The rise of the smart phones and the heavy use of SMS (short message service) text messaging have caused many companies to consider SMS text marketing as a viable option to reach their prospects and clients, especially when other channels and mediums are becoming increasingly noisy.

However, many solopreneurs hesitate to add SMS text marketing to their marketing mix because they feel it can be too intrusive and/or they don’t know where to start, but text message marketing can be a great way to communicate with your prospects and clients.

So should you use SMS text marketing in your business?  Let’s look at some statistics:

Smart Phone Statistics:

• There are 2.6 billion smartphone subscriptions globally (Techcrunch)
• By 2020 smartphone subscriptions are expected to grow globally to 6.1 billion smartphone users. (Techcrunch)
• 70 percent of the world’s population will be using smartphones in five years’ time (Techcrunch)
• Texting is the most widely-used and frequently used app on a smartphone, with 97% of Americans using it at least once a day. (Pew Internet)

So what does this mean for you as a solopreneur? If the use of smart phones is going to increase and the most popular app on a smartphone is the text messaging app, then the use of text messages will also increase, so if this is viable and easy way of communicating with your clients and prospects, why not consider it?

SMS Text Message Statistics:

• People worldwide will send 8.3 trillion text messages in just this year alone. That’s almost 23 billion messages per day, or almost 16 million messages per minute. (Portio Research)
• Over 6 billion text messages are sent in the U.S. each day. (Forrester)
• Over 80% of American adults text, making it the most common cell phone activity. (Pew Internet)
• On average, Americans exchange twice as many texts as they do calls (Nielsen)
• In 2011, 31% of Americans said they preferred text messages to phone calls (Pew Research Center)

So what does this mean for your business? SMS text messaging is becoming a popular and highly used way of communicating and as it continues to grow some individuals will expect or even prefer to communicate with businesses via text messages.

SMS Text Message Analytics:

• Text messages have a 98% open rate (Mobile Marketing Watch)
• Text messaging has a 45% response rate (Velocify)
• 90% of all text messages are read in under 3 minutes. (Connect Mogul)
• It takes the average person 90 minutes to respond to email, but only 90 seconds to respond to a text message. (CTIA)

So what does this mean for your business? If you want a quick and easy way to reach your prospects and clients and you know they will receive and even respond to the message, then text message marketing is the way to go!

So what do all these statistics mean for you as a solopreneur? It means there is an opportunity to communicate with you prospects and clients via text message and text message marketing should be considered in your marketing mix, but just like every marketing strategy, you should have a plan in order for it to be successful.

Your text message marketing plan should include:

1. Who you are going to target (similar to email marketing, you must build a permission-based text message marketing list)
2. What you are going to say
3. How often you are going to send messages
4. Why your clients and prospects would want to receive text messages from you.

For ideas on how you can use text message marketing in your business, be sure to check out the article 6 Super Quick Ways to Grow Your Business Using Text Message Marketing

Note:  The majority of statistics obtained in this post was obtained from OneReach blog post, 45 Texting Statistics That Prove Businesses Need to Take SMS Seriously

Nadine Mullings

Nadine Mullings is known as The B.E.S.T. Marketing Strategist™. She is passionate about assisting small business owners to market and promote their businesses both online and offline using the four core marketing strategies in the B.E.S.T. Marketing System™.
With over 15 years of experience in marketing and an MBA with an Ecommerce specialization, Nadine uses her experience and education to assist entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants, and independent business owners to attract new clients, get repeat business, and build a strong social network.