MEF recently published a report A2P Business Messaging 2020 and MEF CEO Dario Betti held a digital briefing on the topic. Here he shares his top 10 takeaways looking at the trends uncovered and the potential of business messaging in the future.

Business Messaging Is For The Mass Market

73% of smartphone users usually receive messages from businesses. There is still room for growth across all user segments.

2.1 Billion Users- 38% Of The World’s Adult Population Receive A2P Messaging

There is additional growth potential for SMS comparing it with both the level of SMS users (3 billion) and mobile users (4.65 billion).

Promotional and Customer Services Messages Are Equally Common

Globally the difference between marketing messages and customer service messages is marginal: 33% and 32% respectively.

Japan And Germany: Low A2P Penetration Markets

In Japan 56% of the users report not receiving any business messaging; Germany is 42%. All other markets reported 30% or lower shares.

Developing Economies Are A2P Fertile Ground

China, Brazil, and South Africa show the highest penetration of business messaging. In particular,  43% of Chinese smartphone users receive A2P customer service messages, 45% of South African receive promotional A2P messages.

SMS Is The Main Delivery Channel For Business Messaging

SMS is used to deliver business messaging to 71% of smartphone users, while OTT reaches 56%. OTT is growing fast (5% year on year).

Multimedia A2P Is Growing

OTT messaging apps are bringing new functionalities to the market, though some do not officially offer pure A2P messages. In reality, many businesses are still using unofficial channels to deliver messages. MMS has found a new lease of life delivering multimedia A2P messages with 181 million monthly active users receiving business messaging. RCS is small but growing fast (+61% year on year) with 188 million users reached during January 2020.

Young Users Are More ‘Ott Inclined,’ But Sms Still Dominates A2P

All demographic groups show a clear predominance of SMS as a deliverer for business communications – even among 16-24-year-old.

Users Are Concerned About Fraud

64% of users are very concerned about fraud in messaging, 25% report receiving text messages that tried to steal their data.

Spam Remains Is Worryingly High, But Still In Control

30% of users report receiving unrequested/ unsolicited messages (some users might also refer to ‘excessive’ authorized messaging as SPAM as well).

However, mobile messaging has managed to keep a better profile than other platforms. In comparison, email presents 98.57% of accounts receiving SPAM. Spam messages accounted for 57%of the total email traffic in December 2019.

The large amount of SPAM has eventually undermined the success of email as a channel for business communication – a clear lesson for A2P messaging to minimize unsolicited messages.

MEF CEO