From direct mail to email to SMS and now through Facebook event invites, friends and colleagues use various means to invite us to socials. Although all of these methods have their more appropriate use, I feel that SMS invites are the ones that stick. Here’s why.

More often than not, SMS invites that I send out for events usually have a higher turnout for events, even if I indicated an RSVP - and they DON’T RSVP but still come. Hmm. Also, based on experience, I get replies that ar 24 hours late - but still replies nonetheless confirming attendance to events. Does it mean that in my circle, people have a higher chance of forgetting things in email than on their phone? Because when I do send something via email, I get a reply (via SMS!!) after a few days that says “did you send it? I never got anything!”

What are your personal experiences with sending invites? Weddings and formal functions aside, I think SMS is still the best way to go because it is more personal, and people will forget their wallet - but never their phone!

As a final note, there is that element of SPAM to be considered. When one medium is bombarded with spam (in this case, email), it becomes a less effective means of getting invitations.

[image courtesy of newscom]

T-Mobile might be in deep s#it as consumers are up in arms over mobile phone spam. Truth be told, the story of cellphone spam is nothing more than push advertising but with your subscriber base ranting over being misinformed on whether or not they subscribed to a service in the first place.

Culturally speaking, the level of aggression differs per country. Some folks don’t really mind being sent text spam - for instance if this is the business model behind getting free credits. So yeah it depends, but T-Mobile isn’t in any good shape with its irate customers who ARE getting spammed.

I think the way to go should be permission based advertising - mobile phone carriers should still ask subscribers whether they should have certain “spam” turned on. This also allows you to further customize these messages to fit the demographic and thus have, well relatively, better conversion rates into sales.