Text Messaging Dominates the Mobile Market

A recently released survey from the Direct Marketing Association of 800 cell phone users suggests if you’re going to market to consumers via their mobile phones, text messaging is the channel to target. Text messages account for 70 percent of consumer mobile marketing responses, easily surpassing a 41 percent response rate to surveys sent to cell phones and a 30 percent response rate for e-mail offers. Here’s a look at some more of the survey’s findings.

* 24 percent of those surveyed have responded to a mobile offer;

* one-third of the respondents who said they didn’t respond to any mobile marketing offers indicated they had never received an offer;

* 71 percent of people who respond to mobile offers have data (text messaging) plans;

* 21 percent of respondents said they reply to three or more offers per month;

* teenagers 15 to 17 years of age (19 percent) and young adults, ages 21 to 30 (19 percent), are more than twice as likely to respond to offers on their mobile devices than individuals 18 to 20 years of age (7 percent);

* higher-income respondents who earn more than $60,000 per year are more likely to respond to mobile offers;

* the entertainment/music/video industry is the most frequent user of mobile marketing for offers (44 percent); followed by food/beverage and telecommunications/mobile (21 percent each); beauty/personal care (15 percent); automotive/transportation, business services, consumer electronics, financial services and vacation/travel (12 percent each); and health care/pharmaceutical and real estate (7 percent each); and

* lack of interest and cost of airtime were the top reasons cited for not responding to mobile offers.

For more information, go to www.the-dma.org .