Don't 'phone': Iterable's new tools help marketers harness the power of SMS

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Let's face it: we live on our phones. By one estimate, we check our screens on average once every four minutes (which we admit, anyway).

In fact, more than half of Americans have never gone more than 24 hours without their cell phone, nearly half say their phone is their most prized possession, and more than a third would even choose their phone rather than their pets.

There is no doubt that we live in a mobile-centric world. So it's essential for brands to be proactive and tactical in reaching them through the channel they use most – and prefer, said Andrew Boni, CEO and founder of cross-channel marketing platform, Iterable.

To help marketers reach and engage with customers through their phones, Iterable today released a suite of new features, including Iterable SMS, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered channel optimization ) and the custom send control.

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"SMS is an incredibly effective channel for certain use cases," Boni said. "The future is definitely going to involve SMS."

Automation: The Future of Marketing

AI-based customer engagement platforms like Iterable are growing in popularity. The global omnichannel retail platform market will reach $16.9 billion by 2027, as predicted by ReportLinker. This represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.4% from 2020. The growth was largely propelled by the COVID-19 crisis, according to the firm.

In total, according to Markets and Markets, the global market for customer engagement solutions will reach $32.2 billion by 2027, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of nearly 11%. The main driver of this reduction is reduced churn rates, the company reports.

Companies competing for this market share include Adobe Marketo Engage, HubSpot Marketing Hub, Pega, Blueshift, Braze, and MoEngage.

As Boni said, automation is the direction that customer communication platforms are heading.

"Brands want to be able to engage with customers wherever they are, whatever channel they prefer and respond to," he said. When leveraging SMS in particular, "from a consumer perspective, it's just a better experience."

The power of SMS

Text messages have been shown to have an astonishing 98% open rate. On top of that, this year 70% of consumers subscribe to SMS marketing, indicating a 12% year-over-year growth in opt-in rates.

The majority of consumers (55%) subscribe to receive text messages from one to five companies, primarily for shipping notifications, appointment/booking reminders, special offers, and promo codes.

All of this makes it seem like a no-brainer for marketers to connect with customers, Boni said. Yet, due to the cost, complexity and limited data capabilities of the mobile channel, many have been slow to add SMS to their strategies.

He pointed out that email programs are "the easiest to use, the oldest channel" and have a high return on investment.

But SMS is highly interactive, simply because consumers are on their phones for many hours...