I confess I spend too much of my time talking about RCS and rich messaging. I make no apologies; it is going to be the standard way that people and businesses talk top each other – it already might be. But SMS still has a massive role to play and, while it is easy to lose sight of SMS in the melee of content and traffic generation that has come to define telemedia, it is something that I, for one, have overlooked to my peril.
A new study out last month from Decision Telecom finds that some 80.4% of businesses are actively using SMS marketing, with an average SMS marketing budget of around 18.76% of the total budget. The adoption rate of SMS marketing differs by company size. With medium-sized companies (51–250 employees) leading at 35.8%, followed by small businesses (1–50 employees) at 32.8%, and large enterprises (251+ employees) at 31.4%. It is clear that SMS marketing extends to all business sizes and organisations are favouring immediate reach.
Retail companies have established themselves as the leaders in SMS marketing adoption as they require both fast promotions and effective customer interactions, driving a 19.8% adoption rate. The technology industry stands as the second biggest industry using SMS marketing, with 17.5%, followed by finance with 12.3%, education with 11.6%, along with e-commerce at 8.9%, and healthcare with 8.7%.
All very interesting, but it is the use of AI and chatbots that is what really stands out. According to the report, 60% of these businesses are actively using AI in their SMS campaigns and this has so dramatically upped the success rate of these missives that 65% of this 60% are looking to do more SMS marketing powered by AI.
And who can blame them? According to the report’s survey, conversion rates are up 27%, engagement metrics rose 26% and cost efficiency rose by a quarter.
This is sterling stuff. While SMS is threatened by email and social media marketing, not to mention Google and other search marketing techniques, it is looking very much like it is an integral part of the marketing mix for many companies and so it should be. It also paves the way for RCS and rich messaging, which will take this SMS lead and run with it.
We saw across World Telemedia Dubai just how evolved traffic generation has become – and how reliant it now is on AI to parse the data and create the ad content – but it seems to me that rather than just looking at that and SMS/RCS in separate silos, it all needs to be part of the same process. Get traffic from Google and social media, but reinforce, upsell and convert to other payment mechanisms those consumers you have accrued.
In short, I think we are at peak user acquisition and now need to start to look at retention and SMS and ultimately RCS, underpinned by AI, is an ideal way to make that happen.
