A new study from Mintel shows that Millennials are about twice as likely as Baby Boomers to share cell phone numbers with marketers. (30% vs. 14%) What’s even more interesting for SMS marketers is the fact that 51% of Millennials said they would be swayed by an incentive offer to do so, whereas for Baby Boomers, only 25% could be swayed by these same type of incentives. You can see the graph below.
Why is this data so important for SMS marketers? Our good friends at HipCricket reported that back in 2012, 44% of consumers were willing to provide personal information in return for a reward, coupon or deal. Unfortunately the HipCricket survey wasn’t very specific on what type of information consumers would be willing to share, and the resulting data wasn’t separated into different age verticals, which made it very hard for SMS marketers to apply the data to a brands’ specific consumer demographic. Now with this new data from Mintel, SMS marketers are able to easily see what percentage of consumers are willing to share their cell phone number with a brand, in addition to how that changes as consumers age.
How can you use this data to grow your SMS subscribers? As we’ve always said here at Tatango, the best way to capture a mobile phone number from a consumer, is to offer them some sort of incentive to share it. This data from Mintel backs up that claim, as only 30% of Millennials are willing to share their mobile phone number without any sort of incentive, while with an incentive, that percentage increases to 51%. This means that if you’re running an SMS campaign, and not incentivizing consumers to share their mobile phone number, you’re missing out on the opportunity to grow your SMS subscriber database even bigger than before.
You can read the full press release from Mintel here.
