Does SMS TXT Marketing of a Property By Phone have a future? With the accelerated move of the market to browser enabled smart phones, this article looks at the history of SMS TXT marketing of Real Estate - from the original “Property Text and Photo by Phone” services launched in 2003, and draws conclusions that may help REALTORs plan ahead.

It always amazes me how the US market has lagged so far behind the UK and Europe in respect to the use of cell phone technology!

I remember a very heated conversation with my American colleagues in the UK in 1997 (before we moved to Denver) - they just could not understand the value of the mobile phones we were all using in the office - they said their Pagers were all they needed..!

And even today the US adoption of mobile phone technology for marketing is still way behind the United Kingdom and Europe.
But technology, like childrens’ toys, can often have a very dramatic and pronounced product life-cycle. As new technology ideas continue to evolve and replace older ones, the application of a specific technology to meet today’s needs, can quickly be made redundant as the market evolves.

Marketing Real Estate with SMS TXT services might be a good example of this. Although there has been great interest here in the US with regard to SMS TXT services for marketing Real Estate, this is really a late catch-up on technology that in the UK was all the fashion about 7 or more years ago!

Indeed, in the last 3-4 years, the US has seen a tremendous growth in the use of SMS TXT for Real Estate Marketing. But, I wonder if this peak in interest will be sustained? Will REALTORs continue to seek solutions based solely on this technology for much longer?

SMS TXT certainly has provided a common denominator for providing access to information for most consumers. After all, nearly every phone is capable of receiving and sending SMS TXT messages.
But any Realtor worth their salt wants the most fabulous presentation of their listings and is now looking for web applications like FACEBOOK etc to engage with consumers.

The challenge to the SMS TXT approach for Real Estate Marketing is that PDAs, Blackberys and iPhones all have fabulous (and improving) web browsers on them that gives me a far superior experience for property research.
If I can pull up a comprehensive property website on my smartphone with photos, facts, links and movies, I think that’s more interesting to me as a consumer than receiving a SMS TXT message.

Does SMS TXT for Marketing Property by Phone still have legs?

One of the earliest solutions was launched nearly 7 years ago. In early 2003 a British company launched a instant Text Property Brochure service called TEXT4SALE (ThinkSMS.co.uk). This allowed consumers to use their Phone to send an SMS TEXT to instantly receive back Textual information and also Photos on a property! “Someone driving past a property need only send a text message to receive all the relevant details immediately,” said managing director Darren Rose.

In the US market - not a peep!

2 Years later, the US market catches up. In January 2005 ClearSky announce their ICODE™ PhoneFlyer™ service. “PhoneFlyer allows people anywhere in the U.S. to get additional information on a real estate listing by entering a short code number displayed on the yard sign or print ad into their mobile phones.”

Today, of course, there are many vendors and solutions offering instant SMS TXT property information to consumers. For example, REALTORs who use SPS can take advantage of our mobile marketing solution, which includes a free SMS TXT service, that allows consumers to TXT the domain name to a short code to instantly get back property data.

However, a new study by The Nielsen Company, commissioned by Tellabs, finds that more than seven out of ten of American’s surveyed say they expect to make daily use of mobile Internet and other similar services.

The survey, conducted in the U.S., and five Western European countries, included more than 50,000 consumers, suggests that, in these six markets, providers can expect mobile data services to be adopted by more than a quarter of current non-users. It also indicates an overall increase in usage — including current users and non-users — by more than 100 million subscribers. For comparison, that’s about 40% more total subscribers than Verizon Wireless reports.

- quoted from from the Convergence Corner Blog

There is no doubt that SMS TXT offers some exciting methods for marketing real estate today in the US. And, if you really want to see what can be done with SMS TXT marketing you should take a look at the UK market as they were doing it all 7 years ago!

However, given the rate of adoption of new smartphone technologies, and knowing the way the Real Estate market works, I am sure that SMS TXT to market Property By Phone may very well be a thing of the past fairly soon.

In the meantime, solutions from SPS will continue to offer a SMS TXT service for free, as part of our overall Mobile Marketing solution strategy.

If you feel differently - then let me know! I’d welcome your feedback and comments