In the year 1995, a startup called eBay had just launched, and DVDs were a new way of media. At that time, the average American sent about 0.4 texts in a whole month.Â
Fast forward to today; and the world of texting trends has significantly evolved.
Mobile phone users in the US alone sent over roughly 2 trillion texts in 2021. That’s almost 6 billion texts sent every single day.🚀 And if you look at it hourly, over 227 million messages were transmitted per hour on mobile devices in the United States.Â
These days, text message trends in mobile marketing show that people text others for both personal and professional reasons more than ever before. Using text messages to market products and services, known as SMS marketing, is becoming very common.🤗
Given all the data floating around about SMS marketing trends, this blog will provide insight into just how influential SMS marketing can be. The following text trends will give a closer look at the top metrics for text messaging in the current year.
🔑 KEY HIGHLIGHTS
- Advancements in AI, 10DLC standards, and SMS automation are enhancing texting experiences and opening opportunities, but they also raise privacy and data concerns that need to be addressed.
- Texting usage has grown exponentially, with the average American sending 0.4 texts per month in 1995 compared to over 2 trillion texts sent in the US alone in 2021.
- Personalized messaging is a top trend, as customizing experiences for each customer makes them more likely to buy from brands.
- Driving traffic with SMS links is effective as texts can directly access mobile phones and get people’s attention to visit websites.
- Text messaging accelerates sales compared to other marketing channels like phone calls.Â
Top 11 texting trends to watch in 2024
Texting is a huge part of business communication these days. Almost everyone has a phone and checks texts daily.Â
As business texting trends and SMS marketing trends grow, companies will explore different ways to make conversations easy and personalized over text. Some trends may become really popular, while others might not last.
In the current year, businesses will experiment with different texting strategies to see what works best. They’ll focus on making conversations easy and personalizing messages.Â
Text message trends in recent years aim to make messaging easier for companies to use at a large scale while keeping it personalized. So, staying ahead of these trends is crucial. Now, here are some specific trends to look at:
1. Personalized Messaging
Automation will help companies to text more people at once. Some may also send mass texts and use video or new texting apps.Â
Personalizing communication is at the forefront of SMS marketing trends, helping people recognize brand names across different types of ads and posts.Â
Most companies understand that making their messages specific to each person is very important or necessary for brand awareness.
A study shows that 80% of shoppers are more willing to buy something if a business offers a custom experience tailored just for them. And it’s not just about using someone’s first name—true personalization means using things the company knows, like where someone lives, what they bought before, and what they like best, to customize what they see.
Companies try so hard to make each interaction unique because the market is very competitive. Brands that figure out advanced ways to personalize everything in the next couple of years will probably become more popular with current customers and attract new loyal ones.😀
2. Driving Traffic with SMS
If you want more visitors to your website, focus on phones and tablets. According to Statista, more than 54% of all website visits nowadays happen on mobile devices.Â
Figuring out mobile is extremely important these days, especially as text trends show that this approach works exceptionally well with text messages.Â
SMS is made for phones and gets people’s attention. When users tap links in texts, it drives them right to websites on their phones. This increases engagement rates, leads generated, and conversion rates and complements your overall social media strategy.Â
Website owners can see how much traffic and business comes from text campaigns using codes called UTMs (Urchin Tracking Module).Â
They track what people buy after clicking text links. Based on these numbers, business owners can continue to promote text messages.Â
Focusing marketing on phones through texts is clearly successful.💰
3. Text Messaging for Accelerating SalesÂ
In addition to helping customers, text messages are expected to keep being a big source of money for companies.Â
In 2023, texts, driven by SMS marketing trends, worked better than sales calls or cold calling to strangers when it came to getting new business. Recent text message trends show that texts turned 15% of new contacts into customers, while phone calls only worked 1% of the time (Source: EZ Texting).
As we look to the present year, companies are likely to witness more success if they use both email lists and text lists together in their marketing plans. Having ways to reach people through both email and text will be very good for making more money.Â
This reflects the growing importance of texting within modern mobile messaging trends, similar to the role emailing plays in customer engagement.
4. Dominance of AI
In 2023, new types of AI started changing how companies do text marketing by making messages more customized for each person and better at chatting back and forth.
These advancements in chatbot messaging trends and texting technology trends give marketers new opportunities, but they also raise important concerns about privacy and data safety. People are concerned about privacy and keeping data safe. They also wonder if chatbot messaging trends are trustworthy. Other questions revolve around licensing fees for the technology.
Despite the concerns, 47% of brands say they use AI mostly for customer and sales services (Source: Capgemini Research Institute). This shows that businesses are dedicated to adding AI to more of their marketing strategies.
5. A2P 10DLC Messaging
A2P 10DLC refers to a special 10-digit Phone Number used for sending texts. It’s the new industry standard for trusted texting in the US.Â
Major phone companies like Verizon and AT&T have switched to 10DLC. This gives them better tools to recognize legitimate senders and block junk texts.
Since major companies are switching to the 10-DLC system, only texts from approved 10-DLC IDs will have reliable delivery. This ensures customers get marketing messages from businesses while unknown senders have a harder time sending junk texts.
Setting up a 10DLC number is cheaper than getting a short code number. 10DLC IDs are perfect for businesses sending lots of marketing texts to people at once.Â
Since it’s more affordable, more companies are likely to use an SMS gateway to set up and manage their 10DLC IDs going forward to do SMS promotions in big batches.
