Mobile Messaging in Financial Services

• Over 80% of financial services companies use or are planning to use global SMS to communicate or interact with, not only customers but employees.
•  83% of financial service providers believe mobile messaging has a considerable or major impact on brand awareness.
•  90% of financial service providers believe mobile messaging impacts positively on overall customer experience.
• Various studies have suggested that consumers check their text messages up to 80 times each day. This means that text messaging is not perceived as spam in the same way email messaging is.
• Texts have an average response of 45% while email only has an 8% response rate.
•  90% of text messages are read within 3 minutes of being received.
• Consumers perceive text messaging to be more attention grabbing but less intrusive than a phone call. The text response rate is 750% higher than phone calls. The ability to complete multiple messages at the same time means that mobile messaging is 60 times faster when completing customer service functions.
• Research has shown that "outside of regulatory compliance, customer retention is the biggest challenge facing financial services firms. Messaging provides an intimate way for companies to engage customers over the long haul."
• Over 90% of consumers own a mobile phone, with 75% of consumers using them to send or receive text messages. 95% of all text messages are read compared to just 10% of emails.

Summary

• In our initial hour of research, we have focused on scoping the availability of information relating to mobile messaging specific to the financial services' industry. The data presented covers some of the spectra of information available. It is an area where significant investment has been made to understand and maximize the benefits mobile messaging can offer.
• The research path suggested represents the most efficient way of answering as many of the questions raised given the public domain's information availability.
• The financial services' consumer's psychographic profile will provide answers to questions relating to the use, perceptions of mobile messaging, and media consumption habits and beliefs. Creating a profile of the ways financial service providers are using mobile messaging and the available benchmarking data will answer questions around its efficacy and ways to maximize the potential benefits.
• We also suggest considering how industries beyond financial services are using mobile messaging to maximum benefit. This creates a fresh perspective that can be adapted for another industry where using it in that way has not yet been considered. This can create a competitive advantage.