Does mobile marketing REALLY work??

I wanted to find some statistics on mobile marketing a few weeks ago so I cooked up a little experiment to compare it to sending an email blast. I took twenty of my friends and put their email addresses and cell phone numbers into a database.



I then sent a text blast to their cell phones from an unknown number. The text blast was only 140 characters and was telling them about a new Italian restaurant which was getting ready to open in Orlando, Florida (which is where they all live). A link was provided that they could click on to get a free appetizer to the restaurant.

About a week later I sent the same twenty people emails advertising the same deal.

A week later I called them and asked them about the two campaigns.

RESULTS

of my twenty friends:

-all 20 remembered receiving the text message
-all 20 read the text message in its entirety
-14 visited the link provided in the text message directly from their phone at the time of receiving the message
-11 remembered receiving an email
-of the 11 who remember the email, only 1 person opened it.

What this test told me is that while most people don't even acknowledge spam email, for the most part all text messages are read, whether they are advertisements or not. For instance, the same people who deleted the email are the ones who read the text message and then clicked on the link....

While I know that this test wasn't the most scientific, it does serve as a good indicator to the habits of individuals and the true effectiveness of email marketing vs. mobile marketing. I've seen some pretty amazing results with it, and I think that we've only just begun as the country begins to take a mobile turn...