Inauguration May Be Dawn of New Mobile Age

I’m sure many of you, like me, will be watching the inauguration on television today or possibly following it through one of the many websites that will broadcast it live. While this is certainly an exciting and interesting time in American politics, the presidential inauguration also marks an important event for mobile carriers. Millions of people intent on following the day’s events will chose SMS and text messaging as their primary media outlet of choice today. Verizon alone is expected to see over 1.4 billion text messages sent today (yes, billion) which will shatter the previous record of 803 million messages set on election day.

It’s no surprise to see so many people using SMS during the day today. The Obama campaign has set the benchmark in terms of new media use with a dedication to innovative media channels like text messaging, social networking, and YouTube. In the process, many uninitiated users “tuned in” to these new media outlets and have continued to use them long after the election was decided. Today’s inauguration promises to catapult SMS usage to new heights.  Many people will be following the ceremony on their phones by texting HISTORY to 56333 to get updates sent directly to them. Others will undoubtedly be checking their mobile devices to read and participate in Twitter conversations about today’s events (check out obamainaugural at www.twitter.com/obamainaugural).

While I’m certainly thrilled with the spike in usage today, I’m more intrigued by how users who tuned into the inauguration today will continue to use SMS in the next few months. Mobile marketing is certainly on the mind of many marketing execs at this point, especially as more traditional media outlets yield fewer and fewer leads (for more detailed info on this topic, check out Kevin Hillstrom’s post The End Of An Era In Catalog Marketing), and there is no doubt that SMS is gaining. Nielson Mobile reports that currently the average American mobile subscriber sends or receives roughly 350 text messages each month, as opposed to making or receiving 200 phone calls. Additionally, there has been 160% increase in SMS usage since 2007.

With numbers like that, it’s hard for most businesses to ignore text messaging as a legitimate marketing channel. I know many of you are excited about the policies of our new administration, but I have to admit that I’m mostly excited for how it transforms the mobile space.

Tags: SMS Marketing, text marketing

Add Personalized Product Recommendations to Your eCommerce Site

Istobe is a powerful recommendation engine that makes it easy to add recommendations to your eCommerce site. How powerful? Shoppers who click on Istobe recommendations spend 20-50% more than the average visitor.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 at 1:26 pm and is filed under SMS Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.