Text Messaging Featured Article

A quick search around the Internet for some mobile marketing stats will yield varied results, but it looks as though marketers do have mobile marketing—and text messaging—on the brain. Surveys like that from Salesforce took a gander at what marketing folks are using for their campaigns, and while the numbers rank rather high in terms of planning to use or currently using mobile marketing, the responses on ROI were less than impressive.

Here’s what some of the survey stats look like:

• 57 percent of marketers think mobile is critical
• Text messaging fell somewhere between 58 to 68 percent in terms of effectiveness
• 80 percent of marketers say that SMS and mobile deals are effective

Here’s where it gets confusing:

• 9 percent say that mobile yields some kind of ROI
• 33 percent remain positive that mobile WILL show ROI

On one end of the spectrum, marketers seem pretty gung-ho for mobile marketing, but aren’t exactly sure about the return on investing in it. Perhaps it’s time to look at some other statistics to show that, like its direct mail counterpart, mobile marketing can and should be used as part of a marketing campaign.

Google (News - Alert) says that 95 percent of smart phone users look up local information regularly while 88 percent of these users take action within a day. According to MobiThinking, 90 percent of mobile searches lead to action, over half lead to purchase.

Mobile’s response rates and success rates are astronomically higher than any other method of marketing ever seen before, so that’s why marketers need to ditch the surveys and perhaps look into some solid text messaging campaigns.

Compared to email marketing, text message marketing has a staggeringly high open rate. Essentially, almost every SMS sent is opened (and read), whereas only a fraction of emails sent are read. When a subscriber feels that buzz in their pocket or hears that trill signaling a text message, they always look. SMS is more of a direct connection to your customer base than any other marketing strategy, and there aren’t any barriers.

Businesses mistakenly believe that mobile marketing requires heavy investment in apps and does not allow for personalized, targeted communication and lacks strong analysis to support ROI. The reality is that access to mobile communications is far easier than perceived and gaining access to mobile consumers really is as simple as sending a targeted text message.