The past couple of years has clearly shown that governments (never mind people) around the world can react totally differently when the same challenge arises. Fragmentation and a lack of consistency have come up time and again. One thing that has been uniform though is that largely until only very recently, large gatherings were banned. Period.
The events sector in the UK alone is worth in excess of £40 billion and a fast-growing portion of that was festivals. Whether music, beer or anything else, millions of people really loved to have a total change of scenery and get out and about visiting festivals all over the globe. All this came to a crunching halt but things are looking up. The festival calendar is coming back and so is the public’s confidence that these events will REALLY happen and not just be cancelled at the last minute. Great news.
So, if you are a regular festival organiser or contemplating running one for the first time, how do you get your key messages out to your clients and prospects in the most effective way? Mobile messaging is a great answer.
Unless you are actually in the industry, few others are aware of just how big it is. The Application-to-Person (A2P) SMS business is worth c. USD $23 billion globally alone and billions of people globally receive content from enterprises and other types of organizations (think the big increase in communication by governments through COVID) on their mobile devices each day.
SMS has been around for almost 30 years and for sure has become less relevant in person-to-person communications as many with smartphones have moved over to the likes of WhatsApp and Rakuten Viber. Where B2C and B2B communications is concerned however, SMS does a terrif job of getting people’s eyes on content.
Look around and people appear as if quite literally glued to their handsets. Physiotherapists are loving this though. ‘Text neck’ is the term used to describe the neck and damage sustained from looking down at your cell phone, tablet, or other wireless devices too frequently and for too long. And people afflicted with it are often much younger than you might think!
On average people look at their mobile phones 150 times each day and given you don’t need internet access or a smartphone to send and receive SMS messaging, everybody is familiar and comfortable with it. With well over 90% of people reading their messages within 5 minutes of receiving them, the impact of email (and let’s not mention traditional letters) cannot compare.
With so much at stake and given just how much people are looking forward to attending festivals they have long had to forgo, clear and direct communication with your customers is an absolute must.
Extensive research by global events platform company Eventbrite found that festival-goers clustered into three distinct groups:
- Hardcore festies: 20% of all festival-goers; attend an average of five to six festivals each year
- Moderate festies: 50% of all festival-goers; attend two to three festivals each year
- Casual festies: 30% of all festival-goers; attend one festival each year
Anything you can do to not only bring people to festivals for the first time but encourage those who might go from time to time to become quite literally ‘hardcore festies’ will pay you huge dividends in the long-term. So it’s worth investing in mobile digital channels with high conversion rates and not just doing what you have always done – perhaps email only?
When engaging with younger people in particular (most festival-goers are below the age of 49) you have to adjust your approach: using a multichannel marketing strategy. It’s critical to maximize impact in a cost effective manner and texting using chat apps is something businesses should consider too beyond using just SMS.
We are not saying you should ignore email completely as it absolutely has its place but if you are looking to truly engage with a large number of people at the same time in the most attention grabbing way possible, take any digital channel in isolation and SMS does come out on top, delivering time and again.
If you want to keep on top of all the different suppliers to your event too (think caterers, security, photograhper etc.) you can rely on an SMS to get a reply. Not knowing, being kept in the dark, is not acceptable and puts your clients’ satisfaction at risk. And ultimately your business given the number of festivals out there chasing people’s hard-earned money right now.
Talking about competition, there are a lot of business messaging companies out there so what makes us that bit different? Well, we’ve been in business for well over a decade and built up a community of several thousand enterprise clients who know and value the importance of customer trust. Our SMS and chat app solutions make it truly simple for you to send their customers content rapidly and accurately globally.
Intis Telecom’s solution is cost effective, easy to use and allows organizations of all shapes and sizes to get on with doing what they do best – treating customers with exceptional care, as individuals. Try us out.
