In a recent survey of consumer trust in advertising conducted by research firm Nielsen, SMS advertising came out as the least trusted form of marketing, with only 18% of respondents citing text messages sent by companies as trustworthy. Â
Is this a surprise? Â Probably not. Â But in my opinion, Bluetooth advertising seems much less trustworthy overall than SMS, given advertisments can simply be “pushed” onto your devices without you even asking for it. Â This isn’t true with SMS
The problem with SMS is that it’s slowly going the way email did. Â The ubiquity and ease of email has been used by unscrupulous individuals to such a degree that some 85% of email traffic globally is now spam. Â If marketers aren’t careful this statistic will be true for SMS as well, which spells bad news for brands and content providers alike. Â
One thing SMS marketing, and mobile marketing as a whole, has that email marketing didn’t have was a ruling organization such as the MMA. Â Through strict guidelines for SMS, spamming is a lot less prevalent than with email. Â For example, the MMA’s “Code of Conduct” states that consumer consent must be obtained for each individual marketing programme, and that it cannot be carried over from one to another unless explicitly expressed by the consumer at initiation. Â Opt-in can be achieved by SMS or MMS, a voice response, website registration or other legitimate methods, with opt-out accomplished in similar ways.
As long as the industry is governed properly and the MMA keeps a good lock on what’s allowed via SMS, trust should be easily kept in regards to SMS. Â
