Text Message Spam: Why are so many companies using SMS marketing and Robotext?

I have a new text best friend. It's a brand.

As I scrolled through my phone recently, I was surprised to find that many of the messages I received were not from friends and family, but from work. Package updates from UPS made sense, as did alerts about restaurant reservations I made over the weekend. But why was I receiving an offer from a pool-sharing service I've never used, or a warning about a sale on items from Tory Burch, a brand I've never purchased? How about an invitation to a pride party?

Seeing this situation, I felt a little sad and uncool. I'd rather have a friend invite me to a party than an app made by a big pharmaceutical company that makes Botox. It's a reality that creeps up on us, but it's also just a reality of being a consumer today. Contacting consumers via SMS (text messages) is becoming increasingly popular among marketers. If you feel like brands are sending you more messages than they used to, it's because they are.

“For marketers, having someone's phone number is extremely valuable,” said Erin Blake, vice president director of connection strategy at digital marketing agency Digitas. She says, “There's a reason why so many brands are turning to SMS as a marketing channel and why we're seeing so much more of it now.”

It's not that difficult to understand why. I voluntarily gave my phone number to every company that currently texts me (except for one) (supposedly). And we considered engaging with those messages much more than other ads. To be honest, if I had looked carefully at the party invitation, I might have gone.

Open text messages more often than emails

There are multiple reasons marketers turn to text to reach consumers, but the primary reason is that text is effective.

According to Insider Intelligence, text message open rates are astronomically high, with a 97% open rate within 15 minutes of delivery. This is much higher than email open rates (estimated at around 20 percent). Consumers also click on his SMS at a higher rate than on emails.

“Text messages are processed in near real-time and can have a conversation within minutes, whereas email can have a low response rate within days,” Blake said.

Sara Varni, chief marketing officer at Attentive, an SMS marketing platform, explained that text is serving as a new channel as other traditional formats have become difficult to navigate. “There's been a lot of change in terms of privacy and regulation in terms of how people retarget customers, and some of the previously tried-and-true channels, whether it's Google's retargeting program or email, have declined.” “Over time,” she said.

GDPR, the European privacy law that came into effect in 2018, has made it a little harder for companies to track you and follow you around the internet with ads for rugs you decide not to buy. (This is why all websites are now required to accept cookie trackers.) His Apple move to tighten user privacy protections is also causing headaches for email marketers. Masu.

Many people's inboxes are flooded with messages from dozens of companies they've interacted with several times, if at all. Even if he wanted to jump on the American Airlines sale, he would have to sift through 30 other offers that he wasn't interested in. People Text His messages aren't as cluttered, at least for the time being. One reason is that it's more expensive for brands. Sending a text message is better than email.

“In general, most users' text message feeds are much less spam than their email feeds. Permission is difficult to get, but once you get it, it works,” says advertising firm Publicis' Top Commerce Strategies. Director Jason Goldberg said.

Unlike email, text doesn't have a separate folder for junk or spam. Also, services like Gmail have a separate section for promotions that you don't even have to see if you don't want to. “SMS Messenger clients have no such filtering,” he says Goldberg.

All of our text messages are mashed together, combining branded text with messages from mom. This is a solid deal for marketers, but it may not be so important to you.

“Text message inboxes are incredibly personal, and many people do most of their daily interpersonal communication there,” Blake says. “I would caution brands to think seriously about how they can better manage that trust and build that relationship, because once you break trust, it's much harder to get it back. .”

The Good, the Spam, and the Ugly

What industry insiders say about text message marketing is that text messages are one of many ways brands can reach consumers, and the best stakeholders involved can be very selective about the frequency and content of their messages. It means being wise. They point out that SMS marketing is more conversational than just a hard-sell attempt, and consumers can often respond to messages to actually interact. That's actually true to some extent.

