The Impact of SMS as a Response Channel

I spent this morning looking at some pretty dreadful results. One of our clients recently ran a test campaign that didn’t succeed. With 20/20 hindsight one can see why not. A new proposition to a new audience, with a new creative agency, and a new media mix, at a new price point. They had asked for a radical jump, and that’s what they got. Good clear learning that they shouldn’t progress in that direction in the near future. And that’s valuable.

But they also learnt one positive thing, and that’s the value of adding sms as a response channel to their DR advertising. For them it generated c40% incremental response. Net additional consumer contacts that wouldn’t otherwise have been captured. And that’s fairly typical of results across our client base. Increasingly we are seeing response to DRTV and other media channels move away from phone and towards text and online. And we would much rather consumers texted us than went online. Online we might convert 2% of responders to some form of sale. If they text us we typically convert 35%+.

Consumers’ love of SMS as a channel seems to be growing and showing no sign of abating. In 2009 we sent 104 billion text messages, 4 per day for every man woman and child. It’s a mobile medium that is here and viable for most clients now. It’s well worth considering if you aren’t using it.

The Future of DRTV Continued

I am writing this blog from Amsterdam, and the global fundraising conference that is held there each year. Many of the 900 attendees use DRTV to recruit new donors, and there is much debate amongst delegates about falling levels of telephone response.

The world seems to have divided into two camps:-

- those who are just seeing falling phone response and despairing and
- those who are seeing phone response fall, but total response to DRTV rise

This latter group are integrating SMS and web response into their commercials. As a result they now typically see 30%+ of their income from DRTV come via web donations. SMS response can add 10%+ incremental response, and sometimes more than double response.

As media channels converge, and consumers spend more and more time consuming more than one channel simultaneously, measuring campaign results will become harder. DRTV plays a vital role on many clients’ schedules, reaching audiences that other media do not, and generating very cost effective response. It is vital that our measurement systems keep pace with changing consumer behaviour.

Mike Colling
Managing Director

The Future of TV?

Over the last couple of weeks I have been pondering what the future might hold for the medium we all spend a day a week watching still. (I have to confess I have been prompted to these thoughts by the need to write a speech on this subject, promised to a conference next week!)

What have I found in my researches?

Firstly, TV is in rude health. Despite doom-mongers prophesising its impending demise viewing to TV is stronger than ever, and showing no signs of abating. If anything I suspect viewing levels will continue to grow going forward as we all read less and watch more.

Secondly, there is no evidence that TV viewing will be replaced by consumers watching video online. Whilst lots of people do watch video online (43% of us at last count) we don’t spend much time doing it (less than 1% of our media day).
My third finding is that we are about to see a huge amount of change in the TV landscape. The last few years have seen an explosion of channels (from 3 when I started to 650+ now), digitisation, the advent of the PVR, but, as the poet said “you ain’t seen nothing yet”
The big impacts, I think, will come from 3D and HD devices, on demand content (the launch of YouView from the BBC et al next year), searchable content and personalised interfaces (Google, Apple and others launching this year) and home media centres that will allow movement of content across devices (Virgin, BT, this year and early next).

So from a technology point of view we will see huge change. But what impact will it have?

Well for viewers I'm not sure the impact will be that great. In five years' time we may well be able to watch anything we want, anywhere, on any device. I suspect that for the majority of us our viewing habits will not change. Most viewing is a passive activity. We get home, slump in front of the set, and watch what schedulers put in front of us. Even when we have PVR technology for ease of recording and playback, or video on demand via iPlayer through our TV’s, less than 9% of viewing in those households is on demand or time shifted.

So, our viewing patterns won’t change radically in terms of what we watch. But I think the one change that might be drastic is how we watch TV. We used to watch in social groups, typically families gathered around a single set. That is a thing of the past. But we are fundamentally social animals and TV viewing is a social activity - conversations around the water machine in the morning about last night’s viewing convince us all of that. And the growth of social media, now almost 25% of all internet time, and engaging 40% of all of us each week, reflects that need.#

One of the big changes I foresee to TV viewing over the coming years is the convergence of social media and TV. We used to watch TV in physical groups, all in the same room. I see us watching TV in virtual groups, chatting in real time to friends or family about the programme we are physically, separately, watching. That has huge implications for advertisers, about which more next time ......