[Guide] What Does the Future of Text Message Marketing Hold?

Explore our new content series to understand the current state of text message marketing, how the industry arrived here, and where it’s heading in 2021 and beyond.

COVID-19 solidified the shift from brick-and-mortar retail to online shopping in 2020—and mobile helped lead the way.

Last year’s Cyber Monday was the largest e-commerce day in U.S. history, with 37% of digital sales attributed to purchases made on mobile devices. This aligned with the findings in our 2020 Retail & E-Commerce Holiday Marketing Report, which showed that 80% of consumers planned to complete a purchase via mobile during the holiday season. In fact, nearly half of consumers planned to shop primarily using mobile devices.

And throughout the year, retailers increasingly captured consumer attention with text message marketing.

As COVID-19 disrupted shopping behaviors and rapidly transformed the e-commerce landscape, retailers doubled down on text messaging. According to a survey from CommerceNext, while they were reducing spending in other areas, retailers said they expected to increase investment in text message marketing by more than 50% over the course of the year.

But businesses weren’t the only ones showing greater interest in text messaging. Our own survey of 2,000 consumers indicated that over 90% of shoppers would sign up to receive text messages from brands and that 55% already have. Nearly half of respondents said they became more interested in doing so during 2020.

Navigating the new year

Brands are being forced to navigate a transformative moment in digital marketing—yours may be one of them. While consumer behaviors continue to evolve, the impact of traditional marketing channels is diminishing. An accelerated pivot toward e-commerce and mobile technology—as well as a growing demand for personalized, 1:1 experiences—makes it more important to engage consumers on their channel of choice.

Businesses are innovating new ways to engage audiences, build brand loyalty, and increase incremental revenue via text message marketing in a world that is becoming more and more mobile every day.

Whether you’re new to text message marketing or looking for ways to level up your current strategy, our inaugural Attentive Outlook—an ongoing series exploring the most pressing topics in our industry—will help you understand what consumers want from this channel, how it’s being used by your industry peers, and the steps you can take to maximize opportunities.

Explore Attentive Outlook 2021 to discover:

• Predictions from brands, vendors, and other industry leaders about the future of text message marketing
• The text message marketing myths brands should dismiss in 2021
• How text messaging evolved from fledgling technology to leading performance marketing channel

Stay tuned for future updates, including:

• What consumers want from text message marketing
• How marketing professionals are using text messaging today
• Best practices for evaluating and optimizing your own text message marketing strategy

Real-time, personalized, two-way communication is no longer a “nice-to-have”—it’s essential to modern marketing. Find out where your brand fits in, and how you can seize the moment in the year ahead.