Texting Statistics

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A reminder from The Center For Media Research that Texting campaigns are as vibrant as ever, especially when you consider the open rates of a text and the sheer number of smartphones in consumers hands...

"According to Statista, U.S. mobile phone penetration has reached 81%, representing 223 million consumers

• Those consumers spent an average of 4.7 hours per day glued to their smartphones, according to AT&T and The Center for Internet and Technology Addiction
• Among their behaviors, 93% of smartphone users have them handy while they watch television (including television advertising) as reported by the USA Edition of the Deloitte Mobile Consumer Survey.

Beyond these numbers, is the critical role that text now plays in our everyday lives, says the report:

• 97% of U.S. adults text daily, reports the Pew Research Center
• Texting is the number one activity for smartphone users according to PEW
• Texts have a 99% open rate compared to 20% for email according to a study by SinglePoint

In other words, says the report, marketers have an opportunity to align their outreach with behaviors that are already habitual for smartphone users. In simple terms, texting is easy, casual, and conversational. That may explain why the public has expressed a desire to interact with businesses using this vehicle as evidenced by the following findings:

• RingCentral reports that 78% of consumers wish they could have a text conversation with a business
• Three out of four like offers sent via text reports Digital Marketing Magazine
• Texting with a qualified lead can increase conversation by over 100% according to Velocify
• In an article entitled “Text Messaging Is Absolutely Eating Phone Call’s Lunch,” Franchisehelp reports that their research indicates that 90% of leads prefer to be texted, as opposed to being called

Advertisers, according to the authors, stand to significantly increase their inbound leads and conversions simply adding a text option to their call-to-action. Using an easy to remember five-digit short code, marketers are able to leverage a memorable and easy-to-recall numerical sequence across all of their advertising.

According to the report, those who are running DRTV ads, that include a texting call-to-action, are seeing a material lift in sales for the same media dollars from what appears to be a more qualified lead. Consumer traffic that arrives to a DRTV marketer’s e-commerce site, by way of text, has been seen to convert at two or even three times the rate of web traffic arriving from other sources, concludes the report.

Colleen Ferrier is a seasoned direct marketing expert with an acute focus on ROI

Rick Petry is a direct marketing veteran of over 25 years providing creative services to both B2C and B2B marketing campaigns

The original blog may be found here."