Text for success – its the consumer lingua franca

The launch last week of O2More, the carriers location and time targeted advertising service marks something of a watershed in how mobile marketing works. Now consumers can, when they enter a ‘geo fence’ around a brand offering something they have pre-opted into, will get a message offering money off or other inducements to engage with that brand. Such offers can also be targeted around time of day also and are showing how mobile in retailing and commerce isn’t just about buying stuff via the mobile channel, but is also about retailers using mobile to drive footfall into the stores they have already heavily invested in.

But what makes it all the more exciting for the telemedia industry is that it uses text. Yep, good old SMS. OK, if you are a smartphone user you get a graphically enhanced MMS, but the service is designed to use SMS wherever possible as that is useful to the vast majority of people with mobile phones.

This move ‘towards’ SMS in retailing and marketing is clearly driven by expediency among those wanting to reach the widest audience possible. It is also the lingua franca of the people right now.

A survey by mBlox has found that 71% of consumers in the UK want mobile coupons sent to their phones while they are out shopping and 59% wanting retailers and brands to contact them using SMS.

Looking specifically at the role of SMS for business communications, 59% of UK and 17% of US consumers surveyed stated SMS as their preferred choice when being contacted about appointment reminders.

“More and more people are turning to SMS for important communications because emails can easily get lost or overlooked in an email inbox,” says Brian Johnson, senior vice president of sales and marketing for mBlox. “Mobile phone penetration in the US is now catching up to the UK and mBlox is experiencing a hockey stick effect in growth for business-to-consumer messaging. Businesses are beginning to give their customers the option of how they want to communicate with them and increasingly consumers are realizing the power of mobile messaging.”

For payment reminders, such as credit card and utility bills, the consumer research showed that more than one in three consumers chose SMS as their preferred communication channel in the UK, but just one in 10 chose SMS in the US.

“To stay ahead of our clients demands in key verticals such as Finance, Communications, Pharmacy and Travel we will launch 15 unique SMS programs this year,” agrees Jennie Hanson, SVP of West Corporation’s Alerts and Notifications business. “We see many companies adding SMS to their customer contact strategy for payment reminders, order ready notices, appointment reminders, customer care, promotions and a variety of other notifications as consumers begin using text messaging to communicate with businesses and not just family and friends.”

So text is firmly on the agenda again driven by retailers. But it is also looking likely to gain credence in the business sector too and, should it ever return to TV, in the voting stakes as well.

Personally I use text all the time and think that its an easy and cheap way of marketing and of developing communications between business, brands and consumers. We don’t need all the flash ‘flash’ graphics; we need simple messaging. It is also cheap to do and everyone can do it.

In these straightened times we are likely to see a lot more text based services happening as brands reach out to the maximum number of people with the minimum amount of outlay.

Find out more on how SMS and MMS marketing are going to effect the market at Telemedia360 in Manchester on 16 November, when we have keynote presentations from mBlox and OpenMarket.

Register here