• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, May 20, 2014

Consumers may be getting the message but many don’t want them.

Not only do many consumers find text messages being sent to them to be irrelevant, most also find them to be intrusive, based on a new survey.

Numerous studies have shown that mobile shoppers would be willing to receive targeted messages that were relevant to them based on their interests or location.

However, a nationwide survey of 1,202 U.S. adults by Hipcricket found that many companies are missing the mark in what they send to whom.

While the majority (66%) of consumers received a text message or mobile alert from a company or brand within the last six months, fewer than half (45%) found that message to be useful. The stats:

• 52% -- Found messages to be intrusive or spammy
• 46% -- Message not relevant to interests
• 33% -- Message didn’t offer any value

It’s not like mobile shoppers don’t want value delivered to them, since value delivered is a key metric for mobile commerce success.

And it’s not like a company wouldn’t get something in return for delivering value to the mobile consumer.

The survey found that many (41%) would share more information with brands if incented with relevant offers or coupons, which is consistent with other research.

Mobile shoppers would be willing to share all kinds of information if they got something useful out of it. And mobile offers made to loyalty members can lure them back to a merchant’s venue, as we wrote about here yesterday (Loyal Customers Drawn by Some Messages, 13 a Month Is the Limit.)

An in-store shopper might be willing to trade demographic information in return for a real-time discount on what she’s about to buy. This data combined with location, day, time and product could provide high future value for a retailer.

And that could be a nice value to a company, just for getting the message right.