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The Application-to-Person (A2P) messaging market is both vast and varied. Nothing stays the same for long and the only REAL barometer of how the industry is truly doing surely can be through speaking to the people whose lives we are attempting to impact – subscribers, consumers – and asking them?

Well, this is what we have continued to do here at MEF, year after year. On behalf of MEF, On Device Research surveyed 8,450 smartphone users, 650 in each of 13 markets.

Volumes of A2P transactions are increasing rapidly around the world, driven to a large degree by the level of tangible digital transformation that is going on all around us. E-commerce is moving on in leaps and bounds and no matter the organisation, all need to place special effort on building and cementing loyalty with their customers.

Getting to the stage where your clients remain loyal and come back time and again to you is not always easy. This is where having a multitude of great mobile digital channels at your finger-tips comes in very handy.

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FREE - Executive Summary

Key Findings

  • GOOD NEWS: BUSINESS MESSAGING IS ON THE RISE

In general, businesses messaging is bigger than ever with an increase in users who received messages from businesses across every channel. The biggest winners are SMS with a 2% and WhatsApp with a 3% increase.

  • BAD NEWS: SPAM RISING FASTER

Reports of spam are growing at a faster rate than the amount of people who reported receiving business messaging. 42% of people globally say they receive annoying spam messages from companies they have never contacted before

  • CHINA AND BRAZIL LEAD THE CHARGE

Like last year, China and Brazil lead in the amount of people who received  business messaging. A whopping 96% of users in Brazil and 97% in China received commercial messages. This is an increase from last year and the highest record this survey has seen. 95% of users in France received a business message.

  • YOU’VE GOT MAIL

In P2P, email usage has plateaued while SMS and OTT continue to grow rapidly. Yet in terms of A2P, email is the channel most reported to send business messages (increasing to 50% of those we asked). However, if we combine OTT and SMS, mobile messaging is still the de facto leader.

  • YOUNG USERS ARE BECOMING MORE TARGETD BY A2P COMMERCIAL MESSAGES

Historically, we’ve seen younger demos receive less A2P messages from enterprises but this year the divide between younger and older is shrinking. 37% of consumers aged 25-34 reported receiving A2P SMS.

  • FRAUD LEVELS REMAINING CONSISTENT DESPITE CONCERN

Despite concern for fraud on the rise, globally we saw incidents of fraud actually decrease from 36% to 35% this year.

As proud members of MEF, we’re excited about what’s possible when we work together. This is a community filled with smart, dedicated people who all really care about making business messaging better. We need to decide how we’re going to create a sustainable, trustworthy ecosystem that lets our customers reach their users quickly and easily. Otherwise, we run the risk of becoming obsolete.

Business messaging isn’t dead. It’s low cost, has high clickthrough rates, and is ubiquitous, so it can be used around the world. There’s a reason I love this industry so much — and I want to see it thrive in the future. There are obviously going to be challenges as we navigate this new wave of fraud. But as a community, we’re well poised to create systems and an ecosystem that makes business messaging safer and more effective.

Uku TomikasManaging Partner & Ceo Messente
MEF