How much time do you spend interacting with your smartphone on a given day? Most phones give you the ability to track this time, but do you really want to know the answer? We are afraid to know it too... While ignorance can be bliss on a personal level, marketers should be aware of general trends in smartphone usage. A Provision Living survey put the average daily use of Americans at 5.4 hours per day. Considering a person is only awake for 16 hours (yes, we realize that assuming eight hours of sleep is generous), that means a third of a person's typical day is spent on a smartphone. Our dedication to our phones means businesses need to market to this channel that people spend so much time on.
Consumers are more resilient to cold calling and telemarketing (and their phones are helping them block those numbers), but opt-in SMS marketing continues to employee email database show great potential. Here's an overview of how direct SMS marketing engages prospects and customers, and which industries are poised to take full advantage of this strategy. A quick note about SMS The first text message was sent in 1992, and although roughly a decade passed before it took root in the culture (think how integral text messaging was to the plot of the Oscar-winning film The Departed), smartphones have truly changed the medium forever. . Suddenly people were still on the phone, but communicating without making actual phone calls.
Marketing via text messaging inevitably followed – and for the most part, consumers don't mind receiving text messages from a company, as long as they sign up for them. Consider:Open rates for SMS marketing have been consistently reported at 98% over the past few years. SMS engagement is 6 to 8 times higher than email engagement, according to Cellit. SMS marketing grew 197% between 2015 and 2017, according to Salesforce. Plus, attribution reporting for SMS marketing is more advanced than ever. Integrated with the right tools, messages can be sent and received through the same phone numbers configured for call tracking. The data produced by SMS is robust, helping you measure what is working and what is not, as well as informing marketing strategy.