Reach Customers Right in their Pockets
Promotions via text message offer the most powerful advertising medium ever invented. The author bases this on the fact that 70% of all promotional text messages are opened and read.
Philadelphia, PA (PRWEB) May 26, 2006 -- Advertisements on key chains are hot. Those are the little plastic membership key tags to Acme, Blockbuster, or a local gym.
What a powerful advertising medium this is. It’s right in the owner's pocket and he or she sees it every time they get into their car, arrive at the office, or come home.
Now, imagine if that key tag brought relevant and changing information to you every day. Imagine if that information was timely. Now, imagine that key tag beeped every time information arrived.
And, oh yeah. There are 214,175,214 of them in the United States.
Imagine the cell phone. The ubiquitous cell phone.
According to Frost & Sullivan, over 70% of all promotional text messages are opened and read. Compare that to email where less than 3% of all promotional email messages are opened and read. After all, how many more Viagra ads can we all read?
No doubt, the massive offshore spamming that has occurred in the email world has made email marketing ineffective. Similar spamming has not occurred in the area of text messaging, at least not yet. The carriers are diligently policing text message spam and advertisers are understandably reluctant to spam when the recipients may have to pay for receipt of the text message or count the message toward a finite amount of prepaid monthly texts.
Just 15% of the over 36 billion text messages sent in 2005 were deemed promotional messages, according to The Yankee Group. This means that a promotional message to an opt-in list will stand out.
But, how does one obtain an opt-in list?
“I like to think of it as A+B=C,” said Bob Bentz, Co-Owner of Advanced Telecom Services (www.advancedtele.com) . “Advertising agencies and consumer product companies use the ‘A’ to establish a database of opt-in users through an interactive promotion such as a sweepstakes or contest then provide the ‘B’ with ongoing value-added text message blasts. The ‘C’ then becomes the successful promotion.”
Bentz gave an example of a cosmetic product offering a contest to win a free makeover and weekend at a health spa via text message. All entrants in the contest would then be opted in to the database. Those consumers in the database would receive two text messages per week with a makeup tip and a product discount from the cosmetic company.
“The fact that over 70% of promotional text messages are opened and read is a phenomenal statistic,” added Bentz. “With channel flipping and competition on a print page, surely television, radio, and newspaper cannot say that any where near 70% of its audience actually ‘gets’ the advertising message.”
The New York Times said it best. “The cell phone is the most personal and immediate medium ever invented.” The success of promotional text messaging is proving just that.
By Anthony Wayne
Text Message Blog (www.textmessageblog.blogspot.com)
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