6. Increased Click-Through Rates
Most consumers in the US have spent at least $50 buying something after receiving a text about it.Â
In fact, over 68% of people have made a purchase that way. And 22% have spent an even bigger amount – between $50 to $500 – on an item they bought from a text message.
This indicates a shift in consumer texting behavior, where people trust and respond to business texts, leading to higher click-through rates and purchases.Â
Part of it is that texting for business has been around long enough now that we know how to use it better.
If you weren’t sure if texting would work for talking to your customers, this shows that it will. Customers are ready and willing to read and reply to business texts nowadays.
7. Booming Healthcare SMS
Even though healthcare feels like an old-fashioned way of doing business, doctors and clinics have been using text messages for a long time and keep doing it more.Â
In a recent survey done by simple texting, healthcare had the highest percentage of sectors using texting to talk to customers—a whopping 86% and it’s not just the businesses. Many patients said they want doctors to be able to text them as well, reflecting changes in consumer texting behavior within the healthcare industry.
If you work in the health industry, texting is now standard. Your customers and patients want to get texts from you, and your lists of contacts will only grow once you start using text messaging more.
8. Leveraging SMS for Customer SupportÂ
In the past, some companies thought texting was super important for talking to customers, while others just saw it as something extra, i.e., useful but not a big deal. However, in the current period, the former perspective prevails.Â
A huge percentage of younger people and the general public – 90% of millennials and 78% of the general population use their phones now when dealing with customer service. So businesses need to focus on mobile messaging like texts first.Â
Having an SMS system to help customers is what makes the most sense since so many want to communicate that way. This aligns well with advancements in call center technology, which are increasingly integrating SMS and other messaging channels to enhance customer support capabilities.
9. Interactive Marketing Texts
Interactive marketing is about having back-and-forth, one-on-one talks with customers in real-time showcasing various things to do over text that keep customers engaged. This helps you build close relationships and keep customers interested and coming back.Â
79% of companies said doing live chats helps them attract more loyal customers and increase sales.
Live chats usually happen on Facebook Messenger or website chatbots or through emerging messaging app trends. Mobile messaging trends highlight the importance of integrating text messaging into your marketing strategy.Â
But it’s smart also to use SMS to talk to customers. SMS is more dependable than live chats that happen through social media or other websites.Â
Unlike social media marketing, where messages can get lost in feeds, SMS always goes through and reaches people. So, SMS should be part of how you do conversational marketing to customers.
10. RCS Messaging
RCS or Rich Communication Services messaging improves chatting on Android phones. It’s like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger, where you can easily send pictures, videos, and files during a live conversation. This trend is part of broader messaging app trends and automated texting trends that enhance the texting experience, making it richer and more convenient for users.
In 2021, RCS was already widely used and valued at over $1.2 billion worldwide. And it’s predicted to grow even more—it’s expected to be worth over $5.5 billion by 2027.Â
RCS upgrades regular SMS so people can chat online through their phones in a richer, more convenient way beyond texting, such as short-form video content. This new type of texting experience will likely become increasingly popular in the coming years.
11. Automated SMSÂ
Research shows that marketing automation increases sales by 14.5% and cuts costs by 12.2%. Marketing automation platforms involve setting up systems to perform marketing tasks independently. Connecting text messaging to the right software allows setting up automatic text message workflows, which is a crucial part of texting technology trends.Â
For example, sending welcome texts to new newsletter signups, alerts to people who left items in an online cart, birthday greetings based on the date people gave, product updates based on the items customers have purchased or shown interest in, and order confirmations.Â
All these automated texts can be triggered by specific actions customers take, like joining your email list, abandoning an online cart, providing their birthday, or completing an order.Â
A content marketer can utilize automated texting trends to market more efficiently and increase sales at the same time.
Conclusion
The numbers show that the upcoming business texting trends will be essential for connecting with clients while also helping customer service save time and reduce costs.Â
Looking ahead, personalized and interactive texting, and automated SMS will increasingly enhance text conversations, offering more things to do over text for businesses to connect with their audience. 🚀
While ensuring data privacy also remains paramount, forward-thinking brands can leverage advanced messaging tools ethically to build trust with customers. The coming year is sure to bring many exciting developments to text message marketing trends.🤗
So, don’t get left behind – follow the lead of other corporations that have wholeheartedly embraced texting, and you’ll start to see real, tangible benefits.
FAQs
What is the biggest texting trend for businesses in 2024?
In 2024, 10DLC Messaging, RCS Messaging, and AI are likely to be the biggest text trends for businesses to provide more personalized and dynamic automated texting experiences for customers.Â
What are the best practices for ensuring data privacy in texting?
To ensure data privacy in texting:
- Use an encrypted SMS platform that protects user data both in transit and at rest.Â
- Require multi-factor authentication for employee access to the text messaging system to limit access only to authorized individuals.
- Limit the sharing of sensitive customer information over text and only send the minimum required.Â
- Establish clear data retention and deletion policies for messages containing private details and automatically delete texts after a set timeframe.
- Implement access controls and permissions within the texting platform to manage which data different employees can view.
Ensure compliance with relevant regulations, such as HIPAA, TCPA, and SOC-2, that safeguard privacy in regulated industries and domains involving financial or health data.
How can small businesses use SMS marketing automation?
SMS marketing can use SMS marketing automation by enabling businesses to develop an automatic series of text messages spread out over a set timeframe. Businesses can customize these campaigns for different customer groups based on their actions, likes, backgrounds, and characteristics, helping to target the messaging more precisely to each audience segment.