As of April 2021, Sara is processing more than 40,000 text messages a day and growing. That’s almost 1.5 million messages a year between Sara and clients as well as staff and clients.

Some interesting stats from “The Local Project” as of 2021

Texting Statistics by Time and Rates:

1. Texts have a 99% open rate.
2. 95% of texts will be read within 3 minutes of being sent.
3. The average response time for a text is 90 seconds.
4. College students spend 94 minutes a day texting, on average
5. Texting takes up 33% of Millennials’ mobile usage.
6. 96% of smartphone owners text.
7. The average adult spends 23 hours a week texting.

Texting Statistics by Preference

1. 33% of American adults prefer texts to all other forms of communication.
2. Text is the most used form of communication for American adults under 50.
3. 91% of people who text prefer it over voicemail.
4. Texting is the most common cell phone activity.
5. A third of Americans prefer text to phone calls.

Sources: Pew Research Center, CTIA, Nielsen, Gallup, USA Today

So yes, in today’s world, if you want to reach a consumer when and where s/he is (and get a response), there is nothing like SMS.

Sara uses commercial short codes (like Amazon and Uber) for several reasons:

• Shortcodes (typical five characters long) are heavily monitored by carriers like Verizon, ATT, and Sprint. In fact, you cannot get a shortcode without passing stringent requirements and they are extremely expensive. If you send spam via a shortcode you are very likely to get shut down. As a result, they seldom contain spam, and consumers know this.
• Sending SMS via regular 9-digit phone numbers is limited in several ways: a) You can only send a message every 2 seconds, and b) if you send more than 200 messages a day, carriers can (and will) shut you down. In contrast, there are no sending limits on shortcodes, and thousands of messages a minute can be processed.

In addition, Sara always uses two shortcodes: One for Sara and one for staff. In that way, clients can stay in contact with Sara and staff separately without either “stepping on the toes” of the other.

This is one reason why we say Sara is “mobile-centric”.