How Are Marketers Capitalizing On Young People’s Texting?
By Anna Johnson on June 13th, 2009As reported by eMarketer, research by a number of companies points to young people making heavy use of texting on their mobile phones. Marketers capitalizing on the texting phenomenon, however, lag far behind… or do they?
Research by GfK NOP and Limbo (now Brightkite) indicates that 83 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds, and 85 percent of 25-to-34-year-olds, were sending text messages by the end of 2008. This is considerably higher than the 61 percent of all mobile users who use text.
Meanwhile, a PROMO magazine survey found that while over 25 percent of marketers were investing in SMS and digital coupons, their investment in text marketing lagged way behind their investments in email, blogs, display and search marketing.
And this, according to eMarketer, might be a missed opportunity, since Limbo and GfK research indicates that nearly 50 percent of mobile phone users aged 18 to 34 also remembered mobile ads.
But is it really a missed opportunity? Or is it just common sense to be wary of what seems to be a somewhat fickle marketing medium. Just because young people frequently text each other doesn’t mean they want marketers texting them as well.
Sure the same argument could be made about other media, and I definitely think there’s a place for text marketing. However, just as we’ve seen the backlash against telemarketing and spam translated into legislation in a number of countries, marketers are right to tread carefully when it comes to text marketing.
Source: eMarketer, “Mobile Texting Opportunities for Marketers (or Mobi Txt Opps),” eMarketer, June 1, 2009
