One of the most fascinating truths about mobile marketing in 2014 is the dominance of SMS messaging. Ten years ago, when smartphones were in their infancy, few would have predicted that text messages would soon be a key concern of marketing campaigns. If anything, SMS was threatening to become an anachronism in the face of mobile email communications and, more recently, the rise of messaging apps.
And yet, even in countries with high smartphone penetration such as South Korea and the UK, SMS alerts play an important role in mobile marketing campaigns. In developing countries, where mobile device ownership is largely limited to basic cellphones, it’s even more important. In many places, 2G voice and SMS services is all there is.
For the majority of Africans, text-based mobile marketing is the only option. Across the continent, eight out of ten people own a cellphone. Despite the data limitations imposed by the current network infrastructure and paucity of smartphones, the addiction to mobile communication is no less pronounced; most Africans carry their phones everywhere they go, and rarely switch them off. Many people without a permanent abode have a cellphone number. Text messaging is the most effective way to reach people.
Response rates for text are exceedingly high when compared with email or paper mail. It’s not unusual for an SMS campaign to get a response rate of up to 30% on offers and 60% on surveys (compared with 2.6% for direct mail). In part, it’s the immediacy of SMS that gives it an edge. But it also comes down to the fact that cell phones are trusted personal devices. Every recipient almost always sees and reads a text message, which increases the potential response rate for marketers.
The scope for personalization is another key advantage to SMS. It’s as effective for one-to-one marketing as for bulk messaging, and at a cost of a few cents per message, it also happens to be one of the least expensive forms of advertising you can use. Small wonder that text messaging is the go-to form of communication in the developing world.
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