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12 Fast Facts About SMS

It'll come as no surprise that we're pretty big advocates of the mighty mobile phone and more specifically, SMS communications. Even with the rise in other messaging apps (as we’ve said before), not only is SMS very much alive, it is still growing in popularity for businesses. Deloitte estimate that 87% of individuals in the UK either have access to or ownership of a smartphone and SMS can even be delivered to the humble Nokia 3310 (the original), no data package required.

So what makes SMS so popular? Well, we may be a little biased but it is crazy effective and to prove it, we’ve pulled together 12 fast but powerful stats:

• The SMS average open rate of 95% in the UK and 94% globally. Which is even more impressive, when you consider the average for email is just 20.9% (Source: Esendex)
• 90% of all text messages are read within just 3 minutes (Source: Techjury)
• SMS benefits from an average click through rate of 19% vs just 4.2% for email (Source: Esendex)
• SMS produces 10,000 times less carbon than a Printed/Posted Letter and 300 times less carbon than an email (Source: weather.com)
• SMS vouchers are x10 more likely to be redeemed than print (Source: emarketer)
• 90% of mobile users who participated in an SMS loyalty program felt they had gained value from it (Source: SmartInsights)
• SMS marketing campaigns are opted out less than 5% of the time (Source: SmartInsights)
• 75% of people would like to have offers sent to them via SMS
• 9 out of 10 consumers would like to use messaging to talk to a business
• It is predicted that 48.7 million people will choose to receive business SMS messages by 2020 (Source: Mobile Xco)
• Consumers receive on average just 178 SMS messages a month vs a whopping 1,216 emails (Source: Esendex)
• 74% of respondents report an improved overall impression of businesses that interact with them via SMS (Source: Forbes)
• See… bias with good reason. So sign up for your free account today and give SMS comms a go – we are sure you won’t regret it.