Today’s twenty-year-olds aspire to be in constant touch with their friends and families, it’s important for them to communicate fast, like here and now and through images. It’s possible to meet all of these demands with… an old, good SMS message. 

No one else but teenagers decided that SMS have been popularized all over the world. At the turn of 90’s and early the 2K’s mobile operators noticed that text messages are well-known among young people. Looking backwards, you can notice that it’s youth who decides about the success of many products and services. No matter what the trends show, SMS is still popular  in every age group!

According to Neil How from University of Yale who is a co-author of the publication “Generations”, Millenials have one main common feature – an idea to use technology to keep ties with everyone, through many channels and ways (i.a. SMS).

SMS will never let you down

At the beginning, SMS messages were used for the technical reasons – to inform clients about system meltdowns, price changes and to pass all the technical information. It wasn’t even possible to exchange messages between different networks. At the moment SMS is one of the main channels to strenghten ties between people and it doesn’t seem to change. It is because among WI-FI and data transmission it is irreplacable and the most certain way to communicate.

It is understandable that SMS is used in the most private things in life like to confirm bank transactions or many others messages we need on a daily basis. SMS is a great way to use, when Snapchat goes down, WhatsApp doesn’t work or when friends are not available on Messenger. Every time when Millenials are offline.

Natural ground

Millenials feel like the ducks in the water in the mobile world, it’s their natural ground and the data shows that:

• 80% of Millenials sleeps with their smartphones on the pillow,
• smartphone is one of the devices they cannot live without,
• most of them prefer to forget their wallets then smarthones when leaving home in the morning.

It works!

SMS is one on the most effective channels of communcations – that’s we already know. It can be also used to reach Millenials with the commercial information. Personalized, well-tailored SMS doesn’t cause any bad feelings because it appears on their beloved device – smartphone. This is a second quality (right next to cerainity) that makes SMS special for the receiver. At the same time, “open rate” of text messages is extremely high and scores at least 90 percent because of its personal character.

Youth doesn’t let their smartphones our of its side – this is the reason why young people prefer SMS messages then e-mail campaings. In “Millenial Teens digital explorer” report from 2015, only 38% of them admitted that they were influenced by e-mail marketing activities. In comparision, 55% of subjects decided to express interest to buy products after SMS campaign.

One channel is not enough

Millenials are multichannel. They value every service and tools which are fast, easy-to-use and convenient. They can easily juggle between devices, mobile apps, browsers, SMS-es, e-mails and many others at the same time. Older generation is overhelmed by many incentives, while Millenials seek for them.

If it comes to brand positioning, if you want to be reachable for the right clients, you should certainly consider multichannel campaings. Especially when it comes to young generation. On Facebook or Instagram use image content, in e-mail newsletter inform about new offer and in the end finish the process with SMS with a special discount and link to the product.

Meet your goals

Young generation has its own demands – keep instant and constant touch with their friends. This is why they prefer short messages rather then phone calls. One of the Gallup researches reveals that they want a very concrete and consise messages – like SMS.

Target: Millenials!

If you use SMS wisely, it can easily become a highly effective tool decidicated for companies who want to reach their target group precisely. Especially when you are able to combine many channels. Remember about few important rules:

• Write short, concise and fruity messages – remember that Millenials only live once (YOLO – You Only Live Once), so they don’t want to waste their time,
• Use a proper language – do not try to pretend like you’re a teenager if you’re not – be careful,
• Personalize your messages – Millenials feel unique, they know their value,
• Mix valuable contant (images, video, sounds and text) – Young generation is very aware,
• Keep an eye on time and frequency – Millenials are busy but appreciate constat touch, do not abandon them.