Guess what happens 110 billion times a month in the US? No, not that – not even close.

One-hundred and ten billion text messages are sent per month. “Wow, great”, you say, “ if only I were a teenager or a company marketing to teenagers that would be a relevant statistic.”

Not so fast.  Consider this,

1. 9 out of 10 Americans use a cellphone.
2. There are 2 billion cellphones in service in the world.
3. 72% of cellphone owners send and receive text messages.
4. Consumers (read, DONORS) use their phones far more for text and mobile search/browsing than CALLING others,  and this trend continues to spike upward.
5. Mobile phones are the most used electronic device on the planet – more than the PC.
6. Half of all mobile phones will be “smart phones” by the end of 2011 according to the most recent Nielsen projection.
7. People carry their mobile phones on their person most of the time according to several market research studies (and personal observation!).

Welcome then to the world’s most addressable market.

Stats are stats, but these are hard to ignore. Do you realize that if Facebook were a country it would be the third largest, behind only China and India? And guess which demographic segment is the fastest growing within this “country”? Women, age 55 to 65. Currently, there are more than 100 million active users accessing Facebook through their mobile devices. More broadly, social media has overtaken pornography as the #1 activity on the web and remember, consumers (Donors) use their phones more for data than voice, and the gap is only widening.

We at the Agitator don’t pretend to know what all this means, but as the old sales aphorism goes, “You need to fish where the fish are”. And this appears to be a very large and growing pond. We dipped our toes in the water last week by forwarding some thoughts on mobile relationship building from Nick Allen at Donordigital.

To provide more grist for the mill we spoke with Stephen King of Direct Intelligence to get his take. Stephen, a veteran direct response fundraising pro as well as a mobile expert, suggests there are technical barriers (solvable apparently) to really making mobile as efficient and lucrative as possible.

It’s clear that spending big bucks on creating a mobile app for the iPhone is far from a “mobile strategy” and probably won’t get you very far.  Why? Because iPhones represent only 24% of the phones out there (trailing RIM at 37%). The reality is that there are currently more than 30 major handset manufacturers producing over 500 different phones, with significant variations in operating systems, screen sizes, display resolution, processing speed, memory, and performance.

All that diverse and differing technology aside, Stephen suggests the biggest barriers may be mental. He offers up these clear cut mental “do’s and don’ts” when thinking about employing mobile in the nonprofit world:

Do’s

1. Let your fundraising and marketing goals and programs drive mobile, not the other way around;
2. Use (and track) mobile for brand building, donor engagement, fundraising and advocacy;
3. Take full advantage of the most trackable device on the planet and measure results;
4. Research the options, there are cost effective ways to go mobile and get a far, far broader reach than an iPhone or Android app;
5. Understand that, like direct mail, and unlike a PC, you’re dealing with a medium that is both “intimate” and “tactile” –and most likely is on the person during waking hours.

Don’t

1. Think of mobile as just text to give, that’s not a strategy, it’s a technique;
2. Use text to give unless you are capturing contact information;
3. Consider an iPhone app or any other single app as a mobile plan or strategy;
4. Underestimate the speed at which this ubiquitous device will become the principal transaction tool;
5. Wait too long to find out more and explore. Unlike the internet, big advantages go to first movers.

We at the Agitator consider mobile to be such a big deal (110 billion texts can’t be wrong) that we are hosting a webinar on the topic to learn more; to understand the options and costs available to organizations right now; and identify what moves fundraisers, advocates, and communications folks in nonprofits should be making today and tomorrow.

The first Agitator Mobile Webinar will be held on Thursday December 2^nd at 2pm eastern. Registration is free to Agitator readers.

Meantime, we’re working on our own free mobile Agitator App and expect to have it ready for our readers later this month. We’ll update you at the Webinar.

Please join us.

Roger and Tom