SMS marketing has long remained under the radar. But several tailwinds will make sending text messages to customers a common practice in 2021.

Our new forecast for global mobile messaging app users shows that the pandemic has accelerated adoption of OTT messaging services, though not in every country nor to the same degree for every app.

eMarketer principal analysts at Insider Intelligence Mark Dolliver and Jeremy Goldman discuss SMS marketing, calculating the ROI of customer experience, why Gen Z doesn't matter that much and boomers matter more, and what to know about parents in 2021.

The pandemic has brought an influx of new users for subscription OTT, live videos, and video games in 2020, but other activities such as social networking, mobile messaging, and digital video haven’t seen the same bump.

Of the many channels out there, SMS may not be the most exciting, but it is the most personal. And when marketers want to build on those one-on-one connections with consumers, their efforts must be exactly that.

eMarketer principal analyst Mark Dolliver, junior analyst Blake Droesch and forecasting analyst at Insider Intelligence Peter Vahle discuss the impact, concerns and potential outcomes of the Twitter hack, which social issues matter most to consumers, Instagram's TikTok competitor, defining hate speech, text message marketing, when someone snuck something into the baseball hall of fame and more.

eMarketer is pleased to moderate a Tech-Talk Webinar featuring Acoustic’s Dave Haucke, vice president of product management, and Pinky Lees, worldwide mobile strategist. They will share multiple use cases to help marketers understand how to get started with SMS, and where this channel fits into your overall communications and marketing strategy.

How does your brand’s email marketing integrate with SMS and live chat? What call center and in-person interactions integrate with and inform your email marketing program? Testing:. How often does your brand engage in ongoing email testing behavior designed to improve results? Does your testing strategy inform not just the email program, but the brand’s overall strategy as well? Internal Processes:.

Likewise, a March 2020 survey by Rev, another audio-to-text transcription service, found many professionals worldwide expected to increase their use of transcription, captions, and subtitles over the next several years. But captioning is not a panacea.

While existing mobile messaging users are increasing their engagement, few new users are signing on. People tend to have well-established ways of sending messages or video calling, such as regular SMS and Apple’s FaceTime, so there is less appeal to using a separate messaging app. Read More:. TikTok partners with Shopify as the video app moves further into social commerce​.