Royal Academy of Arts chooses PageOne Messaging Service to assist the hard of hearing

London, 13 November 2008 – PageOne, the UK’s leading provider of mobile messaging solutions to the public and enterprise sectors, has been chosen by the Royal Academy of Arts to provide a messaging solution allowing the easy promotion of exhibition tours for the deaf and hard-of-hearing using mobile phone text messages. The decision to use PageOne followed a successful research project by the Royal Academy of Arts, and funded by MAGIC (Museums and Galleries in the Capital), testing the efficacy of promoting events using SMS alerts compared to traditional communication methods, such as email.

As part of the research project, PageOne provided a secure two-way messaging service that enabled the Access Officers to send messages to participants and record their replies. The online reporting was of particular benefit, as it showed the exact status of messages, and those that had failed due to incorrect numbers. 

The research identified some key benefits of using SMS text messaging. It found that:

• Promoting an event via SMS alerts led to a 57% higher increase in attendance.
• The reply rates for SMS were typically 13% to 23% higher than email.
• Attendance among those who had been contacted via SMS was significantly improved.

Project Manager, Arthur Pottersman, Royal Academy of Arts, commented, “After rectifying any incorrect phone numbers, the rate of successful delivery for SMS alerts was 100%. There was a lot of positive feedback on PageOne’s service as the administrators found it to be a quick, easy and reliable way of reminding people about forthcoming tours. On account of these results, and the consistent positive reactions from our customers, the Royal Academy of Arts is looking forward to working with PageOne in the future using SMS alerts on a permanent basis.”