As a business owner, you already realize the importance of staying in touch with your leads and customers. If your marketing techniques are up to par with modern technology and proven strategies, then you are already using either email and SMS (Short Message Service) marketing in your business communications. But, have you thought about how you can use the two together to optimize success?
Why Do Companies Use Both Email and SMS
Email and text message marketing are two of the easiest and most effective ways to stay in touch with your fans and customers no matter how large the contact list. Your customers can easily opt-in to mailing lists that automate the introduction, education, and sales of nearly any product or service niche. Frankly, both SMS and email marketing create easy-to-implement sales funnels for business.
What Makes Text Message Marketing Different From Email
We can use SMS marketing for many of the same outcomes as email. But their varying traits separate the tasks. Here are the distinctive communication differences between these two forms of outreach.
Length of the Message
Email marketing is reserved for lengthy text delivering a notable amount of information at one time. Text messages tend to be more succinct in content (160 recommended characters). Use SMS for shorter and email for longer, more involved messages.
Message Format
Emails contain subject lines, headers, body text, multiple images and links, and can include more than one call-to-action. SMS messages are brief, containing only a sentence or two with a single call-to-action. Use email messages for more complex formatting and SMS when you want to keep it simple.
Time Between Delivery & Receipt
Emails generally opened within 24-48 hours after they sent when they read. Text messages, on the other hand, usually read instantly (and text messages have an astounding 98% open rate). Since text messages are read faster – and more often – than emails, leverage SMS to gather information or send urgent CTAs.
How to Leverage SMS & Email Together
Because of the major differences between email and text message marketing, there is no way to gauge one as more effective than the other; each has its own set of benefits. There are tasks that accomplished via email but not SMS, and vice versa. Using the pair to complement one another is an excellent approach.
Cross-Channel Marketing
Make sure everyone sees your invitations, whether to events, newsletters, or online promotions, by sending a brief text message to SMS subscribers and a more involved email message to your list with a CTA directing readers to the targeted landing page. Cross-channel promotion for your events and other campaigns is important because it helps to extend your reach.