Derek Johnson, président de Tatango, une entreprise spécialisée dans le SMS Marketing, expose sur MobileMarketingWatch ses préoccupations sur l’avenir de son industrie, et sur la pérennité des pratiques actuelles.

As pressure mounts from consumers, advocacy groups and lawsuits, the carriers go on a witch hunt to shut down SMS campaigns. The easiest solution is to shutdown short codes. Without regard to campaign, carriers start flipping switches, cutting off access to each short code in numerical order. First goes the short-code 50001, then 50002, and they don’t stop until they’ve shut them all down. At this point I frantically look around for the government to step in, a public interest group, anybody to help save my short code. No one is coming, like all the consumers, no-one wants to champion SMS marketing anymore, it’s a lost battle. It’s at this point I usually wake from my nightmare.

I know that what I’ve seen in my nightmares isn’t too far from what could soon be the reality of our industry. What will cause the demise of SMS marketing as we know it? Simple. The continued practice of SMS providers allowing businesses the ability to import customer phone numbers into an SMS campaign, bypassing their need to receive the customers permission through an opt-in (i.e text PIZZA to 68398 to receive weekly pizza promotions).

This practice is not only a slap to the face of the Mobile Marketing Association’s best practices, it’s quickly eroding the benefits of SMS marketing, including high redemption rates and even higher open rates. These metrics have an inverse relationship to the rate of SMS SPAM, and by continuing to allow businesses to import customer phone numbers, SMS SPAM will most certainly rise, pushing down SMS redemptions and open rates. Don’t believe me? Look at what’s happened with email marketing.

Le parallèle est assez judicieux, surtout en ce qui concerne le SMS SPAM, et le côté auto-destructeur des l’import des listes de numéros. Mais on peut aussi voir le bon côté des choses. Même s’il est moins efficace qu’il y a 5 ans, l’email marketing fait partie intégrante de n’importe quel mix online à l’heure actuelle, et je reste assez persuadé que l’industrie se porte bien, dans sa globalité.