2017 Business Trend in the SMS Marketing and Communication World

With person to person SMS continuing to decline due to the proliferation of messaging applications such as WhatsApp, 2017 will see a further increase in the use of SMS for mobile advertising. According to Portio Research some 1.7 trillion Application to Person (A2P) SMS will be sent globally by 2018. One of the main reasons is that SMS is the only application available on every mobile handset.

According to the research here are some trends for mobile advertising and the use of SMS in 2017.

2 Factor SMS Authentication

We are seeing a growing number of companies using SMS as a security layer for its services. SMS will be increasing used to share notifications, login confirmations, password resets and updates on status or content shares with users.

Internet of Things

With more devices connected to the internet now and the so called ‘Internet of Things’ expanding, many more connected devices will use SMS for real time alerts and information to device owners.

Mobile DMP or Mobile CRM (Customer Relationship Management Software)

A mobile DMP (Data Management Platform) is a centralized platform that ingests, organizes, and segments a marketer’s first- and third-party mobile and desktop audience data assets in one place for audience creation, analytics, and execution. Brands use mobile DMPs to:

• Build sophisticated audience segments across first- and third-party data for precision at scale.
• Create, optimize, and activate cross-platform mobile and web campaigns for consistent messaging across all consumer touch points.
• Leverage deep mobile integrations to send audience data to top execution platforms and power targeted mobile in-app, web, and video advertising.
• Connect audience interactions across mobile and desktop touch points to provide the most cohesive customer experience anywhere, and track response and actions across various screens and channels.
• Generate robust audience analytics to get deep actionable insights into your mobile audience composition and in-market behaviours. 

Email marketing has been used for years to keep in contact and maintain relationships with customers. Lately, with the increasing use of mobile phones over desktop computers, we’ve seen marketers rapidly adapting to mobile consumer habits by transitioning their Email marketing programs, like Constant Contact and Mailchimps to a mobile DMP, specifically with SMS capabilities in order to reach and engage their audiences more directly through text messaging than Emails. 

• Open rates on desktop computers have dropped over 18% in the past couple of years. 
• 89% of consumers will delete a poorly formatted email if viewed on mobile. 27% will unsubscribe.
• According to a report commissioned by SinglePoint, it was found that text message open rates exceed 99%, and even more shocking is that 90% of all text messages are read within 3 minutes of being received on the mobile phone.
• When you compare the open rates of text messages to email marketing open rates for a business such as a restaurant (23% open rates), you’re looking at over 3X the amount of your customers opening your text messages over your emails.

Sectors which will increase use of SMS in 2017

The main sectors which will increasingly use SMS as their mobile advertising platform will be retail, government and travel sectors. As business and organizations move towards paperless offices, SMS will be used to deliver promo codes, marketing messages, billing cycles, payment alerts and transaction alerts.

The number of businesses globally who use SMS for their mobile advertising is growing as it provides a low cost, reliable and secure way to contact customers. Remember that 98% of SMS messages are read. 


No longer does one need to question the need for dedicated mobile marketing budgets or justify the spend on the medium. Existentially speaking, mobile is here to stay.

For more information on mobile marketing and trends, please feel free to contact us.