What to Expect When Texting

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Intro: Text Messages Work

There is increasing evidence that text messaging works as a way to persuade, to remind, to advertise, and to change behavior. Text messages have been used by nonprofit and advocacy groups in a variety of ways, from reminding people to take HIV/AIDS medication to building mobile lists through a text-to-screen campaign.

However, there is still a lack of substantial data and conclusive studies that have evaluated the use of SMS, even from commercial marketers. Measuring mobile campaigns is complicated, as this article in RCR Wireless News says. "The challenges in mobile are so complex that even Google Inc. is struggling to compile accurate information. Google AdWords, a service that tracks the number of visitors that take a specific action on a site, leverages technologies such as JavaScript and cookies that — while ubiquitous on the fixed-line Web — are relatively uncommon in mobile." However, some upcoming studies, such as this one by the Nonprofit Federation and MobileCause and this one by the Mobile Marketing Association are likely to provide more metrics.

Although there haven't been enough studies and use cases to provide conclusive data and metrics on what to expect from a text message campaign, the examples MobileActive.org has compiled below provide an overview of what we know about text message effectiveness to date.

Text Messaging Effects in Politics

New Voter Project: Texting Out the Vote

In 2006, the Student PIRGs’ New Voters Project and Working Assets, two groups in the United States, worked with researchers from the University of Michigan and Princeton University to study the effectiveness of text messaging on voter turnout. The researchers sent text messages to young people reminding them to vote.

The methodology was sound: Researchers selected a random sample of 4,000 mobile phone numbers from 8,000 people who had registered to vote, and tested variations of different messages.

Overall, they found that the text message reminders increased the likelihood that the voter would go to the polls.

  • Text messages increased the chance that a person would vote by 4.2%
  • 59% of voters surveyed found the messages helpful.
  • 23% found the messages bothersome.
  • Each additional vote generated cost $1.56; much cheaper than conventional methods like door-to-door campaigning or fliers.

Presidential Candidates study

A study by Limbo, a mobile marketing company, included short ads (30-40 characters) on the bottom of text messages. The ads advertised U.S. presidential candidates. According to the study, 6% of respondents reported significant changes to their voting intentions and 22% said their voting intentions had been changed a little. The study found (from this press release):

  • "Six percent (6%) of those surveyed after the campaigns said that the advertising had changed their voting intentions significantly. This was highest for men at seven percent (7%), those aged 35+ at seven percent (7%), and for African Americans at nine percent (9%). An additional 22 percent (22%) said their intentions had been changed a little."
  • "Fourteen percent (14%) said that their perceptions of the candidate was now more positive than before seeing the campaign, with only four percent (4%) saying it was now more negative, a net 10 percent (10%) increase in positive perception. Barack Obama saw the biggest uplift, with a net gain of 16 percent (16%)."
  • "Thirty-seven percent (37%) paid more attention to news coverage about the candidate."
  • "Twelve percent (12%) became more aware of other marketing for the candidate."
  • "Seven percent (7%) visited the candidate’s website with a further 24 percent (24%) intending to do so in the future."
  • "Five percent (5%) visited the candidate’s mobile Internet site with a further nine percent (9%) intending to do so in the future."

Other resources

Text Messaging in Health: Take Your Medicine

SIMpill

Text messaging has been used to send reminders to attend doctor's appointments or take prescription medication. One product, called SIMpill, sends a text message to a central server after a patient opens a pill bottle. This allows health workers to keep track of compliance and send reminders to patients who neglect to take their medicine.

  • A study done of hospitals in the United States found that non-compliance (patients not taking their medicine) is significant. According to the [1], "10% of hospital admissions are due to non-compliance. These admissions cost $15.2 billion and affect 3.5 million patients."
  • Read about SIMpill in the Women'sNet/UNICEF report

Irish study

A hospital in Ireland found that text message reminders helped to boost attendance at appointments in an outpatient clinic.

  • Before the reminders, non-attendance was 33.6%. After the SMS reminders, non-attendance dropped to 22%.

Other resources

Text Messages as Advertising

Text messages have been used commercially to advertise and engage consumers, as well as change their buying behavior. These studies are interesting as they may indicate whether people are willing to act on text advertising which, after all, is also what a lot of nonprofits and NGOs are after.


