In today’s day and age of faster communication, faster information transfer, and faster ways of getting things done, voicemails are becoming increasingly irrelevant, and annoying. Simply put, when you are at work, sometimes you just don’t have the time to be checking every voicemail left on your phone. It’s also important to note that voicemails are becoming less tolerable because we are conditioned as a society to get the information we need much quicker. Voicemails are time consuming, most lasting at least a minute or two, sometimes longer, and create an unnecessary nuisance when trying to communicate. Time is money, and voicemails cut into your time.

According to a uReach Technologies study, 30 percent of voice messages remain unheard for up to 3 days or longer, and over 20 percent of people with voicemails sitting in their mailbox rarely check them. It has been found that adults under 65 years old respond more quickly to a text message than a voicemail, and adults under 30 years old are four times more likely to respond within minutes to a text message rather than to a voicemail. Ultimately, it takes the average person 6-8 hours to check their voicemail after a message has been left. Leaving a voicemail has essentially become like sending a message in a bottle, someone might pick it up…eventually.

Moving along these same lines, it has become apparent that not only voicemail, but direct mail, telemarketers, email marketers, and call centers are becoming obsolete. People have been bombarded by these forms of advertising and marketing for so long that they have learned how to filter out the noise. This truth is especially prevalent among the younger generation, more specifically anyone under 30 years old. Of course, knowing all this, one has to ask why is this happening?

The truth of the matter is that text messaging has essentially killed the voicemail star, pun intended. The traditional ways of advertising mentioned above are much more intrusive than a simple text message. Through text messaging, people gain a sense of authority and control over what they want to see and what they don’t want to see. They can choose whether to view a text message or not, unlike telemarketers blowing up your phone or email marketers flooding your email. Along with this, even if they view a text message, they still have the option of whether to reply or not, and also the choice of how long they’ll take to respond. Text messaging, especially for business and marketing, has become the forefront of the industry because of the ease and speed at which information is sent and exchanged. If you are still using voicemail, direct mail, email marketing, or telemarketing to drive your marketing, you are doing you and your customers a disservice.