55 per cent of Britons respond faster to SMS messages than any other form of communication, according to research from digital marketing provider Pure360 and YouGov.

The humble text beats out everything, including email – with 22 per cent saying it was the form of communication they responded to fastest – and voice messages (12 per cent), as well as social media, such as Facebook wall posts and messages (five per cent) and Twitter (one per cent).

The research, which surveyed over 2,000 people, was specifically looking at peoples responses to messages from their friends and family – but its not hard to see how the findings might apply to marketing messages.

“With the huge enthusiasm for social media these days, we were surprised to find it quite so irrelevant and slow as a conversational tool,” said Abi Jacks, Head of Marketing at Pure360. “Interestingly, there are as many people responding quickly to tweets as there are responding quickly to postcards.”

The preference for SMS is more prominent among women (60 per cent) than men (47 per cent), with men being more likely to respond quickest to emails (25 per cent).