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A few months ago, I wrote an article entitled “Where’s All The Texting Data” lamenting the fact that the powers that be in the messaging world were choosing not to reveal some of the most important statistics that bely the value of this relatively new marketing and sales medium.
As promised, we’ve been on the hunt for just about anything we can find and finally we have some great data to share. Thanks to our friends over at Zipwhip and a rather large survey they ran of the intersection of business and texting, here’s what we can pass along to you.
I think we all had a feeling about this one, but it's nice to see some numbers behind it. Yes, unread text messages aren't really a thing. This is mostly because the phone software doesn't provide for keep track of these messages easily, but it doesn't mean it's not true. Of course you read your text messages. Most people would argue that their most important pieces of communication are there. How could you possibly not read them?
While the directionality of this statistic is true, I think that users are greatly overstating how frequently they respond to emails quickly. We already know that leads respond to texts quickly. But I have some strong doubts that that email number is that high. If anything, leads are thinking about very specific emails and not all business emails.
(If anyone has ever come across any other data concerning email response rates, please, please, please let us know!)
If you haven't read my piece on phone call answer rates, I encourage you to check that out here. Essentially, we were able to back out that phone call answer rates are between 1-2% for any phone calls where the person being called doesn't recognize the number.
Zipwhip's study goes onto further this narrative. The statistic they quote is "In a recent Zipwhip survey, 87% of consumers said they ignore phone calls from businesses and unknown numbers often."
This may be the part of phone marketing that's changed the most in the last 10 years. Thanks to improvements in Caller ID and Spam ID and Call Screeners, people are so much empowered to not answer the phone than they used to be.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. This one has got to make sense to most of you. And it should. Texting has always been more popular amongst younger people.
But here's what you should be looking at. Even at the Baby Boomers generation (55-75 years old in 2019), desire for businesses to text is 64%!!! That number should simply astound you. And we see that play out with our customers as well.
Using text messages for sales is not simply a young person's game!
First of all, if you're interested in emojis, you should check out our video on how emojis evolved and how they work today.
Emojis are a big deal in today's texting environment. Emotions had long been absent from text communication but no longer. Being able to help the person on the other end of thread understand what you're feeling can go a long way to making progress.
And this is true in business as well. Sure you may not find yourself using the more whimsical ones, but there are hundreds and hundreds of different little characters to help you get your message across.
Acronyms on the other hand are almost certainly not a good idea. While we constantly advocate for the informality of texting, we do not advocate for the laziness. If you have something to say, say it. IMHO, don't use acronyms.
Eli Robinson is the General Manager of FranFunnel and the COO of Metric Collective. He's 😀 whenever he finds new texting data.
