SMS Text Messaging Growing According To Commodity Update Survey

Chuck Zimmerman

Commodity UpdateThe folks at Commodity Update have found that SMS text messaging has really gained ground among farmers and agribusiness. To prove it they had Millennium Research conduct a survey of farmers and found some very interesting information. I think this information should help agrimarketers feel comfortable about investing more in mobile, personal and direct forms of communication with members and customers!

“Mobile is the fastest-growing segment of the marketing mix, and now agricultural companies are leveraging this direct channel to build relationships with top customers,” says Joel Jaeger, president and founder of CommodityUPDATE, the leading provider of agricultural information to mobile phones.

Jaeger and his two brothers created the concept that became CommodityUPDATE in 2006 to gain access to market information in the field. The brothers, who run farming operations in Colorado and Belize, soon realized a need for the offering beyond their own operations. They began cultivating a new mobile communications channel that would engage farmers like no other. Today, producers receive CommodityUPDATE primarily through sponsored subscriptions. Companies leverage the channel to send supplemental messages, such as agronomic alerts, to growers.

Growers place unparalleled value on those CommodityUPDATE messages, according to survey data recently compiled by Millennium Research, Inc. in Minneapolis:
• 91 percent of farmers indicated the information they receive is important or very important; roughly the same suggested they would recommend the service to another farmer
• 80 percent correctly recalled the company that sponsors the CommodityUPDATE subscription, on an unaided basis
• 65 percent felt “more connected” to the sponsoring company

According to Jan Johnson of Millennium Research, the results foreshadow where the industry is headed:
brief and direct to the farmer, with information of immediate value.

“One of the most significant findings from the survey is that farmers remembered each of the SMS texts they received,” she says. “On average, CommodityUPDATE subscribers receive 3.8 messages per day. Farmers surveyed recalled 3.6 messages, meaning they pay attention to each one.”

Plus, farmers correctly associated those texts with the sponsor or brand.

“On average, 80 percent of end-users correctly identified the sponsor of the commodity market updates, and some sponsors enjoyed virtually 100 percent recall,” she notes. “Typical unaided recall for an agricultural product from a market leader would be 30 percent in a similar study.”

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