Adding context to SMS usage in the U.S. - from a Mobile Marketer’s viewpoint

October 3rd, 2008 The Insider Posted in Reach, SMS, Shortcode Marketing

Nielsen Mobile has garnered quite a bit of press - including mainstream coverage - of their recent survey results regarding the amount of text messages an average wireless subscriber sends per month.

From CBSnews.com... “For the second quarter of 2008, U.S. mobile subscribers sent and received on average 357 text messages per month, compared with making and receiving 204 phone calls a month, according to Nielsen.”

“…The surge in text messaging is being driven by teens 13 to 17 years old, who on average send and receive about 1,742 text messages a month. Teens also talk on the phone, but at a much lower rate, only making and receiving about 231 calls per month. The report even suggests that tweens or kids under the age of 12 are also heavy text users, averaging about 428 messages per month.”

WOW! That’s quite a lot of text messages, however a couple things are worth noting as a Mobile Marketer:

• If you look at data from either comScore/MMetrics, Nielsen Mobile regarding the percentage of U.S. subscribers that actually send at least 1 text message within a month, than these aforementioned numbers are essentially generated by approximately 50% of the total wireless subscribers in the U.S. (Note: Jupiter Research states that approx 62% of wireless bases uses text messaging)

• These numbers are DOMINATED by peer-to-peer messages versus messages generated through participation in a shortcode program (aka Application-to-peer). comScore/MMetrics has stated the following:

Just 6% of teen mobile users responded to a poll or contest via short code–i.e., voting for an “American Idol” contestant–in the past month, slightly higher than the overall population (4.5%) but still not a critical mass. Even fewer teens responded to a text-message ad (1.6%), in contrast to the 2.4% of overall mobile users. And just 1.5% of teens responded to an offline ad that directed them to text a short code in.

• Also — VeriSign’s wireless aggregation business stated that A2P, such as news alerts, ring tones, promotional video clips, and enterprise messages sent to mobile users rose sharply in Q2 2008, from approximately 186 million messages in Q1 2008 to approximately 249 million (A2P) messages in Q2 2008, an increase of close to 33 percent. NOW, Verisign processed a total of 52 BILLION messages in Q2 2008 - which would mean that less than 1% of these SMS being sent were A2P or marketing-based (in some sort of fashion)

The good news is that all of this supports the fact that text messaging is a legitimate medium that more and more of Americans are embracing. The challenge now is for Marketer’s to find ways to encourage texters to participate more often in their mobile programs.

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