Long ago, email marketing was one of the best ways for brands to connect with leads and customers and make more money. But recently, Combining SMS and Email text message marketing, or SMS marketing, has come on the scene. Many marketers are confused about how to not only add SMS to their existing digital marketing agency’s work, but also make sure it works well with their email strategy. In this article, we’ll show you how to combine your email and SMS marketing strategies to get the best results!
The Differences Between Combining SMS and Email
SMS marketing is being used by more and more businesses along with email marketing. Without a question, SMS marketing is a strong tool. It has engagement rates that are 6–8 times higher than email. To get the most out of your internet marketing, you should know the difference between email and SMS.
Email is a great way to send longer, more detailed texts with pictures and files. Because letters can have more links, calls to action, and stories, they offer more chances to sell than SMS. Marketers can then focus on teaching and caring for their customers. You can send articles, tips, and recommendations through email without any problems. Research shows that 90% of users check their email at least once a day. Emails have an average open rate of 20% and an average click-through rate of 2.5%.
SMS is the perfect communication method for concise, quick information or deals. Combining SMS and Email has much higher interaction numbers than email, with a 98% open rate and 29% click-through rate. SMS is great for promotions, but not ideal for material aimed at teaching and nurturing. SMS has a 160-character limit, causing a need to keep texts short and concise. SMS marketing is also more expensive than email marketing. Use SMS best practices for limited product deals, alerts, urgent updates, purchase confirmations, and promotions.
SMS Best Practices
There’s no question that SMS marketing is one of the most personal forms of marketing, which reinforces the need to move carefully. How can you interest your customers rather than annoy them?
- Get permission: Similar to email marketing, it’s incredibly important to make sure you have the person’s permission before you contact them. Every single person you send a text to must have signed in to receive messages from you. This means asking customers opt-in via an online form or inviting them to text a word to a phone number or shortcode. It’s also critical that you provide friends chances to opt-out from getting your messages.
- Ensure your messages are time-sensitive: Make sure to take time zones into mind when sending out texts. It’s important that your SMS provider instantly sends your texts to your customers at the right time, based on their time zone. This ensures that your text won’t annoy anyone in the middle of the night.
- Keep your copy short and to the point: No one wants to receive a business text message that’s a paragraph long. Keep your writing short, to the point, and easy to read.
- Consider using an auto-responder: Using an auto-responder to engage in conversation with your customers can be extremely useful. By giving your customers the chance to ask questions, give feedback, or seek more information, you’re building a strong foundation for your customer interactions.
- Resonate with your audience segment: When writing a text message, put yourself in the shoes of your audience group. What kind of information do they want to receive? What sales or goods might be important to them? Personalization is key.
- Include an actionable CTA: What is the desired result of your SMS campaign? Is it to drive visitors to your website? Do you want people to take advantage of your sale? Whatever your goal may be, it’s crucial that you be clear about what action you’d like your audience to take. Include a link to your product page and be clear in your words. Use words like “Check out our newest edition!” or “Shop now before it’s too late!”
- Limit how often you send: The best way to turn a person away is by spamming them with text messages. While the frequency of your text messages will rely on your goals, we suggest trying to send two texts per week.
- Consider your SMS provider: When picking an SMS service, you’ll want to pick one with an extensive carrier network that will allow you to reach customers in many geographic areas. You’ll want a company that can grow with your SMS marketing and can send text and picture messages quickly and efficiently.
Striking a Balance
Striking a mix between email vs text is crucial to marketing for your business, especially in the world we live in today. in other word combining email and SMS is very important for business marketing. Email has been the true-and-tried means of mass marketing contact. But now with mobile devices in the picture, SMS is now a very efficient and effective way to interact with your buyers. The average person spends 5.4 hours a day on their smart gadget. To put it more into perspective, the average person takes 90 minutes to answer to an email and 90 seconds to respond to a text. Crazy right? When to use SMS and when to use email is very important to understanding.
The Best Approach for Combining Both Methods
Email marketing should be used for longer, richer messages that includes pictures and important links. Good examples of when to use email includes order proof, newsletters, product launches, offers, or educational material. These messages should not be very time urgent and are usually saved for future reference. Depending on the business and how promotion heavy the brand is, the sends per month is going to change. Usually, it runs from 4-10 sends a month.
On the other hand, SMS marketing is great for short and simple communications that are time sensitive. Good instances of when to utilize SMS are tracking information, flash deals, and restocks. It is vital to restrict your sends for SMS marketing to 1-2 each week. You do not want to be a nuisance to your consumers.
As you can see, Combining SMS and Email marketing have their merits. The employment of them together may leverage your business above its competition as you create brand recognition and build genuine interactions with your consumers.
