In the age of modern marketing, do you want to leverage SMS marketing and email marketing together for business growth?
The digital age has fundamentally changed audiences’ notions of brand communication, speed, cost, product information, and service. Therefore, it has provided marketers a robust new way to create customers’ value, engage customers, and build customer relationships.
Marketers must design strong value propositions and strategies that offer them the greatest advantage in their target markets. Email and SMS marketing are the most engaging platforms to help marketers to stand out in the eCommerce market.
To go further in-depth of Email and SMS marketing together, let’s get an insight into how they are functioning individually in the market
What is Email Marketing?
Email Marketing still remains an important and growing digital marketing technique as around the world, more than 200 million emails are sent out every minute of every day. Today’s emails are not staid as text-only messaging of the past. Instead, they are colorful, inviting, and interactive. Email Marketing is used to cultivate relationships with potential customers and keep existing customers engaged.
Email marketing is the practice of using emails to promote offers and service, sale alerts, birthday greetings. Email marketing permits brands to send highly targeted, personalized, and relationship-building messages to the audience.
For Example, Eyewear brand Warby Parker sends personalized emails to home try-on customers throughout the purchase and after the purchase process.
Pros of Email marketing
- 91% of the audience checks their email at least once a day to filter important mails.
- Email marketing returns an impressive $42 for every $1 spent which makes it an ideal investment for marketing.
- 59% of survey respondents say personalized and innovative email influences their online purchase decisions.
- Compared to social media, Email marketing has a conversion rate of 2.3%.
- 25% of companies in one survey said that email marketing is one of their ideal channels in terms of ROI.
Cons of Email marketing
- Marked as Spam: Promotional email or ‘spam’ annoys subscribers. If your mails aren’t targeted to the right people with the right offer, the user may delete your email or unsubscribe from your brand alerts.
- Unread Emails: If you don’t keep your marketing lists up to date, you will find incorrect email addresses that mean your messages won’t reach the right person.
- Design Issue: If the email is poorly designed, customers will not show interest and consider it as spam.
What is SMS Marketing?
SMS marketing is the fastest-growing communication channel right now. mobile phones are ever-present, always-on, finely targeted, highly personal. These aforesaid benefits of mobile phones make them perfect for engaging large audiences anywhere, anytime as they move through the buying process.
SMS marketing is a technique that uses permission-based text messaging to spread promotional messages to the audience. The goal of SMS marketing is to build a database of subscribers to increase customer loyalty and a higher conversion rate.
For example, Redbox uses SMS marketing to engage its customers, personalize its service, and promote DVD rentals. Its “The 10 Days of deals” SMS campaign generated nearly 1.5 million texts messages, resulting in more than 200,000 new Redbox Text Club Members
Pros of SMS marketing
- 66% of the audience prefer SMS over email/call as it is an instant and convenient way to connect with the brand and get real-time information of the products and offers.
- With the right approach, text messaging can help the brand sell more as SMS has a 98% open rate and 36% CTR on average.
- Unlike other channels, SMS marketing is the most cost-effective and time-saving and can easily support and integrate with other channels.
- Outclass personalized SMS experience can offer 55% of the audience to happily buy more products and increase customer engagement.
- Shortcodes in the message can be used to simplify the response of the audience and build your database.
Cons of SMS Marketing
- Opt-in Requirement: You can not share promotional messages to the audience without an opt-in subscription.
- Word limitation: Only 160 characters can be used while sharing personalized SMS campaigns.
- Spam Messages: Sending unlimited non-structured messages can be considered as Spam messages which can result in customers opting-out from the SMS subscription.
Difference between SMS and Email marketing
- Message Length: Emails can be lengthy and can share detailed information in one-go. Unlike SMS, which only has 160 characters so it can only share short and concise messages to the audience.
- Read rate: Emails are generally read within 90 minutes after they are sent. On the other hand, text messages are read within 3 minutes with a 98% open rate.
- Format of the message: Unlike SMS, Emails have a subject line to give an insight on what to expect from the mail, attached images, and more than one call to action can be shared in the mail.
- Delivery: SMS can be delivered without access to the internet and Email requires the internet to deliver information to the audience.
