I love SMS. Quick, unobtrusive, and trackable, text is by far my preferred means of communication for brief but detailed interchanges. And after three weeks of totally ignoring my wife’s voice mails, she has come to appreciate text too. We are not alone. Nuestar estimates a full 2.5 billion text messages are sent each day in the USA alone. In fact, SMS is still king among mobile based communications beating email, phone calls, and other messaging forms by a wide margin. 138 Million Americans have sent a text in the last 3 months, many finding SMS to be the most direct, easy to use and cheapest communications form. Its easy to see why: 160 SMS characters take up as much room as a one-second voice call and are delivered immediately and stored until retrieved. But its still hard to determine when text is the best mode of communication.
OMG its BIG! Mobi believes 8 trillion text messages were sent in 2011, making worldwide mobile messaging worth over US$200 billion and expected to reach $334.7 billion by 2015. Juniper Research goes further, suggesting by 2016, application-to-person (A2P) messaging will overtake person-to-person (texting) messaging, going from 30% today to over 50% of all messages come from an application or business by 2016.
B2C XOXO SMS: What businesses are using text? Advertising, Financial services, Ticketing, Appointment setting, television voting, you name it. Companies large and small are optimizing this low cost channel to reach the consumer wherever they are, day or night. And with the highest readership of any channel (SMS at 98%, email 25%, direct mail at <3%) businesses are seeing both efficiencies and reach. But SMS is not for every communication. Knowing when communicating by text is effective and when to take the dialogue to another media is critical to successful communication that supports customer loyalty.
1. OPT- IN - I want you to want me: One of the most critical considerations is whether you need a customer to opt in to receive SMS messages from you. The rule of thumb here is based on frequency: if you expect to send more than one SMS in a 2 month period, you should probably request the customer to opt in. While certainly a barrier from the company perspective, the opt-in should be considered a friendly and mutual contract between two parties. By establishing interest and a set of rules about frequency and content up front, the company can overcome potential customer experience pitfalls like message fatigue and high SMS overage charges.
2. Immediacy - What is more important than a buzzing in your pants?: SMS has the urgency of a phone call with the resilience of an email. It is both temporal and historic and can inform, dialogue, pander, and provoke in less than 10 characters. The second question you need to ask yourself is whether your message important and interesting enough to inspire customer interest while they are potentially indisposed? My bank sending an SMS about a potential fraud alert is a great example. Potential fraud is important enough to merit my immediate attention but delivered in a manner that gives me control how and when I respond. A bad example is a recent text I received from a local restaurant telling me about their new extended hours. Not only was this uninteresting, it was a distraction (especially since I was driving at the time). Instead of driving loyalty, this text did the opposite by compelling me to unsubscribe to future messages from the sender.
3. Message Complexity – smtims a cal is bttr: While a text message can contain up to 152 characters, companies should shoot for less than 80 characters. If you cant get your message across in less than that without truncating words bynd rcogntion, your pushing your luck. Customers won’t read it and some will begrudge having to pay for it. What can fit in less than 80-100 characters? Many companies using SMS to:
Cheap, cheerful, and omnipresent, text SMS is a powerhouse of customer engagement as long as you observe a few simple guidelines. Companies that build SMS into the larger and more holistic communications strategy can expand their reach, encourage customer engagement, and drive profitable behavior.
OMG its BIG! Mobi believes 8 trillion text messages were sent in 2011, making worldwide mobile messaging worth over US$200 billion and expected to reach $334.7 billion by 2015. Juniper Research goes further, suggesting by 2016, application-to-person (A2P) messaging will overtake person-to-person (texting) messaging, going from 30% today to over 50% of all messages come from an application or business by 2016.
LOL is not Loyalty: So when does it make sense to use text versus alternate means of communication? Follow these 4 guidelines to make sure you make the most of the channel while avoiding times when text fails.
1. OPT- IN - I want you to want me: One of the most critical considerations is whether you need a customer to opt in to receive SMS messages from you. The rule of thumb here is based on frequency: if you expect to send more than one SMS in a 2 month period, you should probably request the customer to opt in. While certainly a barrier from the company perspective, the opt-in should be considered a friendly and mutual contract between two parties. By establishing interest and a set of rules about frequency and content up front, the company can overcome potential customer experience pitfalls like message fatigue and high SMS overage charges.
2. Immediacy - What is more important than a buzzing in your pants?: SMS has the urgency of a phone call with the resilience of an email. It is both temporal and historic and can inform, dialogue, pander, and provoke in less than 10 characters. The second question you need to ask yourself is whether your message important and interesting enough to inspire customer interest while they are potentially indisposed? My bank sending an SMS about a potential fraud alert is a great example. Potential fraud is important enough to merit my immediate attention but delivered in a manner that gives me control how and when I respond. A bad example is a recent text I received from a local restaurant telling me about their new extended hours. Not only was this uninteresting, it was a distraction (especially since I was driving at the time). Instead of driving loyalty, this text did the opposite by compelling me to unsubscribe to future messages from the sender. 
- Provide basic transaction data
- Send reminders and product renewals
- Confirm appointments
- Manage incidents and emergencies
- Provide customer service on simple transactions. Chase and Discover allow customers to text certain commands like “BAL” for current balance
- Send last-minute promotions via SMS to boost demand for products and services
4. Call to Action - You have my attention, now what?: This hinges on relevancy of the message content and effectiveness in leveraging the SMS channel. The mobile marketer needs to ensure that when a customer actually does get your message they can action it from wherever they are. This is more than just including key details like my balance on my last statement. Effective texts also need to include links to mobile sites, click to call or chat, and other response options that make the most of the connection. One great example is the rather recent phenomenon of text to donate. In response to the Haiti earthquake, the Red Cross TEXT2 HELP raised over $30 Million in a very short period of time and with almost zero investment in processing infrastructure.
Cheap, cheerful, and omnipresent, text SMS is a powerhouse of customer engagement as long as you observe a few simple guidelines. Companies that build SMS into the larger and more holistic communications strategy can expand their reach, encourage customer engagement, and drive profitable behavior.
Text Advertising will soon be the biggest form of marketing for businesses.
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