Nigerian companies have taken the battle for the soul of the customer to a new height, and are now employing bulk short message services (SMS) to reach out to their prospective customers at cost effective rates, Nigeria CommunicationsWeek has gathered.
Though still in its infancy in the country, SMS marketing is one of the most personal forms of one-to-one marketing, and companies are enjoying it.
Nigeria CommunicationsWeek investigations revealed that the medium is also cost effective. Instead of the N5 per SMS charged by GSM operators on the same network, bulk SMS in the range of 250,000 attracts a discount of N1 while one million messages and above are sent for just N3 resulting in substantial savings for the firms.
The SMS messages can be sent and read at any time. They can also be sent to an offline mobile phone, even as most GSM mobile devices support SMS.
SMS traffic is not showing any signs of flattening out and it is no surprise that marketers are tapping into this emerging mobile channel.
In fact, the whole mobile messaging industry worth $130 billion in 2008 is predicted to worth $224 billion by 2013, 60 percent of non-voice service revenues.
Nigeria CommunicationsWeek gathered that concerns have been raised that sending unsolicited SMS to network users is an infringement on consumers’ rights.
Telephone network operators are also accused of releasing phone numbers of users on their network to SMS marketers.
