Do you send SMS? If yes, how frequently? Now, answer – Do you get SMS, and if yes, how many a day?
SMS or the Short Message Service was earlier the most widely used data application, with an estimated 3.5 billion active users, or about 80 per cent of all mobile subscribers.
But people are not using SMS much to communicate. SMS is just understood to be a business service for generating privacy codes or OTPs (One-Time Passwords).
However, the marketing companies are resorting to SMS for mobile marketing. They say SMS is sure way for direct marketing.
As such, the messaging service is being overused, so much so that it is an annoyance at times as people get random messages from unknown sources.
SMS as bulk service
Customer messaging is much sold by direct marketing companies during election time in India or during festivals or special occasions.
Business owners are lured to directly promote their products or services with guaranteed bulk SMS delivery to targeted clients.
Customer engagement strategies are planned by the direct sellers and business houses at the cost of innocent clients who then get bombarded with unsolicited SMSes which generally are offers and promotions.
There is hardly any two-way conversations over such messaging, yet SMS service is sold to prospective political parties or business enterprises as highly efficient way to reach directly to the audience at a very low cost.
SMS Challengers
SMS is increasingly challenged by Internet Protocol-based messaging services such as Apple’s iMessage, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Viber WeChat (in China) and Line (in Japan).
But, for these messaging services one needs smart phones with data connections whereas SMS continues to function on any mobile without consuming any data, albeit its outgoing usage is chargeable.
