With the economic climate continuing to challenge businesses across all industries, marketing decision makers have been forced to carefully evaluate their strategies and demonstrate their value through results. Technological advances - like the rise of mobile marketing - have helped to paint that picture by enabling marketers to implement efficient, cost-effective and impeccably targeted campaigns.
Mobile has become a critical part of the average consumer’s daily life. The scale of mobile’s proliferation opens a wealth of opportunities for businesses looking for better consumer engagement, and today’s mobile networks are primed for advanced, multi-dimensional mobile marketing campaigns. However, with the range of phones in consumers’ hands, and different markets at varied stages of the mobile evolution, mobile marketers need the most effective channel that can reach the broadest audience possible, at the lowest possible cost.
And the answer may be found in the original mobile marketing tool.
Text messaging is pervasive and recognised as a viable, trusted way to communicate en masse. Global interoperability also means it’s a fail-safe way for brands to ensure coveted, ubiquitous reach. Additionally, consumers are almost unanimously familiar with SMS and comfortable using it.
In a recent survey conducted by iGR of leaders at Fortune 1000 companies, more than 90 percent of respondents believed that having a mobile strategy was either ‘very important’ or ‘important.’ Businesses recognise the evolving mobile ecosystem and are determining how they can utilise it to keep up with consumer preferences. Interestingly, 86 percent of retailers surveyed claimed to be investing in new technologies like HTML5 and apps, which are ideal for the new wave of smartphones hitting the market.
While that appears to be a sound approach, there are still large segments of mobile users – 40 percent of UK subscribers, for instance - that do not own smartphones. These feature-phone subscribers are unable to access web-based communication tools and therefore can only be reached via minimal channels on the move. In order for brands to reach these consumers in a direct and timely manner, SMS offers a great solution. With the introduction of newer, flashier technologies, SMS is being overlooked and underutilized.
If brands and industries continue to limit their communication in this way, they are potentially sacrificing significant revenue opportunities from new and returning customers. The hospitality industry, for example, could cost-effectively and efficiently reach out to guests with offers for dining, excursions or additional nights at a hotel, via SMS. By enhancing its guests’ experience through the use of contextually relevant messaging, a hotel could develop a following of brand loyalists and advocates, which often translates into repeat business.
SMS is particularly important to the travel and hospitality industry, with travellers often facing the fear of bill shock from mobile internet usage while abroad. In those scenarios, SMS is the superior choice because the vast majority of travellers overseas are able to send and receive text messages for minimal cost, compared to mobile internet access.
Importantly, SMS enables organisations to look beyond a traditional one-way, direct marketing approach and provides them with the opportunity to start a dialogue with their consumers. When this two-way exchange is done well, SMS marketing campaigns are excellent in promoting brand values and building customer loyalty.
A fun campaign that demonstrated this particularly well was UK-based crisp maker Walkers. Through a promotional SMS campaign, Walkers gave away an Apple iPod every hour to users who sent a text with a winning code from their crisp packet. Rather than just sending the winners their prizes and ignoring other entrants, Walkers also replied to the not-so-lucky users and encouraged further entries. One of those responses called out the flavour from which the majority of winners had taken their code, resulting in a 75 percent increase in entrants from that flavour the following day. Walkers turned its campaign into a fun and friendly discussion, making it seem less like a way to sell products and more like a two-way conversation to encourage consumers to continue to vie for prizes.
SMS offers brands a simple solution to grow relationships with customers. Trust can be built upon by creating a conversation and upselling new offers specific to each customer, which can potentially lead to less churn and more revenue. SMS may not be considered a trendy mobile marketing tool, but its value and place in a marketing mix should not be underestimated.
By Joe DiFonzo, Chief Technology Officer at Syniverse.
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