Survival Guide

While seated at dinner the other night, I heard my Blackberry alert for an incoming text message. I should have left it alone but wondered over to pick it up and see who the sender was. Of course it was from my 20 year old daughter who texts constantly to the entire world. The most interesting thing was that she was actually just across the table from me but chose to communicate through text messaging rather than talk. So like a good dad I asked her why she didn’t just tell me and her reply was “Oh sorry I always text when I can’t be bothered to talk to someone, I forgot it was you” one brief apology later and all was well. Its no wonder that last year in one month alone Verizon reportedly handled 10 Billion text messages http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNewsAndPR/idUSWEN958520070724

Text messaging is an exploding channel for communication and continues to grow at an amazing rate. People find it a great way to keep in touch without having to have long conversations, its fast, cheap and easy to use. That alone is an important fact for marketers. It’s an opt-in service for quick to the point messaging. It’s also an extremely effective way to have push content sent to your mobile device. Research shows that 80% of 18-24 year olds were using mobile messaging almost a year ago, even when you get to 44-54 year olds its still around the 40% mark and growing fast. Text messaging is such an acceptable way to communicate that it opens up the other channels for mobile, MMS, WAP etc. If you don’t currently have a piece of this base mobile channel you’re missing the boat, as social networking, on-line shopping, mash sites and subscriptions become more mobile, this is a platform that you have to take notice of and include in your on-line marketing tactics. If you’re planning on using social networking mobile does and will continue to be a big part of that channel.

Apple’s iPhone is a good example of where the technology platform is going and how the usability of mobile devices is improving all the time. As mobile device technology, faster mobile networks and displays improve this can only make this channel more and more engaging to the end user. Mobile is a fast changing and emerging technology, in many respects its potential has no where near been fully realised yet.