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Innovation

Business walks fine line between communicating with consumers and annoying them

A Twilio survey highlights how email is a preferred channel of consumers for brand communication with text in the mix. Businesses shouldn't overdo it though.
Written by Larry Dignan, Contributor

Consumers are generally annoyed by the frequency that companies contact them, prefer email and expect personalization, according to a survey by Twilio.

Twilio, a communications as a service provider, surveyed 2,500 consumers to gauge best practices for enterprise messaging. Among the key findings:

  • 94% of consumers are annoyed by business communications.
  • 61% of consumers say the frequency of contact was annoying and 56% cited a lack of relevance. 41% said they didn't remember opting in.
  • 83% of consumers say they prefer email for business communications.
  • 12% prefer a company's mobile app for receiving communications. Less than half of corporate mobile apps make it to a consumer's home screen.
  • Gen Z and Millennials want content personalization and prefer promotion messages and sales notifications more frequently than Baby Boomers.
  • 71% of consumers penalized a business when the communications experience isn't what they wanted.
  • A third of consumers will make a purchase from a business if it communicates them in their preferred way.

Based on Twilio's survey, the company crafted a series of best practices that revolve around respecting customer preferences, using different channels for different purposes, considering urgency, adopting omnichannel and knowing demographics.  

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