6 or 7 seven years ago, most industry pundits were predicting that the meteoric rise of sms messaging as a communication tool, would have levelled off by 2010 and would probably have been overtaken by a new form of instant, low cost messaging.
The Mobile Data Association’s recently released figures show that our appetite for the medium remains undimmed and in the UK we send an eye-watering 11 million text messages an hour.
“The continued growth of sms messaging is highlighted by a 2009 daily average of 265 million text messages and 1.6 million picture messages. 2009’s text message total was 96.8 billion, while over 600 million picture messages were sent across the whole year.”
Some of the recent growth is down to new generation handsets, making it easier and quicker to send texts and the increasing popularity of ‘bundled tariffs’ has driven down the cost.
Bulk SMS – The prospects are excellent
These figures are good news for mobile marketers wanting to use bulk sms to get their message across. With sms remaining as popular as it is, there is clearly plenty of scope to use an sms gateway as both a branding and a direct response tool. Bulk sms still generates far more response than any other direct marketing channel and hasn’t been ruined by spam in the same way that email has.
There are no set up costs and sms marketers only pay for the messages that they send. Bulk sms message costs are also the lowest in the industry.