Email marketing vs SMS Marketing, one of the most debated marketing techniques topics. These two titans of the marketing system are always pitted facing each other in numerous ways, both have their pros and cons, and both are utilized broadly by numbers of trades across the globe.
A great way to invite customers back into your store is by offering a discount or coupon for a return visit. Historically, businesses would send out coupons through direct mail campaigns or Message Campaign.
Which Offers Better ROI?
The average retail open rate for email marketing is only 22.54% (Mailcot). The average open rate for SMS marketing is 99%(Telcob). However, it’s worth noting that these are loose figures and doesn’t take into account the limitations of some industries.
Email Marketing is great for marketing products, excellent images and engaging headlines grasp our attention and get us clicking. However, the early success of emails caused a large penetration of anyone and everyone emailing out their products to anyone and everyone.
Where SMS Marketing is riding high on the back of the importance of the mobile phone. It has been on a meteoric rise leading to the majority of businesses and brands now having a mobile marketing plan and strategy.
What About Important Click-Throughs?
Click Through rate is the percentage of clients that clicked through to a website via the link within an SMS message.
The click-through rates between email and SMS are very different, email marketing tends to generate a rate of between 6-7%.
SMS
Whereas SMS generates rates around the dizzying heights of 36%. In this plugged in, ‘always on’ marketing landscape, levels of engagement on any mobile platform are far higher than they are with non-mobile marketing platforms and are only growing.
What Frequency?
The chance of emails sitting unread and unnoticed is high, so the more you send the more chance you have of one being opened eventually. Research has shown that email marketing finds better response and engagement rates when sending up to 30 campaigns a month.
SMS
Less is more and text message marketing is all about exclusivity. Most successful users send between 4-6 campaigns a month, as opposed to email marketing which requires much more to get results.
The reality is that a mix of the two channels is often best for marketers and consumers. But, there are some types of communication that consumers prefer to receive via text, including appointment reminders, prescription refills, and service outages.
The Best of Both Worlds
Although SMS marketing provides an instant and effective way to reach customers, Email Marketing isn’t going anywhere soon. We still use email on a daily basis, with businesses still classing it as their first choice of communication when contacting a client or employee. So in retrospect, there really isn’t a winner. They both serve a purpose and come with an array of marketing and communication opportunities.
Engagement comes from a signal to engage, not from noise. Think about how many “subscribe to our email list” forms you skim over every day. Again, they have their purpose, but it can be hard to make something so commonplace stand out. Some of the more popular options for doing so including pop-up banners and message boxes asking for your email address.
Instead, it might be worth considering merging them together to give your customers a complete experience and maximize the probability of making your marketing campaigns a success.
