Welcome to another installment of “the Friday Five,” a bi-monthly feature that highlights articles from around the web to give readers insight into the inner workings of the SMS industry and offer mobile marketers valuable information and helpful advice. This week we’re featuring articles that cover everything from customer support to SMS superiority over mobile apps. And here. we. go!

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Why SMS Is the New Channel for Customer Support

Mathilde Colin

The first entry for this week comes from Front co-founder and CEO Mathilde Colin. Her story illustrates yet another beneficial application for SMS: customer support. Colin provides a veritable laundry list of reasons why SMS is the ideal platform for time-sensitive business-customer interactions and includes a number of use cases that support her claim, including cases for car rental company Zipcar, the cleaning service Homejoy, and even Southwest Airlines.

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Best Practices for Mobile SEO

Hassan Bawab

The next article on the list features another writer’s take on a common but incredibly useful feature type: the best practices list. At the end of the day, you can never really have enough of these things. Even if some of the suggestions or stipulations are the same as what you may have come across before and there may be a number of constants, new writers always offer a different perspective and Magic Logix CEO and Marketo Blog contributor Hassan Bawab is no different. Bawab’s roundup focuses on best practices for mobile SEO and he offers marketers a number of useful tips pertaining to mobile-friendly websites, content optimization, and mobile ads.

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Own These 5 Tips For A Successful Mobile Marketing Strategy In 2015

Hank Mondaca

Much like the best practices list, there is another feature type that you can never really have enough of (especially in January) and that is the new year advice column! This month’s peek into 2015 mobile trends comes from Hank Mondaca AKA The Mobile Marketer. Mondaca’s insightful column delves into some key behaviors that all marketers should take notice of, especially if they want to find success with SMS in 2015.

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When it Comes to Mobile Marketing, Text Beats Apps Hands Down

Joe Brannon

During our last Friday Five feature, we profiled a story from Direct Marketing News that detailed a recent study that suggested that only one app in 10,000 would actually be profitable over the next 3 to 4 years and this Mobile Marketing Watch guest post by textLiving CEO Joe Brannon is the perfect companion piece! In it, Brannon details a number of other studies and statistics that reveal that SMS is still the preferred method of engaging in mobile marketing efforts over mobile apps. An app-solute (see what I did there?) must-read read for marketers!

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Is There Still Some Value in SMS Marketing?

Adam Groff

The final entry on our list for the week represents the perfect capper for a number of topics that were addressed in previous articles. Freelance contributor Adam Groff composed this piece for Business Review USA and it includes a great overview of the numerous benefits that SMS marketing is still providing for marketers. From the opportunity to make more personalized marketing campaigns to compliance, Groff covers a number of topics in his brief but informative SMS primer.

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