Mobile text messaging, also known as SMS (for short message service), may just represent the next frontier in mobile marketing. Why? More than 4 billion people worldwide -- and 75 percent of Americans -- regularly send and receive text messages. With the recent announcement that social media giant Facebook is acquiring WhatsApp -- an SMS platform that allows users to send free text messages on smart phones of all kinds -- texting's popularity isn't likely to decrease anytime soon. Here's why you should take advantage of this growing market and add SMS to your marketing strategies. The Power of the Personal In Internet years, text messaging is a virtual grandfather; after all, the technology has been around for more than 20 years. In fact, it's been around so long that a (mind-blowing) two-thirds of the Earth's population has access to it. Perhaps due to the well-established nature of SMS, many companies have bypassed it as a marketing strategy, probably in their rush to drive customers to the mobile-optimized versions of their websites. However, as any marketing guru will tell you, customers respond best when a campaign engages them personally. That's where text message marketing comes in. Stats from Techipedia reveal that:
- 98 percent of all sent text messages are opened
- 83 percent of text messages are opened within three minutes
- SMS marketing campaigns boast response rates of up to 45 percent, as compared to email campaigns, which average a 6 percent response rate