Why Your Clients’ Digital Marketing Channels Must Extend to SMS

BY Rachel Cagle
Featured image for “Why Your Clients’ Digital Marketing Channels Must Extend to SMS”

Consumers aren’t glued to their phones purely for personal entertainment. Let’s not forget that while using apps and conducting general online searches are huge reasons to own smartphones, the main reason phones exist is to text and make calls. And with younger generations leaning in favor of communication via text, utilizing SMS as a part of your client’s digital marketing channels is a no-brainer.

Why Your Clients’ Digital Marketing Channels Must Extend to SMS

Why SMS?

According to research from SimpleTextin, “80.5% of consumers check their text notifications within five minutes of receiving a text.” Also, consumers spend more time checking and responding to text messages more than any other app on their phones. And, yes, that includes social media.

That’s WAY faster than their response times to email ads. Let’s compare the two. SimpleTextin’s research says that, on average, it takes consumers this long to take action when they receive a text or an email:

  • 1–2 Minutes:
    • Text: 31.8% of consumers
    • Email: 6.8%
  • 5–10 Minutes:
    • Text: 45%
    • Email: 20.9%
  • 30 Minutes to 1 Hour:
    • Text: 13.1%
    • Email: 25.1%
  • Within a Few Hours:
    • Text: 7.1%
    • Email: 32.7%
  • 24 Hours or Longer:
    • Text: 3%
    • Email: 14.5%

Look at those differences! Consumers are way more likely to react quickly to texts than emails. While email ads are obviously still among the most important digital marketing channels, your client can’t deny the sway SMS has on consumers.

Consumers Want Texts from Brands

While consumers do spend a lot of their text interaction time chatting with friends and family, they’re not the only ones consumers want to hear from. SimpleTextin says that 71% of consumers are signed up to receive text ads from at least one business.

They not only want to hear from businesses via text, they want to be able to continue the conversation. 53% of U.S. consumers say that they want to be able to text a business back once they receive an ad or other message from the brand. And they don’t care if they’re chatting with a chatbot. 46% of consumers say they would be just as happy texting with a chatbot as they would an actual person when it comes to customer service inquiries. So, it wouldn’t take much effort to enable the two-​way texting that consumers want.

SMS Frequency

Now, that doesn’t mean that consumers want to be bombarded with texts from their favorite brands. SmartTextin’s research says that consumers want to receive texts from businesses:

  • Once Every Other Week: 52.6% of consumers agree
  • Once Per Week: 36.3%
  • Twice Per Week: 7%
  • Three or More Times Per Week: 4.1%

Texts Get Results

Adding SMS to your client’s digital marketing channels is 100% worth it. Not only do consumers enjoy getting texts from their favorite brands and check their messages frequently, texts also inspire sales. According to SimpleTextin, 45% of consumers have made a purchase after receiving a text ad with a special offer or promo code within the last year.

Overall, businesses that utilize SMS have seen:

  • Higher engagement from customers: 60.5% agree
  • Higher open and click-​through rates compared to other channels: 53.5%
  • Efficient customer service and tech support: 52.3%
  • Quick feedback from existing and prospective customers: 38.5%

SMS and Your Client’s Target Customers

U.S. consumers’ obsession with their phones is no new observation. However, if your client is worried that their target audience may not be as receptive to SMS ads, take a look at the target audience’s profile on AudienceSCAN on AdMall by SalesFuel. There, you can look up their phone habits, as well as what percentage have taken action because of mobile ads within the last year.

Photo by Oyemike Princewill

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