Marketing via mobile call and text messaging has been around longer than email, but has remained unpopular while email has become the star of direct marketing.
But the appearance of the app seems poised to change all that. For although more than half the potential audience have yet to downloaded a mobile application, those who do comprise a fast-growing minority. And once people do download one, half of them keep it for up to a year; news, retail, promotions and offers apps are kept even longer.
The 10th annual fast.MAP Marketing-GAP Tracking Study (launched in 2005 to track the GAP between what consumers think and do and what marketers assume they’re thinking and doing) shows consumers’ growing determination to retain control of what information they receive.
They’re happy to receive digital marketing for which they’ve given permission and download apps they know they can dump if they become irrelevant or are superseded by others, but they jib at being interrupted and pestered by irrelevant texts or calls. And they want to access the information they do receive at their own convenience.
As more people start to download apps, augmented reality – an extra-information tool, which allows people to link via an app on their smartphone with more detail about products or events around them – is also set to become more mainstream.
But as this acceptance of downloaded marketing tools grows, ‘happiness’ to take mobile marketing calls has declined by a fraction of a percent year-on-year, to an average of 1% across all sectors.
The best news for the mobile marketing industry is a 200% rise in those happy to receive mobile calls about banking; the bad news is that the increase is to a mere 3%.
Though marketing texts remain twice as popular as calls, SMS marketing experienced much the same level of decline in popularity, an overall decline from 2.2% to 1.7% in “happiness to receive SMS messages”.
Marketing via mobile – expectation and reality
The research uncovered a wide gap between marketer expectations and reality. Marketers overestimated by 400% those who’d “be happy to receive SMS messages” and by almost 500% people who feel the same about receiving mobile marketing calls.
This level of marketer optimism about the popularity of mobile and text marketing is repeated year after year and it persisted this year despite the reality of a popularity decline.
“Happiness” to receive marketing calls by landline has increased in only three out of 26 market sectors. These are charities, from 1% to 2%; mortgages from 0% to 1% and utilities, from 1% to 2%. In all other sectors it either remained at an average 1% or declined.
Contact by email remains favourite. Although there was slightly less enthusiasm for messages on insurance and IT/computers than last year, across all other sectors email’s popularity either remained the same or, in most cases, increased.
Whether the marketing message is targeted at customers or prospects email is their preferred contact route – though people are almost three times as likely to want contact from companies they use.
Mail remains second favourite for both groups. People’s happiness to receive marketing by post either increased or held firm year-on-year. All other contact media trail far behind. Click here to see chart
Year after year, marketers underestimate postal and considerably over-estimate email popularity.
Social media and Twitter marketing are in the doldrums, with the exception of three 1% increases in people’s happiness to receive marketing communication via Twitter (competitions, to 4%; insurance to 1%; and mobile phones/services to 1%) the medium’s popularity as a marketing vehicle has remained static or declined, The average across all sectors is less than 1%.
Though social media contact is twice as welcome as Twitter, the situation is similar, 5 sectors have registered a 1% increase and the rest have decreased or remain the same. The average is just under 2%.
Marketers think people are five times happier to receive marketing messages by these routes than is the case.
To get a marketing message across, the first priority is to ensure the target audience reads rather than junks it and Marketing-GAP Research reveals that if you put it in a website pop-up ad, you will cut your audience by three quarters; and 3in5 will immediately dispose of unaddressed door-dropped leaflets, company facebook friend requests and emails from unfamiliar companies. 
Conversely, fewer than 1in10 people ignore information if it comes from a company they know in a personally-addressed email or letter.
Marketers overestimate the disposability of the seven contact routes people are least likely to junk and underestimate people’s dislike of the two media people are most likely to ignore.
The 2014 Marketing-GAP study in revealing people’s increased determination to control what, how and when they receive marketing information underlines the importance of obtaining opt-in permission to continuing marketing contact – especially since there is a strong possibility that opt-in permission (rather than a passive failure to opt-out) will become the legal requirement throughout Europe.
This is why smart marketers are already seeking to boost opt-in rates by benchmarking and improving their permission statements.