The process of creating and sending electronic communications that are generally made up of alphabetic and numeric characters can be referred to as text messaging which is another term for short message service.
Short Message Service is one of the fastest and affordable ways to reach your customers via texting about your business and special sales. No wonder many businesses want to use this method of marketing.
But these are not the only benefits you can enjoy from using SMS marketing. In fact, the most recent stats show that SMS is as powerful as any other digital marketing tools out there (e.g. email and social media). How is that possible?
Let’s take a look below:
1. In the US, 98% of adults (aged 18-29) own an SMS-enabled mobile device and 97% text on a weekly basis.
2. On average, American adults spend 23 hours of their entire week on texting.
3. A whopping 75% of millennials said that they enjoy doing business via SMS (e.g. appointment scheduling, coupon redemptions, deliveries, etc.), according to the Mobile Marketing Watch.
4. SMS has a faster average response time than email. Customers respond to text alerts within 90 seconds, while it’ll take them 90 minutes to respond to business emails.
5. Over 50% of customers find SMS a better communication method to reach customer support than making a phone call. Additionally, 44% prefer to initiate an SMS conversation rather than spend their precious time waiting on hold with a rep.
6. Franchise texting – 90% of franchise leads prefer to receive text messages than phone calls.
7. Around 70% of companies either don’t have an SMS provider or an SMS marketing strategy in place to cater to 30% of customers who are open to receive text promos.
8. Harris Interactive reports that more than 60% of customers do not take business SMS negatively. In fact, it is one way to impress them and earn their trust.
9. 78% of customers are open to exchanging text messages with a company.
These stats clearly show how many customers would choose to communicate with a business via Short Message Service over email and telemarketing. The nature of short message service is very unique.
Looking at short message service advantages and disadvantages, SMS marketing offers multiple benefits that if used correctly can give you that competitive advantage, including customer trust and loyalty.
Short message service system like Express Text has made the process a lot easier.
Short message service, or SMS, is the textual communication protocol that allows mobile device customers to send and receive short text messages over cellular networks.
You can and should use SMS marketing! Text messages have over a 98% open rate within the first 3 minutes of receipt, and over 45% of messages are responded to. That makes it one of the best (and cheapest) forms of marketing available!
SMS for business gives you the opportunity to conduct direct marketing straight to customer’s mobile devices, and studies show that most consumers prefer to receive marketing messages via text rather than phone calls. Also, free short message service are available.
Just sign up for a free trial with an online bulk texting service like Express Text and you can get started sending text messages today! Free account start with limited functionality, then you can upgrade your pricing tier as your business needs expand.