Kingston University Study

This analysis of 26 research studies evaluating 26 SMS campaigns in the U.K. Conclusions taken from the report, "Text Message Advertising: Dramatic Effect on Purchase Intentions:"

  • "Overall 44% of respondents found receiving campaigns on their mobile phones very or fairly acceptable, with only 21% finding it fairly or very unacceptable."
  • "Acceptability was inversely related to respondents’ age (younger people have more favourable views; Chi-square, p<0.01), but not related to gender."
  • "Most messages were read (89%), and 5% were forwarded to friends."
  • "For most of the campaigns (20 out of 26), respondents followed the specified call to action, with the most frequent response following the message directions. These included calls to action involving physical travel (e.g. visit McDonald’s or the Carphone Warehouse)."
  • "The overall acceptability of SMS advertising was 44%, significantly higher than the acceptability of telemarketing (Stone and Wyman, 1992)."
  • "Response rates varied from 68% to 3%, with an average of 31%. This compares very favourably both with direct mail, with reported response rates between 1% and 5 %, (DMA, 2003; DMIS, 2000) and permission-based email marketing, with reported response rates from 1% to 8%, (Rettie, 2002; Doubleclick, 2002; Gartner, 2002)."
  • "The reported increased likelihood to purchase is the most important finding of this research; on average this was 35%, but it was as high as 71% for one campaign."

M:Metrics Study on Response to Short Codes

An M:Metrics study examined the number of people who responded to advertising that listed short codes. They compared response rates in different countries. According to an eMarketer article:

  • "Of the five countries surveyed, Spain topped the list with 29% of mobile users responding to ads, followed by the UK at 18.5% and France at 10%. The US and Germany were both under 10%."
  • "Not surprisingly, the number of subscribers receiving SMS ads is growing. In Spain, 67% of mobile subscribers reported receiving an SMS ad, with France at 50%, followed by the UK, Germany and the US, where slightly less than 13% of SMS users reported receiving ads."
  • "Contests — such as game or reality television shows or chances to win free merchandise — were the leading driver of responses, with 18 million subscribers across the geographies reporting they participated. Again, Spain showed the highest rate of participation, at 18%, followed by the UK and France, with the US and Germany lagging."

Other resources

Some other Metrics from Recent Mobile Campaigns

SMS Info Lines: The Blue Ocean Institute

A text message infoline run by the Blue Ocean Institute called FishPhone allows users text in the name of a fish and receive information about the environmental sustainability of that species.

The numbers:

  • The five top queries, in order, were: salmon, tuna, talapia, halibut, cod
  • The infoline received thousands of queries in its first two months of operation.
  • Can we get some more concrete metrics?*


FishMS

This South African infoline, run by the World Wildlife Foundation and the Southern African Sustainable Seafood Initiative (SASSI), also provides a rating system for fish. The infoline rates fish as green (species that are not over-fished), orange (species that are legal to sell) and red (species illegal to sell) South Africa.

The numbers:

  • The service received about 30,000 queries between December 2006 and February 2008 with advertising on local television channels.
  • As of February 17, 2008, there were 7,254 individual users.
  • The average user has used the service about four times.


Other Resources:


Metrics from Some Live Events

Live events are particularly successful at engaging supporters. Because most people will have their mobile phone at their side or in their pocket, they can opt-in on the spot.

The numbers:

  • A rally in Central Park in New York City for the Save Darfur campaign elicited 25-30% opt-in rates
  • A concert by rock group U2 resulted in opt-in rates of 15-20% for the ONE campaign
  • LiveEarth's SMS campaign at events in four cities resulted in response rates of up to 45% (in the US) but also same-day opt-out rates of 31% because too many messages were sent to those who had signed up.

What to expect

  • Between 5-10% is a strong response rate, but as above metrics show, in venue opt-in rates can be much higher.

Email for Mobile Opt-In

Urging your existing email list to opt-in to a text message list is most successful when the message has an urgent call-to-action.

The numbers

  • Political advocacy organization People for the American Way received 25% opt-in rates for an email campaign.


(where is this from? And other metrics from others?) NARAL?

Text to Voice

A text-to-voice application allows users to connect to a pre-recorded audio message directly from a text message.

Both of the following campaigns were run using mConnect, the text-to-voice application of vendor Mobile Commons.

John Edwards Presidential Campaign (US)

The campaign of presidential candidate John Edwards sent out text messages asking people to call to listen to a special message from John Edwards. After listening to the pre-recorded message, the listener was automatically be forwarded to the Edwards fundraising hotline.

The numbers

  • 10% of people who received the text message made the call
  • 10% of the people who called ended up making a donation
  • Overall, 1% of people who received a text message made a donation to the campaign.

CREDO Wireless Advocacy Campaign

CREDO Wireless sent action-alert text messages asking supporters to call their Congress person to voice their support for a specific issue. The text message connected the caller to a series of talking points that briefed them about the issue. After listening to the talking points, they were then connected to the Congressional Switchboard.

The numbers

  • CREDO ran three campaigns. The call-in rates/percentage of people who clicked call, dialed the number, or replied to the text message, were 28.8%, 31.4%, and 18.3% respectively.

Text to Screen

It's Our Healthcare!

California advocacy coalition It's OUR Healthcare! ran a text-to-screen campaign asking users to text in messages about health care legislation. The message were viewed both on a large screen in front of the legislature and on the group's website.

The numbers:

  • The group received about 650 text messages during the one day campaign
  • any other metrics from their email outreach? I think they emailed their list...

Other resources

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