That seems an unlikely prediction. Most of us hardly receive any business SMS at all, so the prospect of it overtaking personal SMS seems a bit far fetched.
This was, however, the conclusion of Juniper Research whose job is to wrestle with these issues and try and foresee the way of the future. The use of bulk SMS as a way of getting a marketing message across will certainly become more popular but I think it’s other, non-sales related SMS, that will see the fastest growth. Increasingly we’ll be given options for SMS alerts in any number of situations. So as well as appointment reminders, we could receive package delivery notifications, ticket confirmations etc. We’ll also have the option to receive a wide range of SMS alerts triggered by events such as low bank balance, bill payment confirmation or traffic updates.
All of these bulk SMS examples exist already, they’ll just become more popular. As long as the opt-out rules are observed, these types of services will be seen as useful and in many cases crucial, rather than spam.
Daniel Ashdown from Juniper said
“While SMS is one of the oldest value-added services, it has an enduring appeal for a number of reasons. In terms of text communication, it is unrivalled on the mobile device in its ubiquity – virtually every handset in the world can send and receive it. This makes it extremely appealing for brands who want to enable communication with their customers, as unlike other messaging mediums, they know it will reach almost its entire intended audience.”
It will be intriguing to see if this prediction comes true. Talk to Text Marketer if you’d like to chat about how your business might adopt some SMS communications. The bulk SMS tools we’ve developed are easy to use and you can set up a free account to try it at no cost.
0117 2050202.