The rich new world of messaging

My colleague Caitlin’s lease ran out this year, so she needed new wheels, and not just any wheels—she decided it was time for her dream car: a shiny new Ford Bronco. Within hours of registering her interest on a car shopping website, she was chatting 1:1 with local salespeople. Rather than spending hours driving across town, standing in cold parking lots, being pitched by pushy salespeople, only to find that a dealership didn’t have her preferred model in stock, Caitlin shopped right from her phone.

Caitlin’s personalized shopping experience is an example of a major 2024 theme. Messaging is more than a communication channel. It’s a conduit for personalized conversational experiences.

In fact, the two big trends we’re seeing this year are:

• Widening options for senders
• Better experiences for recipients

We surveyed over 1,600 consumers and businesses this year to decode how messages are being sent, and received, on both sides, and serve you up with relevant, fresh information to guide your messaging strategy in 2024.

This is my fifth annual State of Messaging report and I’ve never felt more confident about the positive impact of messaging on businesses and consumers.

In 2020, we talked The Renaissance of messaging. SMS wasn’t a new thing, but it was gaining fresh traction as a marketing tool. At the time we were talking about Verified SMS. Well, times have changed and Verified SMS was sunset in 2023.

In 2021, we introduced The Reformation and shared our “How to choose a provider” checklist, which is still relevant today—you’ll find it included again at the end of this report.

2022 brought us The Restructure. This is when we started seeing new infrastructure in the messaging space around registration and verification. And with that came a rising need for guardrails in the market, and increasing costs. A running trend that continues through today.

Last year, we announced The Realization. Texting is now standard practice across industries. Consumers are used to it, and businesses have mostly adjusted to the expectation of registration requirements.

The “R–” theme may have run its course, but I’m calling 2024 a Rich New World of Messaging because of the deeper, more colorful use cases we’re seeing.

Grab a cup of coffee and scroll on to get our insights, tips, and stories on how this Rich New World is being created.