Some time back I put a question on Linkedin Answers. For those of you who don’t know about Linkedin - it’s an excellent business networking tool, that helps you to connect with like-minded individuals in your industry/occupation. The Linkedin Answers community is where you can post a question in a relevant category such as marketing, business development,software/design etc. and expect useful answers from people who are experts in that field. Similarly you can answer questions by members on your area(s) of expertise and thus connect with individuals.

Anyway, getting back to the topic : so I posted a question on the Linkedin Answers community (Have you tried SMS (Text) Marketing? Has it worked for your Business?) and here are the two contrasting answers I got:

>I do not approve of SMS marketing. If I am roaming, I have to pay to receive what is mostly spam. How would you like it if you had to pay to read this answer? (Germany)

>Frankly its a personal call about using SMS Marketing. Frankly, I think the novelty of SMS Marketing has worn off and target audiences usually consider it a nuisance rather than an information source, similar to snail mail marketing. (India)

It’s interesting to see how SMS marketing can have different implications on the consumer mindset because of different cost-models at different countries. On one hand, you have a customer who dislikes the nuisance caused by numerous junk SMSs received (most likely someone who lives in India and enjoys FREE incoming SMSs); while on the other hand, there is a customer (in American and European countries…I’m guessing) who despises having to pay the cellular company because of a business-owner’s marketing campaign.

Interestingly the CAN-SPAM act (US Legislation against unsolicited e-mail) does not include SMS marketing between cell-phones. So if I’ve a cellphone in the US and I start messaging a database of cellphone users about my business - the receipents can’t sue me! As per an article I read, there Although, telecoms are trying hard to fight this by blocking commercial messages (using SMS Spam filters) , there is not much that they can do as the amount of these messages are projected to increase. The US Do-not-call Registry will be put to test when these numbers increase.

Meanwhile in India (also the Asia-Pacific region), on an average, a user gets about 8 to 10 commercial messages a week which does not cost a penny to the customer. However, they might want to be a part of the Do-not-call registry for no-nuisance reasons. I doubt if there is any law against commercial messaging in India or the Asian region. No one paid too much heed because it never cost them any money - but now it’s proving to be a real waste of time with an ever-increasing bunch of small businesses using cheap SMS plans and FREE SMS gateway facilities to promote their products.

I wonder if in the near future all our SMS inboxes will have a ‘Junk Mail’ folder.

Here is another interesting article with some more food for thought on SMS marketing. Some inputs of this post were taken from that.

Update:  Another article I came across in relation to this topic.

Yesterday I visited a German Architecture and Furnishing Showroom (cum office) to select hardware for the new house I and my family would be moving to soon. As impressed as I was by the quality of the fixtures, it amazed me how there were few that were ‘really’ manufactured for the Indian market. Häfele Hardware is a world-class architecture fittings company that caters to the world market. Or atleast that’s what the salesman said! While the fixtures for wardrobes and doors can be well-adapted by Indian homes - assuming that most Indians wear western formal as well as casual attire, the kitchen fixtures were not even close to the needs of an Indian housewife. Case in point - my mother whose a housewife and has different storage and utility needs which is quite different from that of a Western kitchen. Inquisitively, I asked the salesman - ‘There is nothing here that can be adapted for an Indian kitchen’. His clumsy answer was ‘We cater to the world market’. At that point of time, I said to myself ‘Damn! These guys got the wrong world map!’. With such a huge consumer market, I personally feel, Indians deserve more than what the western companies have to offer. Somehow, us, Indians just can not adapt to everything western! Surely, the western toilet is a lot more comfortable, but we would still love to eat roti-sabzi (rather than microwavable food) the way we’ve been eating since ages! Thus, we need kitchens that got to have the space we need for the rolling pan! We got to have shelves where we can put spices. We got to have more storage for our attas and pickles. NO! We do not need fully-retractable snack packet holders (which look like wending machines). We still need the shelves for PET bottles which will be filled with branded snacks unpacked from their colorful packing! At least, in terms of our eating habits, even the largest multinational food chains need to adapt! (Mc Donald’s Mc Aloo Tikki).

Interestingly (and incidentally), today I read that Ikea (A Swedish furnishing company) took to some baseless commentary on Indian Retail and how there seems to be no future in it. Reliance, Wal-mart and many others think otherwise - for a good reason: Growing consumer demands for a higher standard of living by the huge Indian population!

Microsoft is EVIL ?!?!

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