Martech Matrix: SMS Marketing Platforms

Introducing the SMS Martech Record Matrix 

In early 2018, I remember asking the head of a premiere Shopify agency what the new, new thing would be in customer acquisition. Without missing a beat, he replied that within a decade, SMS would be bigger than email. 

I laughed out loud…who in their right mind would ever opt-in to getting texts from a brand? Only millions of shoppers it turns out….

No sector of commerce tech software has plowed through the Gartner Hype Cycle as quickly as SMS. In just five years, the channel has gone from “is it even legal to collect customer phone numbers at checkout?” to an almost fully commoditized software category. 

Riding the COVID wave, it took just two years for SMS marketing to rise from relative obscurity to 40+ vendors each declaring that they had “discovered the #1 new revenue channel” for brands. The sameness in the marketing was almost comical as brilliantly laid out here in PR consultant John Forberger’s analysis of the positioning statements of 44 companies in the space.     

At its core, the promise of SMS is simple– Postscript’s hero copy for years simply promised to “SELL MORE STUFF.”  But the sheer volume of vendors makes SMS a uniquely tricky market to navigate for buyers. Below is our breakdown of the companies cited by Martech Record readers in the SMS Market Presence Index*

Martech Matrix: SMS Marketing Platforms

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