Marketing has come a long way in the past 50 years. What was once a very corporate, centralize market with billboards, newspapers, radio, and television marketing has become very complex. Now you can go through any number of channels to advertise on the traditional platforms as well as social media, emailing, texting, and web advertising. Not only do you need to know what avenues your users use (it is probably better to advertise on television for 65+ and Facebook for 18-25), but you need to know what marketing is even fruitful.
Here are some of the highlights of the infographic below:
- 98% of texts are opened whereas tweets, Facebook feeds, and emails all have less than a 20% hit rate.
- There are more American on texting plans than unique accounts on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook combined.
- People on average look at their phones 150 times a day. WOW!
What does your business or ministry prefer and will you be reconsidering your tactics?
[via MoGreet]
Jonathan Assink says
I think we open text messages far more often because we presume the buzzing in our pocket to be a friend or family member trying to contact us, rather than a brand (or church) trying to sell to us. I would find it incredibly invasive were a church to somehow have a service that texts me an invitation any time I’m in their neighborhood. “How do they know where I am? What else do they know about me?”
I’ve never met anyone who’s received a text message from their carrier, opened it to find an ad, and said, “Oh good! I can now buy more ringtones!”
Jeremy Smith says
I agree that if a church send you a text without you having signed up for it, that it would be invasive, but it should be noted that we do not support that kind of communication. Many youth ministries have a feature where you send a text to the number to sign up for it, thus making it non-invasive and you can always opt-out.
Dale Aceron says
Even though the stats are favoring text marketing, I think I would block the number if I received a weekly marketing text from a company. Text is more for communicating back and forth, not to be shouted at with their sales pitch.
Jeremy Smith says
Agreed. Yet, I would assume that we would not send text messages unless their was buy in from the user. One should never grab a list of phone numbers and assume you can text them, that is purely unethical.
Dustin W. Stout says
These kinds of stats are misleading. The text messages may have a 98% open rate, but of the 98%, there is close to a 100% annoyance rate. Every time I receive a marketing message via text message, I automatically report it as spam to my carrier and resolve to never give the company/organization represented by it any of my information ever again.
Even on the off chance I opted in for such messages, I’ve quickly opted out once I get a few of them. I’m sure the opt-out rate is astronomical. Let’s see an infographic on that!
Jeremy Smith says
I would love to see an infographic on it globally. Personally, in my youth ministry 95% of my students have been using our text messaging service for over a year now and only one out of 45 people have opted-out. So, if done ethically and morally well (no spam and encourage participation) then it is a HUGE success and better than social media.
Joel Sam says
We use text messaging for a wide variety of things at our church and most people like it especially the youth and young adults. We also used it during the major storms in the mid-atlantic this year to let members know that the church was closed.
We use text for real time polls as well as sending out event messages. We don’t usually send more than 2 messages per week. So I agree that a church would not be wise to bombard its members or treat it like twitter.
The opt-out rate is about 5%
Full disclosure my company also offers a wide variety of marketing services for churches including text messaging and churches and their members have been quite happy with the system.
Jeremy Smith says
Love the real-world examples and data on opting out. Good share!
Joel Sam says
No problem Jeremy. If churches are looking for a cost effective way to get started our service starts at just $12 per month for churches and has the most features of any I have seen including: text to screen, scheduling messages, and Facebook/Twitter integration. http://symbiota.com/crossmrkt