For a decade now, marketers have been striving to obtain email addresses for their clients and prospects as the most critical piece of data for keeping in touch with customers.  In many cases, companies would incentivise sales forces and telemarketers if they could obtain that single piece of information from a client.  Because email as a marketing tool was (and is) so inexpensive, new, and had become pervasive, marketers relied heavy on it for their marketing strategies.

The importance and validity of the email address as a marketing channel has not changed, and indeed still remains one of the premiere channels for marketing’s needs.  But for the key 18-24 demographic, the importance of email is waning and being replaced by SMS.  Having grown up in the 90s when email was coming of age and it was avant-garde to have an email address, it strikes me as a little odd that e-mail is being replaced by mobile text, when mobile text is limited to 160 characters.  Yet this is exactly what is happening with the younger demographic.  It is not uncommon for a typical 18-24 year old with a cell phone glued to their hip go days or weeks without checking their email.  Short, quick conversations are becoming the norm, as evninced by the recent explosion of Twitter as a form of communication.

SMS (and, as it matures as a technology, MMS) are the next wave of marketing channels, but are not mature enough to be relied on heavily as of yet.  The effectiveness of SMS campaigns and the rules by which to engage in mobile marketing have yet to be defined and proven out.  It is the “next big thing” that has yet to actually happen.  Yet, it is inevitable that mobile marketing will become an important channel in upcoming years.  For that reason, marketing teams will do well to ensure that capturing a person’s mobile number is deemed as critical as capturing their email address.  Email won’t soon disappear as a viable channel (just as Direct Mail still retains its importance), but it is critical for marketers to be thinking ahead.  Mobile marketing has its own pitfalls, such as cost and stringent rules for sending legal, appropriate opt-in messages, but it’s potential future benefits recommend its inclusion in every company’s long-term marketing strategy.

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