Britons not keen on Facebook marketing
The British public are decidedly cool when it comes to Facebook's marketing overtures, with Textlocal's 'Mobile Customer Experience Report' finding that only 5% (3.2 million) of the country's consumers actually want brands to communicate with them via Facebook, compared to 27.9 million who have already opted to receive marketing messages by SMS.
Almost two-thirds of the businesses surveyed said they have, or are developing, a Facebook strategy, which is comparable to the number of businesses with a mobile strategy. However, opt-in messaging is still by far the most popular and efficient form of brand marketing with UK consumers.
The report suggests that brands and businesses should switch their marketing spending from social platforms such as Facebook or Twitter to opt-in mobile messaging in order to maximise the return on their investment.
The average click-through rate for a mobile banner advert is 0.1%, which the report points out is a disappointing return on any level of investment, large or small. Mobile text messages, however, have a wildly more successful read rate, averaging 99.9% overall. The maths is simple enough: in order to ensure that 10,000 opted-in consumers read a marketing text message, it needs to be sent to only 10,010 recipients. And, of those 10,000 messages that are read, some 95% on average will be read within three minutes.
"Facebook is excellent for communicating interesting and entertaining information but it is far from the most effective medium for pushing marketing or sales messages," explained Darren Daws, Textlocal's managing director. "The majority of businesses have been rather side-tracked over the last 12 to 18 months by jumping on the bandwagon to invest in a mobile Facebook strategy, which the majority of consumers actually find intrusive".
Nick Lane, chief strategy analyst for Mobile Squared (who conducted the research for Janrain) added: "SMS response rates average over 30%, so why are marketers and brands still focusing so heavily on email or Facebook initiatives? Even email typically only has open rates of 15% and a click-through rate of 2%."
The research also found that more women opt-in to receive marketing communications from brands, and that the greatest opt-in audience age is in the 35-44 range (representing 5.2 million consumers nationwide). Interestingly, there are currently an estimated 16.7 million opt-ins through smartphones, and 11.2 million opt-ins through more basic 'feature phones'.
"Customers do want to hear from businesses, provided it is on their terms and they feel in control, that's where an efficient CRM platform comes into play," concluded Daws. "While 60% of consumers acknowledged that relevant mobile messaging would maintain their loyalty toward a brand, an additional 14% said it would actually enhance their loyalty."
The full report has been made available for free download from Textlocal's web site - click here (free registration required).
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