The latest SMS marketing barometer shows a sharp increase in messages sent by brands last year, what is called “push SMS”. With peak periods, obviously.
In 2023, brands have not been idle, and mobile operators Orange, SFR, Bouygues Telecom and Free Mobile have sometimes overheated. 13.34 billion SMS were in fact sent by companies to their customers and users last year, a total up 4.1% compared to 2022. Push SMS, which can materialize by sending of a delivery tracking message or a code to enter on your banking application, is booming.
Strong growth in push SMS in the e-commerce sector
According to figures provided by the French Association for the Development of Multi-Operator Multimedia Services and Uses (AF2M) in its latest barometer, push SMS represents an average of 1.1 billion messages sent each month.
Unsurprisingly, the months of November, December, January and June (Christmas and sales) are those when SMS push is the most intense, with an average which can reach 1.2 billion messages.
It is interesting to note that just over 1,000 brands alone account for around 80% of the traffic of messages sent. It is retail (physical stores) which concentrates the largest share (31%), ahead of banks and insurance (21%), the services sector (15%) and e-commerce (11%), which remains at a reasonable distance for the moment, delivery messages included. We say ” for the moment » since this last sector saw a very clear increase (+20%) last year.
The rules on cold calling well respected by brands
Concretely, most sectors have given in to the sirens of push SMS. And of the 13.34 billion brand messages sent in 2023, 8 billion are to be classified in the category of transactional SMS, that is to say everything that is notifications, access codes, delivery, validation of payment etc.
Promotional SMS, which includes advertisements, direct marketing or drive-to-store (which encourages people to go to the store), represents 5.3 billion messages in 2023. Note, moreover, that promotional SMS (+7.9%) experienced a much more significant boom than transactional SMS (+1.7%).
Finally, a final word on the numbers used by brands. We know that numbers starting with 06 or 07 are among those definitively banned since the 1er January 2023 as part of cold calling. AF2M points out that all major brands used five-digit SMS, 36XXX for promotional SMS, and 38XXX for transactional SMS. These five-digit numbers allow you to add the brand name to the sender.
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Source : AF2M barometer
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