It’s not just the UK and Ireland that are experiencing a mobile revolution – mobile usage is growing across the globe, meaning that it’s possible to connect with almost every person on the planet with a mobile message. Every international marketing strategy comes with a number of important points to plan for, such as language and cultural differences, but if you’re going to bring SMS into your international strategy we’ve pinpointed a few areas worth considering.
Regulations
The regulations we base all our advice on are from the Information Commissioner’s Office and Ofcom, both UK based bodies. It’s them who decide what constitutes acceptable use of marketing communications, and whether or not text marketers are crossing the line into spammer territory. Other countries will have other rules and regulations, depending on how their national mobile networks operate, the prevalence of mobile marketing and existing laws and practices.
Prevalence
How many companies are sending SMS marketing in your destination market? You’ll need to be clever with your messages in countries like China, where SMS spam is a serious problem. Consumers there receive a large number of spam messages a week, which can make it more difficult to convince consumers to sign up for your messages. In countries where mobile phone usage is less prevalent and still growing, there are likely to be fewer marketers and therefore consumers may be more receptive to your communications.
Cost
We’ve all experienced the phone bill fear when travelling abroad – how can using our phone cost us so much?! But sending international SMS from the UK is a different experience entirely – a lot of the time, it’s actually cheaper to send to distant countries, thanks to the differences in international networks. For example, it’s often more expensive to send to countries in Western Europe, such as Germany or France, but cheaper to send to Eastern European countries such as Albania. The most expensive countries are Myanmar, Micronesia and Nicaragua, and the cheapest is India, where text marketing is a huge industry. It’s also worth mentioning that in some countries, people can be charged by their mobile carriers to receive text messages, making it more important than ever to get opt-ins and consent. Additional information on the cost of sending internationally is available on our Textlocal pricing page.
If you’re running your mobile marketing campaigns with Textlocal you’re in luck – we are truly international, sending to almost every country on the planet. If not, it’s time to open an account, and you’ll get some free messages to start you off! Try it out and open an up an account now.