Email and SMS marketing together for an effective relationship with customers to drive traffic
The two-fold goal of marketing is to attract potential customers by promising superior value and to keep and grow the existing customers by delivering value and satisfaction. For this strategy, Email and SMS marketing are complementary to each other to create value for customers to capture value from customers in return.
Below are the key points to prove Email and SMS marketing together as an ideal platform for real-time marketing:
Cross-channel marketing
Around 88% of the audience purchase from the brand where they receive personalized, cross channel messaging, and with cross-channel strategies, customer satisfaction rates are 23x higher among brands.
SMS and email are a powerful combination of cross channel marketing. They can together make it easier for customers to sign up for a brand. Cross- channel promotional messages regarding discounts, offers can reach a large targeted audience by sending a short and direct text message to SMS subscribers and a more involved email message to your list with a CTA directing readers to the targeted landing page.
For example, Starbucks and their Frappuccino Happy Hour campaign is a good example of a cross-channel campaign that delivered results. They included SMS and email marketing such as sharing messages to customers that encouraged users to text “WOOHOO” to find out what the brand had in store in terms of summer surprises they would be offering.
Starbucks continued to send out regular messages that were cross-promoting its “My Starbucks Rewards” program to get more people to sign-up and use this loyalty program.
Generate Email List Leads with SMS
Grow your email list alongside your SMS marketing efforts with no extra work.
It is a twofold plan which can generate more leads or subscribers for Email and SMS opt-in to receive promotional messages.
To generate email subscribers, unique SMS keywords for the audience will work great.
Example: For Email opt-in, share an automated text to the SMS subscriber such as “Hola! Reply to this SMS with your email address to subscribe to our email alerts and receive a discount of 25% on your next purchase”. When a customer responds to SMS with his email address, then you can share an immediate response to the subscriber sharing exclusive discount coupon.
To generate SMS subscribers, an Email sign up form will help in generating an SMS subscriber list.
Example: While sharing Emails for SMS opt-in, include phone number option in the sign-up form and add audience number in the SMS subscriber database.
Ability to Secure Customer Relations
Customer engagements are the major goal of marketing strategy. Implementing Email and SMS marketing strategy together can do wonders for a brand as you can use email to build customer relationships and SMS to increase customer conversion and profit customer commitment.
It is essential to have the right database of the audience as databases help you understand which services to pitch to the customers or predict who will buy what and when. To be the best in the market, you should improve your marketing efficiency by focusing on keeping the database updated as customers’ phone numbers get changed and deleted all the time, so you must check regularly to make sure you’re sending your messages to the right targeted people, not to the audience who are unlikely to respond.
Email and SMS marketing can also be used to verify and keep updated phone numbers and email addresses of the subscribers.
Improve on Metrics that Matter
SMS and Email campaigns together can establish better ways to boost ROI, improve product quality, customer satisfaction, customer engagement, and time management by sending surveys to consumers.
Surveys help a brand to evaluate customer reviews about the product and services to improve the company action plan. Following up with customers for feedback, once they have received the product can provide real-time information to the brand about customer opinion on services or product.
SMS and Email survey campaigns enable marketers to understand customer product preferences, customer contentment, discover the areas of improvement and accordingly rectify them.
Target Recommendations and Upselling
Personalized SMS marketing campaigns can be offered to the audience using data captured from the Email database to endorse awareness about brands, offer ongoing discounts, increase customer retention and lastly, improve, and uplift sales.
Curtail Cart abandonment rate
Email and SMS reminders together can be helpful for cart abandonment reminders for higher profits. They will remind the audience about the items they have abandoned in the cart, and encourage them to return to checkout.
For a prompt response, share the URL link in SMS and emails to direct the audience to the cart to complete the purchase.
Final Thoughts
The modern marketer’s prime goal is to delight customers by promising an exclusive shopping experience. Email and SMS marketing together play an active role in shaping the market as with this approach delighted customers will not only make repeat purchases but will also become “Customer evangelists” of the company who share their reviews to others about their good experience with the brand resulting in higher ROI and conversion rate and increased brand awareness and business growth.
To keep customers satisfied and build a lasting relationship with them, try Wigzo, a customer-centric product for more revenue and higher customer satisfaction.
