Text Messages Were Made To Be Opened

Let’s face it. When you receive an email about something that isn’t immediately vital to your life, even if it’s from an interesting company whose work you’ve previously enjoyed, you’re not likely to read it right away. You’ll save it for later, and probably delete it before you get to it at all.  Either that, or it will slowly make its way to the 20th page of your inbox, never to be seen again. And the only way that will happen is if your inbox doesn’t mark it as spam first. A weighty gamble.

Text messages, however, are different. Most smartphones (such as the iPhone and the Android) display the message on the screen when it is received. You don’t even have to open it; the message is right there, almost impossible not to read. And even if you delete it afterwards, you still got the memo. You now know that there’s going to be a 30% off sale at your favorite jewelry store this week, and, somewhere in your subconscious, you’re already itching to go.

If that information had come in an email and not been directly in the subject line, you may never have known about it. That immediacy is the advantage of mobile marketing. According to studies, 99% of all text messages are opened. 99%! That’s about as close to perfect as you can get – especially compared to the 33% open rate that email marketing messages boast. And 90% of those messages are read within the first 3 minutes of their reception. Talk about instant gratification! And it’s almost guaranteed.

As Mark Cohen, small business writer for the New York Times, wrote:

So there you have it. Mobile text message marketing is the future. Will you embrace it and use it to your advantage, or let it pass you by?

Enjoy this infographic, and feel free to PIN it!