The SMS Marketing Business Case

I'm often asked whether marketing to the mobile channel using SMS is cheaper than traditional mailshot campaigns.  To answer this we need to think about direct and indirect costs.

Considering direct costs, think about the costs of running a traditional mailshot campaign, that is stuffing printed leaflets through doors.  Firstly you have to design the leaflet which can cost anything between £50-£5,000 depending on how innovative you want the graphic design to be, or how conformist it needs to be against branding values and guidelines or whether you want original artwork or re-use library images and layout templates. Then you have to print the leaflets incurring a printing cost and a logistics cost (getting the leaflets to the distributors from the print room).  You then need to pay someone to physically post the leaflets through doors.

Then there are the indirect costs.  Designing the leaflet will require hours of time from yourself and your colleagues to meet with the designers, review the layouts and then check the final designs.  You then need someone to work with the printers, specify the paper quality, the ink quality, the size and quantity etc.  They then need to receive, unpack and check the leaflets before they are then shipped to the delivery team.

Stats then tell us that only 1 in 30 leaflets posted through a door are actually read, the rest go straight into the recycling bin.   And heaven forbid if you need to change the campaign message halfway through...  You'd need to re-design then re-print then re-deliver all the leaflets.

SMS on the other hand costs around 4p per message.  No other costs.  OK, so the message is limited and there are no fancy graphics to attract attention etc (unless of course you texted a WAP link to a fancy web site).  Although, the upside is that the SMS is personal.  It's sent from you to one individual, not an entire household.  Stats show that 45% of SMS marketing messages are actually read and more importantly 29% result in an action of some type taking place - ideally a purchase!!!

SMS doesn't use paper, so there are no costs to the environment.  If you want to change your message you can do so at anytime, and most importantly you've got more chance of your recipient replying to the message...

So, why are you still marketing on paper?