Don’t overlook texting
There are over 4 billion mobile phone subscribers, worldwide. Two-thirds of these users can be found in developing nations. Of these 4 billion subscribers, less than 10% of them have smartphones, or pda’s.
Broadband on cell phones has about 5% penetration. Most mobile phone users still send text messages. Statistics consistently show that people send more text messages than make phone calls on their mobile phones. Are marketers truly taking advantage of the fact that 2 trillion text messages were sent, worldwide, in 2008? What this means is that mobile phone subscribers are open for business. Not only are they available to receive advertising via text (SMS) but they offer an inexpensive way to spread a message widely.
Think about the social “texting” networks or “hyper” networks that exist within a school, or a community as a model for how information can be disseminated via text messaging through out a village. The average thirteen to seventeen year old sends or receives 1700 text messages a month.
Young African-Americans were early adopters of using text to communicate with each other. In the late 80’s, upside down numbers and code were used to deliver information via beepers, that didn’t require the need to find a pay phone to call the person back. In the early 90’s, Skypagers, which were nationwide pagers, and Motorola’s two-way pager were staples in the inner city and were a predecessor to the current sms mobile communication options that you see today. The rap group A Tribe Called Quest’s opening line from their 1991 song Skypager was, “Do you know the importance of a Skypager?” Not many marketers spent time in the hood to observe these insights which would have helped them to understand where the rest of the world was heading. The facts say that the network is up and running, so the job of the marketer is to find a creative way to seize this golden opportunity.
One of the initial hurdles when creating sms campaigns is the need to create an experience that makes the user want to opt in. A consumer does not want to receive an intrusive text message that does not offer information beyond an advertising message. People will tolerate advertising if you also include relative content along with your marketing message.
The time is now to adjust your strategy to include the development of dynamic text based mobile campaigns. This is a big audience, at the ready, that you can hit in their pockets, literally. Forecasts say that in 2010, 2.38 trillion SMS messages will be sent generating USD 50 billion. That’s GR8, C-U-L8TR !
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