The potential of SMS messages for mobile engagement

The mobile is now omnipresent, and there can be no doubt that brands want to reach out to their public through their favourite gadget. The most obvious option is by using mobile apps: users dedicate about 82% of their time on their smartphones to apps, compared to 18% on the web browser… but here we meet a few problems:

Most of this user time is hogged by applications such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp, Google Maps…, leaving only 5% user time available for commercial apps. In fact the majority of retailers say that sales from the mobile version of their web are still higher than sales from their app.

And the fact is that one of the handicaps of using apps is the need to send Push notifications to promote the activity; however only 50% of all installations allow such notifications. This ‘disconnects’ us from the user, even when our app is installed.

The solution that many people are finding is the use of SMS with a multichannel approach. 97% of all SMS messages are read; clients are familiar with the concept, and what is more, the delivery of the SMS does not depend on data coverage. This opens a whole world of possibilities…