While high-end smartphones and their accompanying applications, or ‘apps’, have hogged the limelight of late, SMS marketing has long been the quiet achiever.
Where your clients or consumers go, your reseller business should follow. For most small-to-medium enterprises, SMS is affordable and easy to operate. Provided marketing messages are highly-targeted, many clients and individuals willingly opt-in to both paid and free services from mobile carriers and brands. As most SMS marketing campaigns require no education process, it can be a cost-effective channel for lead generation.
SMS campaigns need not be passive; businesses can encourage clients and consumers to send feedback and enter promotions by replying to a shortcode, or to follow a click-to-call or click-to-browse action. In addition to 160 text characters, SMS can include binary data that enables coupons, pictures, wallpapers, logos and ringtones.
An important, affordable, highly-measurable channel for your business, SMS shows no sign of slowing down. An estimated 6.1 trillion texts were sent worldwide in 2010, according to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Currently worth $150 billion, global mobile messaging is expected to grow to $233 billion by 2014.
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