Text-Marketing
Nielsen: Text Marketing to Become More Prevalent

Text message marketing is high on my list of new marketing tools to offer my clients and here are just a few reasons why.

According to Nielsen’s Telecom Practice text messaging is starting to catch on because of consumer's heavy use of texting.

Check it out:

  • U.S. consumers now use their cell
    phones for text messaging more often than for talking
  • The average
    U.S. wireless user makes 204 calls and placing 357
    text messages each month
  • 70% of consumers who've responded to a mobile
    marketing offer say they’ve responded to a marketing text message vs. 41% who’ve responded to a survey and 30% to
    email offers

Marketers are using SMS marketing in a
number of creative range of ways such as simple information messaging, rewards
programming and couponing.

Here are some impressive national SMS campaign results:

  • Coca-Cola’s My Coke Rewards program engaged 1.1 million AT&T and Verizon Wireless customers as of
    Q3 2008
  • Radio station Alice 97.3 KLLC-FM in San Francisco
    invited listeners to send messages to the station to make requests, win
    prizes and enter polls. According to Nielsen, more than 1 million
    transactions with the short code A-L-I-C-E were sent.

A recent Nielsen study found that U.S. consumers now use their cell
phones for text messaging more often than for talking, with the average
wireless user in the United States making 204 calls and placing 357
text messages each month, writes CourierNewsOnline.

Some 70 percent of consumers who have responded to a mobile
marketing offer say they’ve responded to a marketing text message –
compared with 41 percent who’ve responded to a survey and 30 percent to
email offers – according to the Direct Marketing Association.

Check out this eMarketer chart showing how text messaging has overtaken phone calls.

Text messaging overtakes mobile voice calls

Now these numbers may have shifted a bit due to our current economic crisis, but you can be sure that the amazing trend for Mobile advertising will continue.

U.S. Mobile Advertising Spending

Sources: Adweek, eMarketer, CourierNewsOnline, Direct Marketing Association, Nielsen.