SMS has been around for more than 25 years and because of its versatility, it is a core part of business marketing and sales plans. But after all that time, does SMS still stand up in today’s modern world?
Back in the 90s, SMS was a brand-new technology, allowing people to communicate through their mobile phones without ever uttering a word. As technology has rapidly advanced in those 25 years, is this somewhat old technology still a favourite for businesses?
We already know that consumers want to receive SMS from businesses and with it boasting a 98% open rate, 90% of these messages are being read within 3 minutes, plus it boasts a huge response rate of 45%, you would be right in thinking SMS marketing works.
So, do these stats alone show that SMS marketing works?
No!
We know, not the answer you were expecting, but bear with us.
Those stats show that sending customers a text message will mean your message will be read and if you need customers to reply then almost half of them will, but what it does not show is the other side, the business side. Do businesses get what they want from it?
This time it’s a yes.
We know it works as we have lots of great customer stories about how SMS has helped these companies get more website visits, reviews, and sales.
Now with both those amazing stats and great customer stories, does this prove that SMS works today?
Yes . . . But also no.
Yes, those customer stories, and many more like them, prove that SMS marketing works. But imagine if SMS was a product, those customer stories would act as amazing 5-star reviews. So we wanted to put SMS marketing to the test and really find out if all businesses give SMS a glowing 5-star review. To do this we put a short questionnaire on our website asking businesses if they were using SMS marketing, if it worked for them, and why it worked. This way we can once and for all give SMS marketing a star rating.
Now with those stats, customer stories, and our own survey this surely means we can answer the question, does SMS marketing still work?
Yes, it does!
And without further ado, here are the results from our SMS marketing survey.
Does SMS marketing work?
We are very happy to announce that a whopping 97% of all businesses that use SMS marketing, said it works.
We love the fact that 97% of businesses found success with SMS, and what was even better, this wasn’t just from a handful of businesses, the answers ranged from multiple different sectors, proving SMS works for everyone.
Who uses SMS marketing?
We can’t think of a single business that wouldn’t benefit from using SMS, either for external communication, sales, updates, surveys, or using it internally with their employees or contractors.
A large majority of those who said they use SMS marketing were in the Retail sector (14.6%) with Healthcare (12.2%) and Marketing (9.8%) closely behind. We had a split of over 15 different sectors that use SMS marketing.
What is surprising however is that we had many businesses saying they had never used SMS marketing before, 67% in fact. This means that only 33% of businesses use SMS marketing.
It is a real shame that there are still some businesses who haven’t experienced the power of SMS yet, we already know that of those companies that have integrated SMS marketing into their plans, 97% said it works.
Why does SMS marketing work?
We weren’t satisfied with just knowing that SMS marketing works for 97% of all businesses, we wanted to find out why it worked. At the end of our survey, we included an open-ended question, to give the respondents a way to express why it worked so well for them.
We had some great responses from being able to keep customers informed, SMS being more customer-centric, easy way to communicate, and our favourite answer by far, “98% open rate” – this person has clearly been reading our blogs.
“It informs my followers of upcoming exhibitions”
“Keeps customers informed”
“People do not have time to communicate through phone calls”
“People can instantly check the SMS, compared to email and other communications”
“Gets the job done”
“Everyone who receives the message reads it and it doesn’t get deleted. Nowadays people are always on their phones so when the message comes through, they see it”
“More customer centric, customer specific & has one of the largest social media reaches”
“Enables patients to turn up for their appointment”
“Easy way to communicate and gives consumers flexibility to reply if they want to or not”
“Quick response to surveys”
So even with all the amazing technology we have at our fingertips, SMS still stands up to all of that and works wonders for so many businesses.
If you are new to SMS and want to see how easy and amazing it is, sign up to a completely free trial and use our online messaging platform to try it for yourselves.
We would like to thank everyone who took time out to answer our survey.