Disadvantages of SMS marketing

The world has officially lost interest in talking to other people and this is why people have introduced the service of short message service or SMS. Over 8.6 trillion messages are sent every year worldwide and people enjoy that. They prefer typing instead of talking to each other. Well, marketing has always followed technology like now. With the increase of SMS advertising in UAE, people have probably forgotten what it is like to receive pamphlets, brochures, discount booklets and more. You may have heard many pros and advantages of SMS advertising but this article will tell you many disadvantages as well.

• It is required to have your message of only 160 characters. This throws creativity out of the window and companies usually have to add their hyperlink in the end so that the customers can get full details somewhere on the internet. People usually avoid that because they don’t have time. They want every bit of information in 160 characters only

• Companies usually use system generated random numbers for marketing which annoys the receivers. Papa John’s was sued for $250 million because it had sent out over 50,000 messages to customers against their wishes.

• If people do not subscribe to the mailing list, it is extremely annoying and hence they create a terrible image of the business. For them the messages are nothing but spam and annoying

• What is worst than spam messages is that usually the signals can be corrupted which disallows messages to be sent to the customers hence bringing a huge break into the marketing campaign

• For customers, privacy is invaded by giving out the number or sending in texts or replies to the very number. Hence privacy is exploited especially when companies send marketing SMS without the permission. It is rude and unethical

• SMS marketing does not contain rich media content which gives a very dry advertisement look to the message. People are not usually open to reading those without pictures and graphics

• Marketing companies tend to forget that they are paying for limited messages. Although, SMS marketing is cost effective, when the limit exceeds, they – without any notification- become more expensive as the prices raise with every message

• Usually people put random numbers to their span and hence it causes the delivery to fail and the success rate of SMS marketing decrease collectively.

• A survey shows that 94% SMS marketing messages are only seen and deleted and not read at all. This shows that the receivers are not always interested in random promotional messages

• The advertisement is not conversational and is like a robot sending out a message. Does not leave a good impression

• It is not individualized. This means that there isn’t even a specific number for them. Usually a SMS short code is used to send out these messages which means unless you waste characters on contacting your business, the customer cannot respond to your ad

These are a few disadvantages of SMS advertisement!