This is why we can’t have nice things
The Washington Post wrote about spam text messages sent to mobile phones last week:
Text messages are the latest tool for advertisers and scammers to target consumers. But unlike junk e-mail that can be deleted with the click of a button, text-message spam costs money for the person who receives it and chips away at the mobile phone’s aura of privacy.
…
More than 1 billion text messages are sent every day in the United States. U.S. consumers are expected to receive about 1.5 billion spam text messages this year, up from 1.1 billion last year and 800 million in 2006, according to Ferris Research, a San Francisco market research firm. Those are conservative figures; some estimates are far higher. Verizon Wireless said it blocks more than 200 million spam text messages every month, and cellphone companies are ramping up efforts to shut them out by taking spammers to court and by using more sophisticated filters.
Compared with spam e-mail, junk text messages are seen as more invasive because the cellphone is more intimate and is used for one-on-one communication — a quality marketers are trying to utilize.
And marketers could utilize that, of course. But that takes work. For example, we’ve all read about Barack Obama’s presidential campaign has used SMS to mobilize supporters to attend campaign rallies. They did it the right way: they offered people a way to receive information via SMS that was expected, wanted, and perceived as valuable.
The rise of spam could spoil trust in text messaging as a mode of communication, not to mention its potential for mobile advertising, according to Charles R. Taylor, a Villanova University marketing professor who has studied online and mobile ads. “Trust is crucial for an ad to be effective, and the minute you start clogging up cellphones and BlackBerrys, it’s a real turn-off and an invasion of your personal space.”
Sadly, we’ve seen our profession do this before with email. Too many marketers have abused email by sending lots of generic messages that are of little value to recipients and adopting “opt-in” policies that assume that if you’ve ever revealed information to a site then you’ve opted in for whatever they want to send you. The result is that email is less effective than it ought to be, even if you use it properly, because consumers tune so much of it out.
I love text messaging; it’s a great way to communicate with people when you just need to get a quick message to them right away (”I’m stuck in traffic,” “Call me on my mobile for our 10 AM,” etc.). And, happily, I’ve gotten one spam text ever. (My carrier is AT&T and they must be doing a good job filtering this stuff out.)
The moment I start getting spam, I’ll be asking AT&T to either give me a way to only accept messages from a select group of contacts or turn the feature off altogether - because if I don’t know you, I don’t want a text message from you. Ever. Right now I know when that little beep sounds from my phone it’s somebody I know telling me something I probably am interested in; that’s why it’s useful.
It will be harder for dumb marketers to wreck SMS as a useful way to communicate; carriers have a real incentive to block it, because they make a lot of money off of it, and if customers stop using it or start demanding credits on their bills for the junk they’re receiving, it’ll hurt them. But I never underestimate the power of bad marketing.
It’s frustrating, of course, that in an era when there’s so much focus on building meaningful relationships with customers and communicating with them in useful ways, there are still people thinking, “Hey! A great way to make unwilling victims read my ad!” But that is how it is, I’m afraid.
Meanwhile, if you get text spam, you can complain to the FCC in about five minutes using their online forms. I encourage you to do so, especially if you’re a marketer; if we don’t demand that our peers behave themselves, someone else will, possibly in the form of regulation.
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John,
Obviously a good post, and certainly true–it does seem that some ham-fisted (spam-fisted?)practitioners in our industry abuse and destroy every new potential channel by raising the ire instead of the interest of recipients. But my main focus is the TITLE of your post; I love it! It represents just the kind of relevant humor that respects the intelligence of your reader and provides a kind of back-end “reward” once you’ve read the post and can enjoy the reference.
These days many search-obsessed (even for blogs)experts would tell you the title should have been: “The growing abuse of text messaging as a marketing tool.” Zzzzzzzzzzz. In my view, establishing that kind of fun, human connection attracts readers and turns them into regulars and advocates of your blog. (Doesn’t help any to attract more visitors if you’re only going to bore them to death!)
Hey Mike, thanks for the kind words and for reading. You bring up a great point. I do think about SEO on every blog title, and often I do design the titles to include search phrases - just as I tell any blogging client to do.
But obviously I don’t always do that, as in this case. I try to remember that I’ve got two audiences: one is the people who are not readers but might find the blog by searches, and the other is regular readers. Sometimes a clever title works, and I do that both because I like it (hey, I need to be enjoying the blogging) and because I think people will enjoy it - I know I do when I come across them on blogs I read.
Other times, it makes more sense to be more search-friendly. Part of the calculation is which posts are “SEO-worthy” - if I’m writing about the basics of starting a business blog, I would really love that to be found by search, and I’d forgo cleverness for search-friendly clarity.
You have to remember the rules, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t break them sometimes.
Glad you enjoyed it, and thanks for bringing up the point about post titles and SEO.