Here in the UK SMS has been hyped as a fabulous new marketing opportunity for the past year or so, but I'm not convinced. It's just too limiting in terms of content (160 characters), styling/branding (none!), interaction (users have to use commands of some kind, which have to be explained clearly within the 160 characters) and cost (either for the company running the promotion or the unfortunate user getting charged something like 25p per message).

It's a bandwagon, similar to how email marketing was viewed a few years back, and lots of companies who are still too clueless to make full and responsible use of email are jumping on it (and, of course, email is no more of a "one-way push" than SMS).
I think multimedia messaging, which is just arriving, certainly has some potential though (people are likely to want nice colour 'wallpaper' images for their 'phones, for example).

Luckily the cost has kept spamming down so far - I think I've had 1 spam SMS in two years.

Posted by: Matt Round on August 4, 2002 10:45 AM