There are many examples of branded text messages working. There are moments when SMS becomes extremely difficult, such as when a plane moves gates or your luggage is delayed. Website and text message chatbots are notoriously useless at solving anything but basic problems, but in a world where artificial intelligence and his ChatGPT are actually improving chatbots, SMS You can see that it also adds value. “Robots will probably make people happier than humans, thanks to GPT, so SMS is likely to grow along with all other text-based services,” Goldberg said. Ta. (Sure, the current AI hype machine is basically either solve everything or destroy the world, but it's hard to say.)

Varni says text message marketing can be used to provide consumers with a curated experience, send special deals to loyal customers, educate people, and alert people when products they want become available. He said that it can be a powerful medium for Her company works with clients to ensure they don't go overboard. “We don’t want SMS to become the next version of email and create a graveyard of brands and promotions in the inbox,” she said.

Legitimate companies and brands often sign up to receive text messages in exchange for discounts, free shipping, or some kind of gift. Attentive's research found that 91% of consumers worldwide have signed up for or are interested in signing up for his SMS program.

Still, it doesn't take long for people to start getting irritated and overwhelmed by all the text. According to a report from data firm Validity, 96% of survey respondents have been irritated by marketing text messages at least sometimes, 84% have received a text message from a company they didn't register with, and 70% have received a text message from a brand. I could tell that the text made me feel anxious. poses a data security risk.

According to data shared with Vox by spam text and call blocker Robokiller, 70% of spam messages identified on its platform in May and June 2023 were related to brand marketing messages. Even if the text isn't technically spam, it is. Patrick Falzon, general manager of Teltec, the app maker that developed Robokiller, said he wonders how many consumers are seeing them. “These are messages coming from what appear to be legitimate companies trying to lure people back into their web funnels and experiences by offering some promotional discount or sales offer,” he said. He said that it means guiding from the entry point. Toward some goal or action, such as sales. He acknowledged that while high open rates are appealing to marketers, they can create tension for brands over time. “Consumer fatigue will probably increase,” he said, “and along with that, there will be consumer backlash.”

The good news for consumers is that if they want to stop receiving marketing texts from a brand, they can often just reply “stop” to the message. Phone providers also tend to take the issue very seriously, in part because of government mandates, by blocking robotexts and making sure people can opt out if they say they want to. Still, this system is imperfect. Not all marketers listen to consumers' requests to “stop” or refrain from giving out their phone number to others. “There are more gaps in the regulatory framework on the call and text side,” Falzon said.

Between brands and politicians, you might as well throw your phone into the ocean (well, sort of)

Much of our personal data is already on the internet and, for better or worse, in the hands of attackers. This landscape makes it a little difficult to understand how to think about text message marketing from a distance. On the other hand, it's not ideal for a company that is so bad at protecting data to have yet another piece of information. On the other hand, emails from companies with sales aren't the worst thing in the world. Oh, yet another brand has my phone number? At least I got a 20% discount by passing it on.

“We're starting to see brands asking for your phone number within the funnel,” Falzon says. “We, as consumers, have become desensitized to disseminating information online.”

The tipping point here comes down to whether people are so inundated with messages that their phones start to look like email inboxes. In this space, there's so much of everything that it's almost impossible to find anything. Again, there isn't much ability to filter text messages like email at this point.

While we hope brands don't blow up our phones to the level of email in the near future, we should prepare ourselves for heavy text usage in the coming months. Marketers typically jump on the holiday season and send an extra number of texts. This means you can expect more messages to be sent in October, November, and December. And then there's election season, and with it comes a plethora of political texts. And then there's the next holiday season.

“Political campaigns are also really leaning towards SMS, and it's not limited to commercial brands,” Falzon said. “Politicians are taking advantage. Unfortunately, I think the next 12 to 18 to 24 months are going to be pretty tough for consumers.”

Stay tuned for more and more messages from Starbucks and Old Navy, as well as Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.

We live in a world that constantly tries to deceive and deceive us, and we are always surrounded by deceptions big and small. It can feel impossible to navigate. Every two weeks, join Emily Stewart as we look at all the little ways our economic system controls and manipulates average people.welcome to big squeeze.

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Correction, July 13th, 11:30 a.m. ET: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the percentage of Validity survey respondents who found marketing text messages annoying. The correct number is 96%.