Email and SMS Marketing : Differences and How to Integrate them?

Introduction

Email marketing and SMS marketing both have their own advantages. You might have noticed that each marketing method performs well in different scenarios.Through this article we will try and  understand how Email marketing and SMS marketing perform individually, a comparison between the two and how integrating both of these strategies together can work wonders for your marketing strategies. So let’s dig in!

What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing has often been viewed as a more formal form of communication. 

However, that being said, it’s effectiveness can only be maximised when the emails sent are to people who actually want to receive them. Confused? Let’s break it down. 

Let’s start by understanding what Email marketing actually is. Email marketing can be defined as the method by which you are educating your customers about your business through promotional messages, product updates, discount offers etc. 

The catch here is that to obtain maximum ROI from email marketing you must send the emails to customers who actually want to hear from you. This means that before you craft your mail and hit send, you need to create an email list. This email list would consist of customers who opted to receive information from you.

Benefits of Email Marketing

Having an email list will help you in 2 ways:

(i) It will prevent your emails from going into spam

(ii) It will increase the open rate of your emails

When an email is sent to someone who hasn’t subscribed to receiving them, they will most likely discard it and mark it as spam.If too many of your emails get marked as spam, it will cause a serious breach in your credibility. 

Customers who have subscribed to receiving emails from your business would be aware of doing so and would most likely pay more attention towards it, hence increasing the open and click through rates. 

Some advantages of email marketing include:

1. Accessibility – Over 4 billion people all over the world use Emails. 
2. Affordability – Many email marketing services offer free delivery of emails upto a specified number of recipients. After which the cost of sending bulk emails is not too high. 
3. Personalization – Customers respond better to emails that are addressed to them by their name and contain personalizations. With email you would  be able to personalize.

What is SMS Marketing?

SMS marketing has established itself as a highly lucrative method of communication due to it’s very high open rate. A 98% open rate surely can do wonders for your marketing campaign. 

Just like Email Marketing, SMS marketing also requires that your customers have consented to receiving said communication. 

The TCPA outlines the guidelines to follow with text message or sms marketing. 

SMS marketing can be used to send promotional messages, discount offers, payment status and so much more. You can read more about SMS marketing in depth with its advantages and disadvantages here.

Email Marketing vs SMS Marketing

When to use email marketing and sms marketing

Comparison between Email and SMS marketing

Strategies for Integrating Email and SMS Marketing

As you would have noticed by now, both email and SMS marketing has its pros and cons. Each channel has the ability to perform better in various ways. Thus, to obtain maximum ROI out of your marketing efforts, an integrated marketing approach including both SMS and Email marketing can do wonders.

Get more insights into customer metrics

With two channels of communications with your customers, you would be able to track what sort of content performs best on which platform.
Email and SMS marketing platforms both come with features that will show you how your campaigns have performed. Everything from the open rates to click rates can be tracked. You can use these stats to make better performing campaigns the next time. 

Use both for different scenarios

Email and SMS marketing can be used in different scenarios to perform better. For example, to send messages with eye-catching content such as images and videos which may depict product updates or releases, email marketing would perform best.

To engage in 2- way communication with customers, text messaging or sms marketing would work best. With emitrr, you can easily engage your customers in 2-way communication. You would also be able to convert conversations on the web to text communication and yield higher response rates.

Use Email and SMS marketing in tandem

One method can be used as a follow up for the other. For example if you have set up an appointment for your customer the main message that will go on the date of the appointment setup can be sent on email. The following reminder messages leading up  to the appointment can be spaced out and sent through texts as they are more likely to get read and be remembered by the customer.

Similarly, you can use text messages to create a hype about an upcoming event, promotional offer, or a product update. You can send  limited information on text and induce a feeling of waiting and excitement in the customers. On the release of the update, an email with all the details can be sent, which would now perform better.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

As you must have had an idea by now, email and sms marketing together can generate great results if executed properly. With emitrr, you will be able to craft, schedule and send messages via both email and text under the same roof. 

Just Import your contacts and you will be able to do so much with them. Check us out here to learn how sms marketing can be easily accomplished and used to produce great results!