Over the years, brands and corporate organizations have utilized text messages as a very important advertising tool. Now, towards the end of the second decade of the 21st century, text message marketing has evolved to become a powerful, revolutionary tool for effective advertising, especially with the recent rapid advancements in mobile technology. 2017 has been a significant year in the text message marketing world, as more brands from diverse niches of the business world have joined the text message advertising train and several modifications have been made to make text message marketing an increasingly effective marketing channel.

Experts, however, have predicted that even more exciting advancements would be witnessed in the of text message marketing in 2018.  Below are four trends to watch out for in 2018, as predicted by experts:

• Increased TCPA compliance: TCPA is an acronym for the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. The act seeks to protect the general public from incessant disturbances from random brands by preventing brands from sending text messages to consumers without their consent. The sending of mobile adverts through text messages to random people by some brands has been a source of general concern among privacy activists and the Government. To be frank, it might be quite annoying to keep receiving repeated text messages from several companies trying to advertise their messages every day. The TCPA, therefore, serves as a sort of restrictive mechanism to help inhibit the influx of strange messages into people’s phones without their consents. With the TCPA’s regulations, only customers who have consented to receive messages from a particular brand would receive mobile adverts from the organization.

TCPA helps brands  get their product information to individuals who are actually interested in the information they have to offer, and it also gives  consumers the opportunity to receive the exact kind of information they need. Over the years, dozens of brands have violated the regulations of this act, causing them to incur thousands of dollars in lawsuits, with fines ranging from $500 to $1500 per message. With increased awareness of the TCPA, there is likely to be increased compliance with the TCPA’s regulations, leading to reduced losses in the form of fines and legal penalties in 2018.

• Text Messaging Chat Bots: Developments in Artificial Intelligence have helped to revolutionize text message marketing to  mind-blowing extents through the use of ChatBots, which are specially designed virtual robots that have been programmed to converse with customers, receive feedback about the brand’s products and service, provide help, respond to frequently-asked questions and do so much more. Since these robots have been designed to have superhuman memory, several terabytes of information may be stored on the chat bots’ database, enabling these AI-powered robots to provide even better customer care service than humans. Advancements in Artificial Intelligence have also integrated extra features like humor and sarcasm into these robots, making chatting with them a relaxing and interesting experience.

These bots also have the ability to record all of their conversations with customers for their human operators to peruse, thereby enabling the brand to make important customer-friendly decisions. The bots are also quite cost-effective, in comparison to human customer service representatives.  Since chatbots are becoming more popular and are gaining wide acceptance in the marketing world, it is likely that this amazing invention would become a widespread trend in 2018.

• Text Message Links: As developments in smartphone technology keep moving at breakneck speeds, we can now do things on our phones that were not even remotely possible about a decade ago. It is now possible for individuals to receive text messages containing links which could lead to a particular website or a specific application. From this site or application, individuals may be able to read articles about a particular product, watch an informative video, read testimonies of other consumers about a service, and do so much more. In the past couple of years, text message links have helped a great deal in bringing exhaustive information about previously unknown products to the knowledge of individuals who would become big buyers, and consequently investors. With the possibilities of unlimited information that can be accessed through text message links, it is likely that links would evolve to become a primary marketing tool come 2018.

RCS Messaging: RCS is an acronym that stands for Rich Communication Services, and it is a digital invention that is fast taking the marketing world by storm. Though, still in its incubation stage, RCS is already showing signs of being a key player in the communications industry. RCS is basically a communication protocol between mobile telephone carriers and phone users aiming at replacing SMS messages with a text message system with added features like phonebook polling and in-call multimedia transmission. The features possessed by RCS make it a trend to actually look out for in the marketing industry in 2018 and subsequent years.

(Inspired by Tatango)