Are associations overlooking text messaging?
Mobile tech guru Tomi Ahonen (@tomiahonen) opened the 2011 Digital Now conference today urging associations to take advantage of mobile technology. He talked about using a multimedia approach, but some numbers he shared about text messaging (SMS) specifically were hard to ignore:
- In, 2009 SMS passed voice calls as the primary use of mobile phones in the United States (long after this happened in many other countries in the world).
- SMS use worldwide is big as eight Facebooks.
- One third of SMS use in India is content (business to consumer).
- MMS (multimedia messaging) has 2.2 billion users worldwide.
- Even on smart phones, the top uses are messaging, apps, voice, and then mobile web.
- 42 percent of American teens can send SMS blindfolded.
- Opt-in (permission-based) mobile marketing campaigns average 25 to 40 percent response rates.
Most of of the buzz around mobile today is around smartphone apps, but this info makes me wonder if associations are mistaken to overlook simple text messaging as a tool for connecting with members. SMS is a very personal medium, so association using it must choose carefully, but the potential value of an effective use is high.
Ahonen shared a slide with the eight unique advantages of the mobile medium. One of them stood out to me as a good way to think about possible SMS use: Mobile is available at the moment of creative impulse.
Associations that host meetings and education events have the opportunity to engage their members when they are most energized, during and immediately after such events. Often it's difficult to capture that energy. Enabling an engagement avenue via text messaging during events could be a great way to do so.
If you have ideas or examples of SMS use at associations, please share.
(And you can follow along with the Digital Now conference on Twitter via the #diginow hashtag.)
| | Permalink |
Comments
Hi Joe-
Great points about mobile apps having so much hype, it makes sense, but with smart phones only making up 28% of mobile users (in the U.S.), that leaves 72% left out of the conversation. With text messaging available on 99% of all mobile phones, it makes sense that more and more associations are seeing the benefits of using it.
Here are the ways we're seeing text messaging (SMS) used at association events, I hope these are helpful:
* Alerts and Announcements
Before, during and after the event.
* Live Questions and Answers
Attendees can text in questions and get responses or they can text questions to speaker panels vs passing the microphone around. The benefit to that is that event organizers (and even the speakers) have a record of the questions asked so they can making improvements.
* Text to Screen
Often time used for voting, polls or to post the Live Q&A questions for everyone at the session to see.
Those are the 3 main ones for association events and conferences, but using text messaging for reminders and updates throughout the year is also a great way to stay in touch with members. Whether it is for events, to check out regular association updates, to remember to renew their membership, etc, it's truly a powerful medium.
Thanks for the post!
:)
Posted by: Noel Chandler | May 16, 2011 7:09 PM