Mobile Marketing & its Relevance Across Industries

Short Messaging Service (SMS) which once has been considered as a method of convenient communication between the individuals has grown into an industry segment, which is going to be valued at USD 86.53 Billion by 2025.

Apart from notifications and alerts, businesses across the world do consider mobile marketing (SMS marketing) as an effective channel of communication to engage with the user and bring positive ROI.

In this article, we are going to share some quick facts and figures with you on how SMS marketing is making it easy for businesses to connect and communicate with the consumers in the most effective manner. Also, we will mention some noteworthy industries which are already making the most out of the SMS-based service industry.

Here are some SMS marketing statistics giving you a clear picture of the fact that marketers still consider SMS marketing as a key channel of communication.

1. Talking about US-based consumers, 50% of them makes a purchase about the Branded text/QR code/Discount Coupon received by them. It’s an astonishing fact giving us a picture that half of the population who got exposed to SMS communication are making purchases.
2. How many times have you redeemed a printed coupon while making a purchase? Consumers are keen to receive mobile coupons via SMS because it is convenient for them and it has a higher redemption rate than printed ones. It doesn’t direct to the assumption that mobile coupons are an assurance for the purchase, but it can increase customer retention through active engagement.
3. Today, most of the mobile devices are enabled to receive SMS marketing as a major factor in their marketing mix. Another important indicator is that the customer considers SMS as a valued touch-point complimented by the fact that less than 10% of text messages are considered as spam.
4. As a business promotion and engagement tool, Emails are considered an important method, but it turns out that SMS campaigns bring better results than email campaigns. In a general scenario, the impact of SMS marketing is higher because consumers aren’t prone to deleting text messages without reading them, unlike in the case of Emails.
5. Guess the open rate of SMS in comparison to email? Let me tell you the open rate of an Email, it is 20-25%. Now you might be thinking the open rate of SMS would be around 40-50%. It is 98%.

Now, let me shower some insights on how different industries are using SMS as their business communication tool.

Banking

Banking is the one industry which runs majorly by its customers and they must manage an efficient communication channel to significantly offer the best customer service. Banking sector uses SMS for multiple scenarios, such as:

• Notification/Alerts: Whenever any activity takes place in a customer’s account; a notification gets delivered to his/her registered mobile number regarding the activity.
• Customer registers their mobile numbers and requests for notifications on account balance, transaction history, payments, etc.
• Bank uses SMS as a viral medium to reach out to customers informing them about the new products and services.
• SMS can be used as an automated communication tool. This is possible through the usage of auto responders which creates the response based on the keywords.

Hospitality

With the title of the industry, we can get the idea of the fact that this industry thrives on opportunities to offer effective and efficient customer service experiences. Here is our take on some scenarios when SMS serves the best for Hospitality:

• Customer Service: Unlike any other industry, the customer here wants to experience proficient service experience and they happily like to connect via their mobile devices. Tailored text messages, up-to-date information, facility offerings, upcoming events and more gets communicated to customers through text messages.
• Customer Loyalty Program: If customer service is the entry path andCustomer Loyalty Program is the palace which pathway leads to. Hospitality business provides rewards for their customers through CLP. Incorporation of short-code SMS allows businesses to gather more information, which will help them to segregate the VIP customers from the database and enhance the overall customer experience.
• SMS campaigns in no less than a boom, allowing Hospitality corporations to take the maximum out of it. SMS campaigns complete the 360-degree for any promotional activity, resulting in more effective response rates in comparison to other channels.

Retail

• Time & Reach are the two major factors which make SMS a perfect fit for Retail marketing activities. Retail players use SMS majorly for boosting sales, customer retention, and brand awareness. Out of many ways, here are a few examples:
• Retail stores execute sale offers time to time and to spread the news about the same, text communication is the cheapest yet effective channel.
• Suppose a customer visits your webpage and makes a purchase, send a quick text informing them about the purchase and share the approximate time of delivery. On the other hand, if the customer forgets the item in the cart then you can send them a text message as a reminder towards making the purchase.

Apart from the above, there are many examples related to Media & Entertainment, Internet-based, Real Estate, Travel, Non-profit, and Recruiting organizations which uses SMS to spread the word about their business and acquire & retain customers to gain growth in their business environment.

Brief about Kaleyra:

Kaleyra is a global leader in the cloud-based CPaaS industry, which empowers large enterprises to communicate with their audience through intelligent Messaging, Voice, and Fintech services. We are working with players from all the industries across the world, handling SMS traffic of 2.5 billion and 600 million voice calls per month.