Obama VP Text Blast Shows SMS Message Limits
Written by Evan SchumanA retail IT lesson from the world of politics? Maybe. Web tracking firm Keynote studied the text message blast sent by the U.S. presidential campaign of Barack Obama, the one in which his campaign promised to tell supporters his VP selection before it was broadly announced.
That message didn’t quite work out politically, as CNN broadcast the choice hours before the text blast was supposed to start. As a result, the campaign immediately triggered the blast, which didn’t work well, either. About 50 percent of people who subscribed to receive the text message from the Obama campaign regarding the VP pick may not have received it “in a timely fashion and perhaps not at all,” Keynote said. Does this mean Common Short Code SMS messaging won’t work for large national blasts? Not necessarily. But if you’re relying on getting your data out to prospects, it’s probably a good idea to vote for a different transmission method.
-Marc
September 4th, 2008 at 3:17 am
No not at all. There is no good reason for the SMS delays. I work with companies that deliver messages for UK county coucils and they can shift 500,000 per minute – which means that it would only take 15 minutes to text 15.5 million people!!
September 4th, 2008 at 7:28 am
Editor’s Note: Fair point. What we were trying to say is that such dispatches are hardly foolproof. There’s little doubt that done properly, such messages can work, but retailers need to understand that there are many reasons why it can fail. The campaign example was a powerful reminder.