SMS Marketing Becoming a Popular Attendance and Engagement Driver

My agency, Encore Media Partners, recently sponsored a national survey in order to learn how trade show, exhibition and conference producers are using SMS/text messaging to promote their events. In this week’s post, I’ll share some of the results with you along with some observations.

Fifty percent of the respondents indicated they are using or planning to use SMS marketing within the year, and of those using SMS, 59 percent expect to increase their usage so event producers are clearly leveraging this fast-growing channel. There are certainly many reasons to use SMS marketing—see 10 of them in my June 3, 2010 post, ‘Text Messaging Continues Explosive Growth, Provides Big Opportunities for Organizers.’

According to the survey, event producers are using SMS marketing in a variety of ways, including:

Promoting attendance at live events, including special offers/discounts               60%
Updating attendees pre-show/at-show (i.e., only after people have registered)    60%
Driving booth traffic (joint promotions with exhibitors)                                            40%
Staying in touch with attendees throughout the year                                              40%
Promoting webinars, webcasts and other online programs                                    35%

What works best for your events will depend on multiple variables, including your type of event, target audiences and objectives. Since this is a relatively new marketing channel, plan to experiment, and use testing and tracking to maximize your results.

According to the survey, event producers are using multiple media channels to promote their SMS programs, including:

Emails              84%
Social Media    84%
Web site          68%
Direct Mail       42%
Trade Pubs      11%

Digital media are the most prevalent ways the respondents to this survey are promoting their SMS programs but keep in mind how you promote your text messaging campaigns will depend on your media mix, type of program and objectives.

According to the survey, not one respondent had read the Mobile Marketing Association’s most recent Consumer Best Practices Guidelines for the U.S. Market.

Due to substantial lawsuits against companies for allegedly deploying SMS marketing in violation of the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), if you are using or planning to use SMS marketing, you should understand the TCPA and relevant industry best practices. The penalties can be very high for non-compliance. See my July 8, 2010 post, ‘$90 Million SMS Lawsuit Offers Valuable Take-Aways for Event Marketers.’

You may even want to Google “SMS lawsuit” and read up on some of the cases. There are plenty of valuable take-aways here. Doing your homework will help you avoid a lot of problems, wasted dollars and lost opportunity—and enable you to get the most out of SMS marketing.

Posted on October 14, 2010