2010-02-09 21:11:45 Author: Paul Kinsella

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Valentine's Day takes a larger share of shoppers' wallets than any other holiday season, third to Christmas and back-to-school.

Based on this year's National Retail Federation's (NRF) Valentine's Day survey, the average
consumer will spend $103.00 on traditional Valentine's Day merchandise, up
from $102.50 in 2009. NRF also predicts that US consumers will spend a total
of $14.1 billion on Cupid's holiday this year.



Last year, with more than 1.06 billion messages sent on Valentine's Day, SMS
continues to play a major role in how the world communicates and transacts
in many ways. Given the popularity of SMS, especially on large spending
holidays, retailers are finding clever ways to reach customers to drive
revenue, using SMS
marketing, which can be easily implemented via Clickatell applications
or APIs.



With more than 4 billion mobile phones already equipped with SMS, the growth
of SMS has been astounding. Portio Research, a leading firm covering the
mobile messaging market, recently noted, "SMS continues to confound
expectations as Worldwide Messaging Revenues are set to exceed USD $233
billion by 2014." Another recent study by Dialogue Communications reported
that 67% of mobile users would like to receive text alerts for everything
from medical appointments to bill payment. Smart marketers around the world
are incorporating SMS marketing as a wide reaching communications channel as
part of their complete marketing mix, augmenting existing channels like
direct mail, email, printed coupons and others.



"This Valentine's season, the most popular forms of social media, SMS and
Facebook, will help retailers generate more awareness and buzz about brands,
products, services, and special offers instantly and effectively," said
Pieter de Villiers, Clickatell CEO. "Retail offers can be delivered to more
than 4 billion consumers via SMS, including more than 500 million Facebook
users instantaneously, making it that much easier and natural for offers to
be passed along virally. Never before has it been so easy and effective to
reach billions with relevant, targeted, opt-in based offers," he concluded.
 

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