Facebook Messenger vs. SMS
FBM’s 3 biggest advantages
I write about messaging for business and nonprofits at @Mssg (atmssg.com)
Looking back at the apps space, it’s easy to analyze the successes by showing how the winners used the unique features of the new (app) space to beat the competition on older platforms that didn’t have these new features available. The prototypical example is Uber. They used the app space which provided location to build a new market that connects supply (drivers) and demand (riders) in real-time, in a real cool way.
Looking back is a cool exercise, but looking forward is much more interesting, profitable and risky.
Messaging is the new and exciting space. There’s a lot of talk about AI and bots, which is great, but theoretical. I’m interested in thinking about the concrete advantages that messaging has over other channels — apps, email, and in this post SMS.
I do a podcast about messaging called The Chat Bubble. If you’d rather listen to this episode, we’re on the web at http://thechatbubble.com this episode is http://bit.ly/2yL9lp for subscribe on iTunes for interviews and other messaging analysis like this.
In this episode we are thinking through Facebook Messenger’s biggest advantages over SMS. We are completely skipping the downsides for now and just thinking about the positives.
Number 1
Facebook Messenger is Free. Yes, you heard that right. Sending a message over Facebook Messenger does not have a cost. You might need a platform to send the message or a developer to build some technology or you need to hire someone to respond manually within Facebook, but… Facebook does not charge for messages the way that carriers do via SMS.
Cost can play a big deal for organizations that are scaled up. Email has become the dominant channel for marketing communications. Having a million people on an email list is not rare and businesses can communicate with that list at very little cost. If an organization builds an SMS list of 1 Million people, communicating with that list is going to cost a non-trivial amount. If a business is paying 1 penny per text, sending 1 million messages to that list will cost at least $10k. It’s just a factor that comes into play.
This cost has advantages, but it’s also held SMS back as a marketing communications channel. Facebook Messenger has chosen to price more like email (not at all), and this gives FBM a significant advantage over SMS — especially as businesses are thinking about starting messaging campaigns and may be comparing the two channels.
Number 2
Facebook Messenger is worldwide. In previous podcasts we discussed SMS having this amazing ubiquity because it’s installed on every phone in the world. That’s great, but the phone market is fragmented. The suppliers of SMS are different in every country. Costs are different and more importantly the setup is different and needs to happen in every country where SMS campaigns are launching.
If you’re a brand that wants to message people in US, Canada, Mexico and the UK. That means 4 different SMS setups, 4 different cost structures and potentially more than 1 aggregator (remember them). Aggregators are the SMS suppliers/wholesalers. If you launch on FB Messenger in the same four contries, it’s one launch and of course 1 cost structure (free) and the build is to a single API.
Combining worldwide and creates interesting angles. One perfect example of these two benefits multiplying is messaging for podcasts (one of the reasons I do a podcast). In a previous job, launched SMS campaigns with podcasts and it went very well. Demand wasn’t a problem, many people texted in. The first problem was cost. if enough people texted in to make a difference, the cost became too expensive. We‘d see tens of thousands of people messaging in over the course of a month or so. The shows were happy about this, but didn’t have the budget to experiment and figure out how to monetize these SMS subscribers. I should point out that a benchmark cost is 1 cent per text, but this really only happens at high volumes or if the organization builds the technology and uses Twilio. With a vendor involved, which is needed at a podcast, the cost per text is significantly higher.
The second SMS problem for podcasts is the podcasts episodes are naturally worldwide. When a podcast tells listeners to text in, the call to action will only work for one country. SMS short codes are only valid in a single county. Obtaining multiple short codes is unrealistic and doing multiple calls to action also won’t work.
A podcast can tell listeners to text in and the results will be good, but for any listeners outside of the source country, the experience just won’t work at all.
So FBM being free and worldwide takes care of these issues and aligns messaging dynamics nicely for podcasters.
Number 3
This is the biggest advantage. Facebook Messenger is connected to Facebook!!
This is probably a 10 hour conversation, but high-level, Messenger being connected to Facebook is a multiplier. Anything that an organization might want to do via messaging can be multiplied by Facebook. One example is a the Facebook Share action. So if my company wants people to take a survey for some type of incentive, at the end of the survey I can ask the person to share on FB and the social aspect means that some of their friends might see it and then click and take the survey.
This isn’t a groundbreaking process — it’s what socials all about. But the multiplying idea comes into play if we can make it easier to share via Messenger (than through the web) then Messenger is multiplying all of the social aspects.
It also works the other way. The first example is Facebook amplifying what the brand does via messaging. The opposite example would be Messenger amplifying what the brand is doing on social. One idea here is that the brand is buying Facebook Ads, can we increase the conversion rates, and value we are getting from the ad by sending the clicker into Messenger rather than a landing page?
This is where I get really excited. With SMS it was always tricky. People wanted to use the channel, but in order to get started they needed marketing to make a TV commercial to drive opt ins — they need to spend money and build the list before they could really do anything with it. So the communications person would need marketing’s help to do anything with SMS.
With FB Messenger, marketing can actually get excited about messaging. They can use Facebook Messenger to increase their KPIs AND build the messaging channel at the same time.
This is a big deal and it’s all just getting started. We’ll be talking a lot more about all of this on the podcast soon. So if you haven’t subscribed yet, please do so at itunes or wherever you get your podcasts. You can search for us — just type in The Chat Bubble.
Of course if you have questions or feedback, message us on Facebook — we are The Chat Bubble there as well.
We’ll be back soon with more, thanks for listening.
