Text/mobile marketing by the numbers

There are some pretty compelling stats when it comes to text marketing and the open rates of text messages when compared to the numbers of other mediums. If you read “Facebook and Twitter By The Numbers Pt. 1″ & “Facebook and Twitter By The Numbers Pt. 2″ you’re probably asking yourself, what does this have to do with mobile or text marketing?

We’ll start with some older stats just to give your some perspective. As of June 2008, over 75 Billion text messages are sent every month compared to just 18 Billion in December 2006. That number has grown by 250% each year for the last two years. To validate the future growth within the channel, just two years ago, Verizon Wireless anticipated the number of text messages sent by their users on their network to grow nearly 5x from 400mm per month (in July 2005) to over 2 billion per month – and that is just over Verizon Wireless.

SMS is also the only universal mobile platform for the masses. It does not require special downloads as it is already available on over 98% of all cell phones.

US Mobile Content Market = 68.7 million text users

86% of the US owns a mobile phone
265mm mobile phones users
240+mm text enabled handsets
65mm text & web enabled phones

Two of the most compelling statistics that make the case for using some kind of text/mobile platform are the following:

97% of text messages are opened

83% of text messages are opened within 1 hour of being received

What can you take from those numbers? Text messaging is going to have much higher open and read rates than any other medium you can go with hands down. Text messaging is instant and will help you engage your customers where they will always look (at least 97% of the time). If you can offer your customers a reason to join your text club/database and you don’t start spamming them, you will find yourself with more customers walking through your doors.