Valentine’s Day 2009 is gearing up to be the biggest texting day ever, with VeriSign predicting 3.5 billion messages will be sent in North America alone.
On February 14 last year, VeriSign estimated 2.2 billion messages would be sent in the US, suggesting a 37 percent increase.
For 2009 as a whole, VeriSign’s estimates imply an increase in total messaging for the year of 30 percent compared to 2008.
What we’d love to know is: what proportion of these messages stem from mobile marketing campaigns? Can anyone estimate this?
All festivals – be it Christmas, New Year or Mother’s Day – present excellent opportunities for the mobile marketer – but Valentine’s Day, with its international appeal, is one of the best.
If you haven’t been attracting customers to your mobile site with special promotions and free m-Valentine’s cards and wallpapers for your customers to send to their sweethearts and friends, you’re missing out.
Check out our new paper on running a campaign around holidays and special events, using some inspirational examples from Valentine’s Day, past and present.
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How do they work it out? If you don’t like figures, please look away now.
VeriSign’s estimates are based on the number of messages carried between different mobile operators on its network.
In the US, VeriSign expects to carry 1.2 billion SMS messages. As its share is 60 percent of all inter-carrier SMS and MMS, i.e. between two people on different operators, the total is 1.7 billion. That means that the majority of the 3.5 billion messages sent on the Valentine’s Day are intra-carrier, i.e. between two people on the same operator, at 1.8 billion.
Assuming the same calculations, Valentine’s Day, is a bigger texting day in the US than Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve 2008, where VeriSign carried 1.1 billion and 1 billion messages, respectively.
In 2008, a total of 224 billion messages passed over VeriSign networks. This is predicted to rise to 320 billion in 2009. Assuming shares of the market remain equal, this suggests that messaging is rise 30 percent year-on-year.
Presumably because VeriSign’s share of the global inter-carrier network is less significant, it is unable to make accurate predictions for SMS on Valentine’s Day worldwide.
We expect more information to be published by VeriSign here soon.
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