Businesses and companies are fond of using SMS marketing and Email marketing as their marketing channel to reach out to customers and prospective clients. The two marketing methods are effective for marketing. Most businesses use the both of them to market their products and services, while others decide to only use
SMS Marketing
What is SMS marketing? Also known as text message marketing, SMS marketing is a technique that uses permission-based text messaging to send promotional text messages to people. The goal of SMS is to build a database of subscribers to increase the company’s loyalty. Text messages are an ideal way of notifying people within the geographical location of your business, of any offer or discount without having to use any third party application. SMS can be a great way of sending reminders to people for upcoming events and relevant information on how they can get their tickets for the event, or make a table reservation.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is the act of sending messages, to people using email. It usually involves using emails to send promotional messages to customers and prospective customers using email marketing software. Businesses send emails for the purpose of enhancing customer relationship between their brand and their customers as well as attracting new customers. Email marketing has evolved rapidly over the years, it has developed as an effective means of communication between two people, to a marketing technique that is being used by both big and small companies to increase sales by building a strong marketing campaign with email marketing. There are various ways in which Email marketing can be carried out. Some of which are:
Transactional emails, transactional emails are usually used based on a customer’s action with the business. The purpose of a transactional email is to convey information regarding the action that is taking. For example, when a customer purchases a product from an online vendor a transactional email would be sent to them to notify them about the action they have taken, as well as other vital information regarding the product they have ordered, like the delivery date. There are many email service providers that provide support for companies and businesses to send transactional emails.
Direct emails, direct emails involve sending emails to customers solely with the aim of communicating with them. Businesses and companies usually like to send promotional messages to their customers. When there are discounts or new products, brands can easily communicate directly to their customers to inform them about the new development.
Email marketing templates can be used as a guide to create promotional mails. The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 is the law that governs the use of emails for marketing purposes. Remember when sending email to always use an email verification tool to increase your email ROI.
Comparison
Putting SMS texting and email marketing together would not be as easy as comparing them with other marketing methods, this is due to the fact that text and email have a lot of similarities. This does not mean that they cannot be compared together, and their differences pointed out. The two techniques are giants when it comes to marketing the products and services of brands. Below is a breakdown of the two marketing techniques.
SMS MARKETING | VS | EMAIL MARKETING |
| 8 trillion texts are sent per year. 22 billion texts are sent every day. 15,220,700 texts are sent every minute. 67 is the average number of texts a person receives each day. SMS has 98% open rate and it has 45% response rate. It takes the average person 90 seconds to respond to a text. 95% of all text messages are read within 3 minutes by the recipient, with most on average being read in under 5 seconds. 75% of people would like to have offers sent to them via SMS. Over 65% of marketers say that SMS is very effective for them. 55% prefer text messages for appointment reminders 51% prefer SMS for their prescription refill reminder. 53% prefer SMS for fraud and service outage messages. | STATICTICS | 74 trillion emails are sent per year. 269 billion emails are sent everyday 2.4 million emails are sent every second. 121 is the average number of emails a working class person receives each day. Email has 20% open rate and a 6% response rate. It takes the average person 90 minutes to respond to email. 49.7% of all email is spam. 35% of people prefer emails for their appointment reminders. 36% prefer emails for their prescription refil. 34% prefer emails for fraud and service outage. |
After a careful evaluation of the two marketing techniques, it can be said that SMS texting is more efficient and as such is the winner of this comparison. Texting features are more outstanding and cost-effective than its counterpart. Below are some of the winning features of SMS.
Very fast
SMS texting is popularly known for its fast open and response rate. Once delivered, SMS is opened almost immediately by the recipient. Statistics have shown that people open and read their SMS within three minutes of delivery. According to a recent study, 98% of the text messages sent are opened and read within 3 minutes of being sent to the recipient. This statistic as placed texting as a real-time marketing channel. This is the same reason why businesses and companies prefer to use this method for their customer care support. There are several ways of using SMS to manage consumer relationship. It can be used to receive feedback from customers, send reminders to customers regarding their appointment, etc.
Automatic
Texting can be automated. Most businesses and companies are familiar with marketing automation. This is a technology that allows businesses and companies to send automated text messages to their customers. This helps to save time and makes the flow of communications independent, but it also helps companies to create relevant and targeted marketing campaigns. It can be used to send automatically gear content and messages like; welcome messages when there
Personalized
One of the key features of texting which makes it outstanding is that it can be personalized in such a way that it is unique to the customer or recipient. This feature has two aspects: one being targeted at brands, who can personalize the messages that they send out to customers, making them recognizable and easy to remember, this is due to the feature that replaces the phone number or as it is called in marketing terms “short codes” with a keyword that is unique to the brand or company. The second is targeted at the customer or recipient, through segmentation features provided by SMS service providers like Express Text and dynamic fields, making it possible to customize the SMS based on each subscriber’s online activities, interests
Cost
SMS marketing services are cheap. The cost to send a text message is cheaper than sending an email. However, it varies by country, the length of the message and the number of messages sent, overall it does not cost more than emails. Email marketing tools are more expensive. Service providers like Express Text have different SMS marketing pricing depending on the size of the business. There are available packages for
Accessible
It may sound familiar but this term is more than appropriate. SMS is easily accessible to everyone irrespective of the user’s mobile device. SMS is present in both the old generation devices and the new generation devices popularly referred to as a smart phone. SMS is considered like an accessory that we always have on our hand like our wallets. It is accessible because it reaches the recipient anywhere and at any time of the day, because it does not depend on internet connection like the email. Consumers do not have to be within the reach of an internet connection before they can receive promotional messages from brands or businesses.
In conclusion, both SMS marketing and email marketing have roles to play in the overall marketing campaign of a business or brand. Each of the marketing technique holds unique benefits in the way they deliver promotional text messages to both old and new customers.
An SMS will almost always arrive on a customer’s cell phone or mobile device, while email marketing may be received on a smartphone, computer, tablet, or other device. It’s also important to consider how messages in both formats are worded.
Consumers have long since tired of the constant flow of spam into their email inbox, and are generally more receptive to special offers received via SMS. Text messages are also opt-in for your customers and can be seen as more legitimate.
For marketing outreach you should consider using both SMS and email, but text has some advantages that email doesn’t. Text notifications arrive instantly on customers’ mobile devices, are often opened and responded to right away, and are more difficult to ignore.
Bulk text messaging has gotten cheaper and easier in recent years as technology has improved, and is now just as cost-effective as email, if not more so. Texts cost just pennies per message to send, and you can start with a free trial account from a company like Express Text today.