1 in 5 Marketers Report Having Run an SMS Campaign Last Year

July 3, 2013

This article is included in these additional categories:

Digital | Email | Mobile Phone

ChiefMarketer-Use-of-SMS-Campaigns-in-2012-July2013As seen in research released in late 2011, marketers appear to be largely ignoring SMS campaigns, according to [download page] a new study from Chief Marketer. While about 44% of survey respondents reported using text messaging as a mobile marketing tactic, only 1 in 5 said they actually ran SMS campaigns last year. That’s despite a wide range of perceived benefits of text messaging campaigns, led by their immediacy and urgency (55.5%). That perception is backed up by recent data from Dynmark, which found in an analysis of almost a billion SMS transactions that roughly 43% of SMS engagement occurs in the first 15 minutes.

Other perceived benefits of text messaging campaigns include reaching a wide audience (42.9%), low cost (37%) and high open rates compared to email (36.1%).

Separately, marketers’ adoption of mobile display ads appears to be on par with their use of text messaging, as 18.9% of respondents said they currently run mobile display ads. It looks like that figure will change soon enough, though: another 15.8% plan to start mobile advertising by the end of 2013.

Other Findings:

  • 1 in 5 respondents said they have no direct knowledge of their mobile audience and use third party research as the basis for their decision-making.
  • About 3 in 4 optimize emails for mobile viewing, yet just 4 in 10 connect those campaigns with mobile-optimized landing pages.
  • The top reason given for advertising on mobile (display) was that target audiences’ time spent with mobile devices is increasing (66.7%). Those not advertising blamed a weak ROI (38.2%) first, and also said their target audiences ignore or are irritated by mobile display ads (28.5%).

About the Data: Chief Marketer’s 2013 Mobile Marketing Survey was conducted via email from April 10 to May 13, 2013. 666 responses were received. Respondents identified themselves as B2B marketers (48.9%), B2C marketers (18.6%) or as a company that targeted both (32.5%).

About one-quarter of respondents reported 2012 revenue of over $1 billion; approximately 22% were in the $5-50 million range; nearly 17% reported $1-5 million; and 36% under $1 million.

54.4% of respondents sell their products or services online. 76.1% market entire or mostly in North America, and only 5.1% market mainly outside North America. About 17% reported that their efforts were split equally between marketing in and outside of North America.

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