Newsletter
SMS Trends: 2023 in Review
We released our 2023 State of Business Texting Report and made three big predictions based on that data.
Let’s see how those predictions have played out.
1. Commerce Is Conversational
Transactions and buying conversations increasingly happen through SMS.
This has proved true. Despite the economy slowing down significantly in the first half of 2023, we’ve seen an increase in transactions happening via text. Those include:
Sales conversations for services
Fundraising and donations (text-to-give)
SMS marketing for selling products
SMS payment transactions (text-to-pay)
Event registrations and ticket sales
Consumers are continually gravitating to text messaging for more of their purchases. Businesses leaning into this trend are increasing revenue while making employees more efficient and creating better customer experiences.
2. Texting Is More Convient
Consumers would often rather text than call, but it’s also more convenient for businesses.
Consumer experiences tend to become business expectations, and texting is no different. Once someone realizes they can text to accomplish a task while avoiding phone calls, that becomes their standard channel.
As businesses text to meet these expectations, they’re realizing it’s more convenient for them, too. Employees and owners can text with customers in between other tasks and around the clock (if they want) while saving time from being on the phone.
And in fact, more work is getting done in less time, reducing stress for employees.
3. More Business Texting
Unexpectedly, businesses are texting for more reasons.
We predicted that significantly more businesses would begin texting this year. The market’s been in a sweet spot where consumers expect texting to be an option, but it’s not so saturated that you can’t stand out.
This has played out roughly as expected. However, we’ve also seen innumerable businesses double down on their texting efforts. What’s particularly interesting to us is not that more businesses are texting, but that businesses are texting more often and for more reasons.
That’s a very good sign. Across the board, businesses are seeing success through text, so they’re expanding those efforts. For more details, insights, and statistics, view the 2023 report.
