Keeping with yesterday’s meme about SMS (text messaging), we want to highlight some confirmed information care of Tomi Ahonen and his consulting services. I’ll let the work speak for itself:
That changed this week, as we received the brand new Ofcom study of international telecoms markets. They surveyed 5,636 consumers in six major countries on three continents and part of the usage survey were questions ‘do you use SMS on your mobile phone’ and ‘do you use voice calls on your mobile phone’ And for the first time we have solid comparable measurements.
The countries are all in the ‘Industrialized World’ and are Australia, France, Germany, Italy, the UK and the USA. They found SMS usage levels from a low of 64% in the USA to a high of 86% in Australia. They also found voice calls ranging from a low of 68% in Italy to a high of 80% in Germany. The population-weighed average of the six countries gives an average SMS usage level of 71.52% for SMS, vs 71.48% for voice calls. So these percentages are ‘per capita’ and not ‘per subscription’ by which more often SMS usage levels are reported. The actual human consumer ‘per capita’ measurement is more accurate obviously, as it ignores the phenomenon of multiple subscriptions and multiple phones on the same person. And we have massive news! We have JUST passed the tipping point.
First, on the measurement, if you prefer to use the statistic of ‘per subscriber’ rather than ‘per capita’ – then the subcription-weighed numbers are even more strongly in favor of SMS ie 72.4% vs 71.5%…
Read the latest Communications Market Report at the Ofcom website.
Such a study should have some profound implications towards how you pursue efforts in mobile ministry. Not that you should forget your applications, nor that your mobile web efforts are worthless. You should do those, but to gain the best reach (and in some works that I have read in the past, the best response rates for your efforts), text messaging should be a signifying part of your planning.
“But, Antoine. If we do text, then we miss that face-to-face connection. And if we only see their heads down, then how will we know that the message reached them?” Always valid questions, however, these are borne in a sense of you not having control over the message’s end point. If you are fostering culture appropriate communication patterns, or at the worst adjusting to the changes in communication streams across economies and age groups, then this won’t be the problem as you will be able to get the feedback you desire, the face-to-face moments will happen. We are designed to connect to one another, anything that increases the friction to do so (yes, even forced meetings in small groups and social events) will degrade any ability to connect. SMS is such that it offers so little friction, that it flat out works. Add to that how cheap it is for most folks, and you have the activities which broker this report.
Take a look at the companies we list for SMS services, some are platforms, others allow you to build your own solution. Yes, it might take some more work, butch attention, until video (via MMS and web) becomes more normal than not, this is the route towards making your efforts count in less than 160 characters.