Text messages help tourism pros reach a mobile audience

How a South Dakota agency makes its opt-in program valuable to visiting skiers

No doubt about it, mobile users have given text messaging a thumbs-up. In the U.S., 77 percent of mobile subscribers have paid for text-message packages and 53 percent text-message regularly, according to a Nielsen report.

“Text messaging has become so pervasive that U.S. mobile subscribers now send and receive more text messages in a month than they do phone calls,” Nic Covey, the director of insights for Nielsen Telecom Practice Group, said in the report.

So, are you communicating to your audience with text messages?

Since 2007, communicators at the South Dakota Office of Tourism have texted information to their audience—and the program has reached people they may have previously missed.

Why should you care? Because at least one prominent consultant is convinced many companies will soon use text messages to communicate to customers and employees.