Whether advertising or just communicating with clients about transactions or appointments, every business needs to use texting. Your clients prefer being contacted over text, and it has an open rate of 98%.
But there are many things to learn about business texts, from the message types to text message character limits. You need to be aware of the text character count limit and ways to make the most of the space you have within a message.
The evolution of SMS
To better understand the text message character limit, take a minute to look back at how SMS has evolved over the years.
Given that we currently text with our phones, the fact that the first SMS (short messaging service) was sent in the 1990s may come as a surprise. More interestingly, it came from a computer.
The idea of short messages began even before that. In 1984, Friedhelm Hillebrand realized that most short messages had less than 160 characters. This would later become the standard.
The first official SMS was sent on December 3, 1992. Neil Papworth sent Richard Jarvis a message reading “Merry Christmas.” As mentioned, Papworth sent it from a computer. Unsurprisingly, Jarvis had no way to respond.
From there, it didn’t take long for mobile phones to start supporting SMS. Nokia was the first to do so in 1993. For years, you could only send SMS to people on the same network as you.
