step aside in the wake of some many SMS messages. However, when it comes to marketing, there are a lot of spam and junk mail options within the various email programs that are designed to keep what you do not want to see out of your reach. The problem for marketers is that this is one method that they use on a daily global basis to promote brands and attempt to increase sales.

Aine Doherty is the Marketing Manager at Sendmode. This is a leading provider of low cost bulk SMS and multi-channel marketing services. They have over 7,500 customers in 12 countries. As of the last count, reports indicate that there are somewhere in the neighborhood of seven billion mobile subscribers around the world.

This is an interesting number since at the end of 2013 the population count was at about 7.181 billion people. According to my calculations, that represents about a 97.48 percent of the world’s population that have a mobile subscription. A study conducted this year by Ericsson (News - Alert) shows that a lot of people have several subscriptions with the capability of receiving SMS messages so the above number is closer to 4.5 billion reported mobile users.

In comparison only about 2.5 billion people have an email account. The numbers do make sense if you take into account that there are a lot of emerging markets right now who have access to wireless communications through their mobile devices, but no access to computers.

As Doherty says, “That’s a lot of people with the capability to receive an SMS text message. The popularity of email marketing meant that it very quickly became over populated with spam, thus reducing the chance that your email will be interpreted as a legitimate one and actually opened and read. SMS Marketing alternatively is 99 percent legitimate, with only one percent spam text messaging (and) this communication tool is still highly regarding by mobile phone users.”

What this results in, is the fact that SMS text messaging has an open rate of about 98 percent. Open rate is a measure primarily used by marketers as an indication of how many people view or actually open the commercial emails that they send out. It is most commonly expressed as a percentage and calculated by dividing the number of email messages opened by the total number of email messages sent. While the number is quite high for text messages, it is only at about 22 percent for email messages.

Doherty feels that if you consider the amount of time and effort put into each tool that a text message can be crafted and sent in a matter of minutes. This is in comparison to the amount of design and production time that goes into each email that is sent out. Business, groups, charities and sport clubs of all kinds are using SMS Marketing to deliver short sharp sales or information text messages to their relevant, opted in databases.