Interactive Mobile Messaging

America’s fastest growing way to communicate: Text Messaging

Seventy-seven percent of mobile subscribers text on a regular basis, and 97 percent of all those text messages are read within 15 minutes of arrival. It’s hard to make those same claims with e-mail marketing, Twitter or even Facebook.

Maximize customer convenience and loyalty while extending your brand. Automated text messaging connects your brand with on-the-go consumers by providing reminders and product promotions while collecting consumer feedback. Text messaging facilitates engagement with Gen X/Y and multilingual customers.

More than 77% of mobile subscribers (over 42% of the US population) text on a regular basis, and 97% of those text messages are read within 15 minutes of arrival. The volume of messages—in the billions—is growing 20-25% quarterly. Text messaging is secure, generally spam free, and your call-to-action message remains on the mobile phone. Targeted text coupons are reported to convert at nearly 12%.

Overall benefits:

-       Customer convenience and loyalty

-       Mitigate lost revenue associated with missed appointments and sales

-       Instantly gain valuable customer feedback

-       Promote new products and services

-       High conversion rate on mobile calls to action

-       Mitigates problem of e-mail SPAM filters

What is Text Messaging?

Text messaging, also called Short Message Service (SMS), is a messaging system operated side-by-side to the cell phone voice network (call SS7). The SS7 network is not Internet based and is offered by almost every mobile carrier in the world.

A message is limited to 160 characters. Text messaging has also been extended to include picture and video messaging (called multimedia messaging service—or MMS). It is also suitable for sending ring tones and wallpaper.

Multimedia messaging

While text messaging technology is relatively mature in the US, multimedia messaging services (MMS) are starting to emerge. A multimedia message is typically a picture or video. While many carriers permit messaging between cell phones, only a few permit picture and video messaging to be sent from an interactive application to a cell phone.

Another way to send picture and video messages is using WAP push and WAP 2.0 (wireless application protocol). In this case, multimedia content is sent over an Internet connection to the cell phone. Many phones support these technologies, and especially Smart Phones, however, the service in inconsistent.

Due to the reliability of multimedia messaging, a marketing campaign should combine a reliable text message with the multimedia content to ensure the cell phone receives a response.