ITV extends interactive services partnership with Fonix into its 10th year

ITV PLC, the UK’s leading commercial broadcaster, has entered into an agreement to extend its partnership with Fonix PLC, continuing a long-standing relationship focused on delivering mobile interactive services across ITV’s portfolio of programmes since 2017.

Under the extended agreement, Fonix will continue to power mobile carrier billing across ITV’s competition portfolio, while supporting SMS payments and interactive services across a range of flagship programmes, including I’m a Celebrity Get me out of Here, Love Island, Britain's Got Talent, Good Morning Britain, This Morning and ITV Sport.

Leveraging its Campaign Manager platform, Fonix provides secure, scalable SMS engagement infrastructure alongside real-time data insights, helping ITV enhance audience participation and deliver more dynamic, engaging viewer experiences.

Peter Mossman, Director of Production and Strategic Delivery at ITV, said: “Our partnership with Fonix has played an important role in shaping our interactive services. As audience behaviours continue to shift, it’s vital that we work with partners who can combine reliability with innovation. Fonix brings both, and we’re excited to continue building on what we’ve achieved together.”

Rob Weisz, CEO of Fonix, told That's Business: “Extending our work with ITV reflects the strength of the relationship we’ve built together, as well as a shared ambition to keep improving the viewer experience. Interactivity continues to play a key role in broadcast, and we’re proud to provide the technology and insight that helps ITV engage audiences at scale.”

https://www.fonix.com

Why SMS should be a key part of your marketing strategy

Business messages need to be seen and read which is why the channel you choose is so important.

When you consider the average Brit spends 4 hours and 14 minutes a day on their smartphones and checks them every 12 minutes, using SMS to communicate with customers seems like an obvious choice.

SMS is the only marketing channel with up to a 98% open rate, and with an average response time of just 90 seconds, it’s the most effective way to send time critical messages, promotions and alerts.

It also enables your communication with your customers in the place where they are already gathering information and interacting; in-fact recent research highlights 33% of SMS recipients react to CTAs in SMS marketing messages, and 47% of them end up making a purchase.

SMS complements existing marketing communications, such as social media, email, WhatsApp Business Platform, direct mail and search advertising to support a unified message and voice for your brand.

SMS can help businesses in a wide variety of ways, from sending notifications, or alerts about sales/discounts, sending order/ shipping updates, to sending appointment reminders, conducting polls/surveys, or even sending thank you messages to customers.

So here’s how to maximise the use of SMS to get the best results, according to Esendex:

Timing is everything

You don’t want to miss the mark when it comes to the timing of your message. Don’t like Mondays? Neither do your customers, or the weekend for that matter. SMS campaigns statistically perform best mid-week. Aim for between 9am and 12pm during business hours or between 5pm and 8pm for online browsing and shopping.

Place your call to action at the start

It’s a good idea to put your most important details at the start of the message so that they can be seen in the preview text on your customer’s phone. Customers are far less likely to hit delete if they read something they can relate to.

Don’t over communicate

Sending too many messages will make your audience tune out, and not sending enough will mean messages lose impact - finding the sweet spot will help with higher engagement rates.

Get the message structure right

Stand out from the crowd by structuring your message and adding elements of humour, empathy and personality. Doing so can go a long way to engaging your audience. Make sure you have a clear sender ID so there’s no confusion who the message is from and always check grammar and spelling.

Get personal

Recent research highlights that a personalised advert converts 10 times better than a non-personalised one.

Personalisation goes beyond adding a customer’s name to the top of an advert. By using relevant and up to date data, businesses can make product recommendations, add context, cross sell, and tailor promotions to customers’ needs. Anything from ‘Thank you’ or ‘We miss you’ messages, to birthday or purchase anniversary promotions to VIP offers and back in stock alerts – will let your customers know that you value them and are thinking of them.

https://www.esendex.co.uk/