The Federal Trade Commission this week said that it plans to crack down on spam text messages and the groups that send them. It has been illegal for groups and companies to send these types of messages to consumers without having them first sign up to receive the alerts, but not everyone even knows they can report the numbers. How big of a problem is text spam?
Text Frequency
In Ask Your Target Market’s latest survey, 25% of respondents said that they receive spam text messages every day. 9% said they receive them about once a week. 10% said they receive them about once a month. 10% said they get them every few months. 23% said they rarely receive spam text messages. And 11% said they never do. Another 13% said they don’t currently have a phone with text messaging capabilities.
Has the problem gotten worse? In an April 2012 survey, 25% of respondents said they receive spam text messages fairly often, and 16% said they had never received a spam text before. 38% said that they had just received one or two spam text messages at some point.
Spam Text Messages
67% of those who have received spam text messages said that they delete them. 26% said they just ignore them. 19% said they block the number. 10% said they report the number. And just 7% said they have responded to spam text messages. Just 37% of those who have received spam text messages were aware that it is illegal for companies to send them.
Text Alerts
But companies can legally use text messaging for marketing purposes, provided the customer signs up to receive alerts first. However, only 8% of consumers said that they subscribe to text alerts from many different companies. 29% said they subscribe to text alerts from just one or two of their favorite companies. And 63% said they don’t subscribe to any text alerts from businesses.
You can view the complete survey results in the widget below and be sure to click “Open Full Report” to take advantage of all the chart and filter options.
Photo Credit: Jenny Holzer + twitter + text messaging from Flickr
What do you want to know? If you need some consumer insights on a particular topic, let us know in the comments below and we’ll consider it for an upcoming survey post.
Results were collected on March 8 via AYTM’s online survey panel.
