There’s a special relationship between a human and their mobile phone. In fact, a recent study by British psychologists revealed that an average young person spends five hours a day on their device. Business opportunity? I think so.
On average, how many times do you check your phone a day? 50 or 60 times? Well, I can safely tell you now; double your estimation and you’re probably getting close.
In effect, young adults use their smartphones roughly twice as much as they think they do, equating to around five hours a day. That’s just over 76 days a year spent learning, laughing, liking and sharing!
Is it any wonder why there were 111,169 divorces in England and Wales in 2014? We’re in love with something else! (But let’s not open that can of worms.)
The truth is, this research only strengthens the fact that smartphones hold the key to businesses successfully communicating with consumers.
Living in a smartphone generation
‘I just need to post this picture of my food’. ‘I better check the footy scores on my app’. ‘Let me compare the price of these shoes online’. Any of these sound familiar? There’s always something to do on our phones.
And then there’s the psychological characteristics. Researchers argue that ‘rapid mobile phone interactions’ are becoming habitual for smartphone users. We treat phones like a precious electronic diary, with most of us not even letting our nearest and dearest use them for more than 10 seconds. Which is funny as we’d trust a babysitter to look after our kids, but not our phones!
In other words, we’re an app adoring, Facebook fanatical, tenacious text messaging generation.
Sure, you can argue that the rise of the mobile phone has somewhat diminished the art of communication and the English language. But I personally see it as a new avenue for your local takeaway, a high-street retailer, a reliable car garage etc. to get their foot in the door and reach thousands of potential customers.
And one of the most effective ways of doing this, is via the means of business text messaging.
The power of business SMS
To be honest, it doesn’t surprise me that young adults spend an average of five hours a day on their phones. Especially when Google highlighted that 82% of smartphone users turn to their phone to influence a purchase decision and 91% look for ideas while completing a task.
But let’s face it, a lot has changed since the first commercial SMS message was sent by Neil Papworth some 25 years ago. It’s believed that over 23 billion texts are sent worldwide every day. And then there are all the amazing features you can include, such as: mobile surveys, tickets, vouchers, and loyalty cards (to name a few).
In our latest white paper: Mobile marketing for small and medium size businesses, research revealed that 63% of people have read a SMS marketing or communication whilst watching TV, 26% on the toilet, and crazily enough; 3% during sex! In other words, we’re obsessed with text messaging.
And then there’s the performance stats of business SMS. The industry standard read rate is 98%, while the response rate stands at an unprecedented 32%. MMS marketing also holds its weight in the marketing mix for business communication proving to be a cost-effective way of sending multimedia such as audio, video and imagery to customers.
If you combine these findings with the amount of time young adults spend on their phones, it’s a no-brainer for businesses. With our free award-winning platform, you can instantly send bulk text messages with special offers, personalised tickets, and vouchers.
Or you can even send SMS alerts, delivery notifications and booking confirmations to help reduce appointment ‘no-shows’ and improve customer satisfaction.
So, what are you waiting for? When a customer is on their phone next, make sure they’re reading a message from you. Embrace the smartphone generation and give business SMS a go for free today.
