Mobile phones and mobile devices are set to play a huge role in advertising and commercial communication in the very near future.
There are now more mobile phones than people in Australia and many countries across the world are enjoying 100% mobile penetration. The personal nature of mobile devices makes for an amazing marketing and advertising tool.
The year 2010 established a new record for new mobile phones sold, at 1.37 Billion units sold. Bear in mind, that the world has only about 1.2 Billion PCs and about 1.6 Billion TVs. But mobile phones sold almost 1.4 Billion new handsets just during the 12 months of 2010.
In this blog post we will provide you with some useful and interesting statistics from the mobile space. You can also download our complete Mobile Marketing Guide - 2011 as a PDF. The document contains a range of successful mobile marketing ideas both from SL Interactive archives and from around the world.
SMS and Social Networking
A new study by Deloitte confirms that text messaging still far outweighs social media and email engagement for mobile users.
The study found that 90% of smartphone users send at least one SMS per day, compared to only 40% of smartphone users who utilize social networks like Twitter and Facebook at least once per day.
Despite claims that SMS is being surpassed by mobile email and social networking, it seems the opposite is true as SMS still reigns supreme.
(MobileMarketingWatch 14 February 2011).
SMS and Mobile Apps
How big is the mobile banner and in-app advertising today?
According to JP Morgan the total value of mobile advertising in 2010 was 11.5 Billion dollars, which amounts to 2.5 times growth in one year!
(Nothing but Net report by JP Morgan January 2011)
How did SMS text messaging stack up in 2010? Informa counted that the total value of SMS was 105.5 Billion dollars.
(Informa 28 January 2011).
App Store Figures
Appsfire reports of their survey of iPhone and iOS device owners, that the average iOS device has 88 apps on it that were downloaded by the user.
28% of all apps that have been downloaded by the users were paid apps, and 72% were free apps.
Games formed 32% of all downloaded apps.
Just 20% of users ever return to run a free application again the day after it's downloaded and is nearing zero after three months.
An average free app would need to earn $8.75 CPM in order to equal revenues that paid apps receive on average, but the market is currently standing in a range of 50 cents to two dollars CPM. Thus, only a few high-performing applications, representing less than 5% of the market, can maximize earnings with advertising.
(AppleInsider, Pinch Media).
Apple App Store produced app revenues of about 1.5 Billion dollars in 2010. If we double that, the global market for user-installed apps bought from all the app stores worth somewhat less than 3 Billion dollars – however, it is growing strong.
In comparison, the value of MMS multimedia messaging globally was worth - 32 Billion dollars in 2010. If you ad SMS and mobile data, then the total 'value-add' services opportunity for mobile was worth over 300 Billion dollars in 2010.
SMS and Advertising
The average click-through-rate for text messaging is 14.06%, while the average conversion rate is 8.22%. E-mail brings in an average CTR of 6.64% and an average conversion rate of about 1.73%, and Internet display doesn’t even hit the radar with an average CTR of 0.76% and average conversion rate of 4.43%.
Combine these figures with the fact that 100% of the world's 4.25 Billion phone handsets can do SMS and you have a very powerful and cost effective medium to engage your audience.
Top Creative Tips for SMS Marketing
1. Use Your Business Name as the Sender
By displaying the business name as the sender of the message makes your communication look and feel professional.
Remember that since it’s not a number, recipient cannot reply to it so you still have to have an opt-out method in your message. We recommend using a short URL, such as www.j.mp/notxt.
This short URL links directly to our mobile optimized SMS Blacklist Tool, allowing people to optout from SMS campaigns.
You can also add URL's to mobile web pages, Google Maps, Mobile Coupons and even streaming video.
There are a multitude of URL shorteners available that are excellent for use with SMS. bit.ly is one of the most popular ones as it has analytics for simple tracking of clicks.
2. Create a Genuine Value Offering
Your customers need to feel that they are getting something that others aren't when you approach them with an SMS. Your value offering needs to be compelling and it needs to be well timed.
As a rule of thumb, ask yourself if you were interested in receiving and taking action on the SMS yourself?
If the answer is yes, you are very likely to enjoy a great response rate.
If the answer is no, you might wish to reconsider the value offering in the message.
Good SMS content can come in the form of freebies, discounts, mobile coupons, reminders, links to free applications, competition entries, mobile video, alerts etc. Just sending out a vague sale alert tends to come across as spam and will most likely result in an optout.
3. Don't Forget Call-to-Action
Always engage your customer by adding a call-to-action. You can use SMS keywords to have people reply to the message or you can guide them to a mobile optimised site, ask them respond with a phone call etc. Use verbs like go, see, click, reply and call.
