As observed, mobile phones particularly among the youth is growing widely; resulting into promotional SMS marketing as a crucial aspect of election campaign because it is direct, efficient, and cheaper. This type of advertising utilized the feature of phone as popular and effective means of reaching the public almost instantaneously with campaign messages.
This brings the benefit of SMS marketing, and that is the short message gets to the mobile phones of the voters, which they spend time to check. This makes SMS one of the most suitable tools for passing of messages which are considered sensitive and emergency such as a reminder of any event such as a rally, the time within which one is expecting to cast their vote or even emergency news within the context of the campaign.
Indeed, another major boon of this type of marketing strategy is that a vast number of people receive text messages and open them. This form of communication has been deemed to be more efficient compared to email communication, with the texts being well opened at 98% on average. This high engagement rate we see here gives an assurance that any message passed through a campaign is sure to ‘go viral’. Third, the use of SMS marketing is timely or time-sensitive in its message delivery because the message being passed could be easily forwarded to other other people. Others also argued that in as much as campaigns can target specific areas, they can also target people of a certain background, age, political history, which is even a higher level of targeting as people will in most cases react to the message that is hold dear to them.
Furthermore, the management of the masses through Judicial use of SMS enables the voters to respond to the message administered to them, or be part of the poll or survey conducted by the campaigner. It also can be utilized for call for action such as in a way of reminding the supporters a specific rally, volunteering and voting on election day.