Innovation, fast tracked: How did we get here?
Consumers are on their phones more than ever. The average person now spends over five hours a day on their phone, and 90% of messages are read within three minutes.
Widespread cultural changes and technological advancements have taken place.
Consumers are on their phones more than ever. The average person now spends over five hours a day on their phone, and 90% of messages are read within three minutes.
Not only is texting the norm, but mobile commerce has transformed the mobile phone into a personal shopping mall, giving consumers the power to buy from the palm of their hand, wherever they go. According to Shopify, 70% of Millennials spend over six hours per week shopping online, and they prefer text messages to emails in order to communicate with businesses on their phones; on mobile, shopping becomes more social, personal, and convenient.
Consumers have changed, too.
As texting became the quick and engaging way to communicate between friends and family, consumers began to crave these experiences from brands as well.
Today, consumers not only prefer to be able to engage in conversations with the brands they purchase from — they expect it. According to Chief Marketer, consumers desire both one-word answers (yes, no, help) and natural language feedback at the level of two-way communication with businesses, and 60% of Millennials prefer two-way text engagement because it’s easy to use, fast, and convenient.
Short-form content, like texts, also easily caters to ever-shrinking consumer attention spans. Rather than viewing the messages they receive as spam, consumers actually want to receive texts from brands they like; the majority (68%) of consumers find SMS messages sent to them from a company to be valuable, rivaling email at 46%. With SMS marketing, brands can generate growth without gimmicks. They can be direct without distracting from brand identity.
Luckily, consumers’ desires to build connections opens a massive opportunity for brands to drive customer lifetime value with SMS anytime, anywhere.
Brand marketing has evolved to keep up with demand.
To reach customers in an expanding market, eCommerce brands have had to focus efforts on targeting shoppers more effectively.
Today, traditional marketing channels, like email, are saturated; nearly 269 billion emails are sent per day and approximately 50% are spam. Shoppers receive more messages than they know what to do with, making it more important than ever for brands to be able to cut through the noise to reach their customers.
SMS marketing presented itself as a highly effective channel. Today, texting drives 8x higher engagement rates than email.
eCommerce was ready for a revolution
In 2015, brands were beginning to search for channels other than email to connect with customers and move the needle. How could marketing communications become even more effective? More personal? Further extend customer lifetime value?
SMSBump began running tests to understand exactly what brands needed in order to enable them to better communicate and engage with their customers. The results were clear: SMS marketing was the future.
Open rates were skyrocketing and click-through rates were through the roof; the channel was able to build connections like never before.
One thing was clear: The eCommerce industry was ready for SMS marketing.
