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The Growth of SMS Marketing

SMS messaging is the fastest growing marketing channel in the UK, with the potential to reach millions of people on a daily basis, according to a newly published report.

The State of SMS reveals some interesting stats on how marketing by text message is available to a huge audience and is seen as more reliable than marketing by email or social media.

Here’s just some of the facts and figures from the report.

• 93% of the UK population now own a mobile phone
• At the end of 2016, there were 79.14 million active mobile devices in the UK
• Only 50% of organisations use SMS marketing, but this is expected to grow to 92% by 2018

The report also says that messaging is the most popular feature on mobile devices. 89% of users claim they use SMS, followed by browsing.

SMS Marketing – Opting-In

The State of SMS also looked at the issue of opting-in to receiving marketing texts.

37.2 million users in the UK opted in to receive text messages from businesses in 2016. That’s 7 million more than Facebook’s Audience. This is expected to increase to 48.65 million by 2020 – making text messaging the fastest growing marketing channel in the UK.

The research also shows that recipients respond well to SMS Marketing. In 2017, 54% of opted in users would engage with an SMS from a business – with around 25% clicking on a web link and another 25% forwarding the text on.

All this is good news for the charity sector. Charities are expected to see a 34% increase in donors opting in to receive text messages by the end of 2020.

There are currently 6.2 million donors who have opted in to receive texts on fundraising initiatives, charity news or confirmation of donations. This figure is expected to rise to 8.4 million by 2020.

SMS Marketing – Make It Simple with instaGiv

With the huge marketing potential available from text messages, charities should act now to get a proper system for allowing recipients to opt-in to marketing.

This is vital due to the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) coming into force in May 2018. This will change the way businesses can handle personal data and the rules around opting-in to marketing.

All this is taken care of with instaGiv’s Consent Feature.

This gives charities a safety net with regards to using supporter details for future contact.

When charities enable the Consent Feature on their fundraising campaigns they are giving the supporter the option at the point of donation to either opt-in to be contacted again or to opt-out.

This means that anyone who donates has read clear opt in/out details on the advertising material when they received their SMS keyword and shortcode.

For example, a person could receive a text asking for a donation like:

Text GIVE to 12345 to donate £3. To donate and not receive any future calls/SMS from us. text GIVE NO

You can also learn more by getting in touch with us.