Free white papers
& free studies
Thanks to our white papers and studies, discover expert advice on how to master the sending of SMS and optimize the use of SMS in your communications.
PDF AVAILABLE IN FRENCH
2020 Barometer.
Analysis of the performance of SMS A2P for its strategy
Our SMS A2P 2020 study uncovers, identifies and provides insight into 2020 trends in A2P mobile messaging usage, sending habits, content and other significant issues.
The SMS A2P (also known as SMS professional) remains an essential and unavoidable mobile interaction channel between companies and their customers.
On the eve of its 30th birthday, SMS remains an essential mobile communication channel. While the number of SMS P2P (between 2 people) messages exchanged is declining, SMS A2P continues to grow... and therefore to be a powerful medium in the mobile communications landscape.
To establish this study, smsmode© has collected a vast array of data. More than 83 million SMS sent by some 1299 brands and companies from October 15, 2019 to January 14, 2020, were analyzed.
STUDY SMS A2P 2020
MARKETING OR NOTIFICATION?
With almost 65,000 SMS sent per month per advertiser, the use of SMS A2P is a well-established practice among marketing professionals.
Almost as many SMS notifications (48.73%) as SMS advertisements (51.27%) were sent by companies. A more recent use in SMS communications, notification by SMS is therefore set to dethrone SMS advertising and become the main use of SMS A2P.
However, these two uses of SMS deserve to be differentiated as they are so far apart. As one-to-one informative communication, notification volumes via SMS vary little over the weeks. On the other hand, and unsurprisingly, advertising via SMS is strongly influenced by periods of commercial activity (sales, Black Friday, the pre-Christmas period, etc.), when advertising pressure is 3 times higher than during a period of no significant commercial activity.
WHEN ARE THE SMS SENT ?
In terms of sending habits, the beginning of the week (Monday and Tuesday) is more conducive to sending notifications via SMS. Nevertheless, we can see that notification traffic remains fairly steady until Friday, and quite high at weekends (particularly on Sundays, when Monday's appointment reminders are sent).
On the advertising side, however, marketers clearly prefer Thursday to run their promotional campaigns via SMS (+52.20% more traffic observed on the marketing channel than on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or even Friday).
Now to the question of sending times. The times of day chosen by companies to carry out their SMS operations - marketing & notification combined - are quite extensive, covering the wide 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. time slot: 93.76% of SMS are sent during this period.
There is a slight preference for the late morning and early afternoon - 51.91% of SMS are sent during this period - with a small peak in the early afternoon(between 1pm and 3pm) and sustained activity in the late morning between 10am and 1pm.
TO WHICH OPERATORS?
The breakdown of SMS A2P campaigns by mobile network operator in mainland France is consistent with their respective market shares .
The Top 4 operators are therefore composed of : Orange (32.91%), SFR (26.32%), Bouygues Télécom (19.37%) and Free (18.12%).
WHAT CONTENT FOR SMS A2P?
Our analysis shows that the technical constraints and possibilities of SMS - as well as their optimizations - are fairly well used by communications professionals.
Sender ID personalization is well known and used by professionals. In fact, more than 9 out of 10 SMS messages are sent using this feature.
At the same time, the content of 3 out of 4 SMS messages contains 160 characters or less. In other words, these are optimized messages that take into account the character limit of SMS. Among the so-called long messages, we note that 20% of SMS messages exceed the 160-character limit by a few characters limit (up to 40 characters more), which could be considered undesirable.
WHAT PERFORMANCE?
Unsurprisingly, SMS 's key performance indicators (message delivery, unsubscribe and error rates) record very good results, in line with the various studies carried out on the subject. With over 95% of messages received by recipients, and a very low error rate, the appeal of SMS marketing can be explained in part by its unrivalled deliverability compared with other communication channels. This is perhaps the most important indicator and explanation of its longevity.
The interactions measured with the data from our study correspond to the number of SMS sent by the final recipients in response to SMS sent with a short number. This engagement rate of 9.35% is already respectable, given that it does not take into account clicks on links that may appear in these messages, or any other returns to physical or virtual stores (drive to store).
It's worth noting that new opportunities in terms of SMS (notably Rich SMS and preview functionality) will make SMS much more visual, interactive and therefore attractive. The performance of the SMS channel will undoubtedly evolve in 2020. To be continued...