Zipwhip, the leading provider of Texting for Business™, unveiled a new survey showing that of today’s main communications mediums – text, phone calls and email – consumers get the most spam over phone and email: 70% said they receive spam “often” over email and 51% said the same for phone calls. Fifty-four percent of people even use a separate email address to avoid getting spam in their main account. Comparably, consumers report receiving much less spam over text: 41% reported “rarely” receiving text spam, and only 18% reported getting text spam “often.”
Given the high spam figures for phone and email, it’s no surprise that 92% of survey respondents said they ignore phone calls from unknown numbers. With texting, however, a person or business can identify themselves immediately without the consumer needing to engage. This could be part of the reason texts have better response rates than phone calls; in a separate survey, Zipwhip found that 83% of consumers respond to a text message within 30 minutes or less.
Consumers also reported low volumes of scam attempts via text, with only 17% reporting they receive them “often,” versus 43% who report scam by phone and 46% who report scams by email “often.”
“Texting continues to be consumers’ most preferred medium, and that’s increasingly the case as spam and scam attempts infect other methods of communication like phone and email,” said John Lauer, CEO of Zipwhip. “Legitimate businesses with a real need to reach their customers have an obvious choice, and that’s to text.”
The survey also found that a large majority of consumers have been affected by the surge in robocalls – 83% of respondents said they’ve noticed an increase in the last year. Consumers inundated with spam and scam phone calls, as well as robocalls, can report them to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) or their network carrier. In Zipwhip’s survey, 35% of consumers report already having done so.
For more data and to see the full spam report, visit: http://zipwhip.com/blog/zipwhip-spam-and-scam-survey.
About Zipwhip
Zipwhip empowers companies to communicate with their customers in the most effective and preferred way possible – texting. As the pioneer of Texting for Business™, Zipwhip first enabled texting to and from existing landline, VoIP and toll-free phone numbers in 2014. Zipwhip’s direct network connectivity, intuitive cloud-based software and an enterprise-grade API mean businesses can use any computer or mobile device to securely and reliably reach their customers, every time. Your customers are only a text away: https://www.zipwhip.com.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191217005778/en/