Text Messages: Emerging Mechanism or Gradual Antique?

Ever wondered why people still try so hard using text messages when communication channels such as e-mail and Whatsapp seem so much more interactive and closer to us?

1. Immediacy and Mobility

Typical reasons such as “Oh my mobile data wasn’t on” or “Come on! There wasn’t internet connection at that time” could very well be the reason why you and your family members are bickering for various reasons all the time.

Using the classical text message would eliminate any problems having to do with mobile connection. Also, as long as there is a data connection, texts are delivered immediately and with approximately 97% open rate, your message is highly bound to be received across the nation.

Also, people always have their phones in their pockets or sitting on the desk, they may not see an email for hours but it is highly probable that the text message is seen within just literally an arm’s reach.

2. Intrusive and Sensitivity

If I were a consumer, receiving messages through emails wouldn’t be a good idea because the concept of emails is that they are mostly work-based. It is unusual seeing messages of “Where to eat later” in email inboxes, right?

Sending other non-related messages to people’s email or Whatsapp may come off as spam and even intrusive. Virus attachments and malicious links are often seen in email and chain messages in Whatsapp.We seldom see people chaining messages on text messages because of the lack of groups and increase in security.

Additionally, Whatsapp requires mobile numbers to be saved before allowing us to start a conversation. This hassle and inconvenience could be eliminated whilst using text messages and save much awkwardness in future first-meetings.

3. Influence highly engaged public

People registering on websites such as Zalora or Nike and would be prompted their email address so companies are able to send them their latest promotions and whatsoever.

Consumers, at that moment, may be just temporary interested in them but 1 week down the road after successfully purchasing their items online, may chuck the brand aside and start to feel annoyed when such promotions and advertisements flood in.

However, using text messages would be much more appropriate as consumers have the ability to opt-in or out based on their preferences. It is fully under their control to do so and would have no obligations unlike some brands in emails.

4. Short & Sweet

Do you have an overly excited friend who spams your Whatsapp by pressing send after every word they type? It makes your notification look like you’re very popular but in actual fact it’s just 20 messages from the same person. Emails, to add on, is just words worth 2 pages of overloaded information, making it very boring and unnecessary.

On the other hand, text messages are short and sweet, only limited to 160 characters each SMS. Most of us humans read about 200-400 words per minute, enabling us to read our message in just under a minute on average. It’s even faster than taking a selfie!

5. Simplicity is the best

Whatsapp, being one the major apps that facilitate conversations would constantly have bugs and problems that requires update of the app and causes major inconvenience. At times, it’s pretty foolish to use “a sledgehammer to crack a nut”. Too many features, backup and lagging would cause people to feel annoyed and might even backfire in other cases.

“It went into the draft”, “Your email is wrong” has constantly proved to be one of the bigger reasons why people are annoyed with emails and the usage of it. Emails may also be stacked and hidden in those thousands of spam mails, making retrieval of mails a chore, instead of a convenience.

As the saying goes, “Old is Gold”, text messages is the most simple platform you can get your message across to someone online and it still proves to be problem free 90% of the time because of it’s limited, but key features the bring on potent marketing results.