Looking to grow your marketing strategy effectively? Most of us keep our mobile phones within arm’s reach and check new messages within minutes. So it’s no wonder SMS marketing strategies are a popular way for marketers to connect with customers.
But have you ever considered how SMS can actually support your other communication channels, such as email? Here are some ideas to get you thinking about how to combine email and SMS marketing activities so you can grow, maintain and engage your customer base.
Email vs SMS Marketing
There are advantages and drawbacks to both email and SMS marketing. How you engage these channels will depend on the goals of your marketing campaign and the urgency of the message.
| Advantages | Disadvantages |
| For email marketing: – Can reach a large audience with minimal effort – Emails can be personalised to target specific demographics – Can include rich media (images, videos) – Email is less invasive | For email marketing: – Can easily get lost in the inbox due to fierce competition – Requires an internet connection to read – Time-consuming to create rich media content |
| For SMS marketing: – Unmatchable open rates – Perfect for reaching busy, time-poor customers – Can be used to send reminders or special offers | For SMS marketing: – Can be considered spam if not used correctly – A standard SMS message is limited to 160 characters – Only room for one CTA button |
It’s best to use email marketing for the following applications:
- Building a relationship with your customers by maintaining a regular cadence
- Promote long-form content that requires more detail, links and images
- Sharing interactive experiences and richer media content
SMS marketing is great for the following:
- Sending time-sensitive or urgent messages
- Brief updates like appointment reminders or confirmations
- Getting customers to take immediate action
Benefits of Combining Email and SMS Marketing
1. List growth and data sharing
Get your SMS marketing off to a strong start by using your list of engaged subscribers to grow your SMS list. Subscribers who are actively engaged in your comms are more likely to share their personal information so they can keep up-to-date with the latest information. Consolidate the insights you gain from both channels to help personalise and tailor content to each individual.
You could start by creating an email form to collect your subscribers’ mobile numbers by providing them with an incentive. This could be early access to a sale, a new product release, or even a competition.
2. Both are permission-based
With email and SMS marketing, you can send messages to people who have given you permission. These lists of subscribers are higher quality leads as they already know the basics of your brand and have expressed interest in hearing from you. As opposed to other marketing channels like social media where you are interrupting someone’s day with an unsolicited message.
3. Reach more customers
When you combine email and SMS marketing, you’re able to extend your reach and start engaging subscribers that may have not been actively engaging in your emails in the past. Over time you’ll be able to identify your subscribers’ preferred channel so you can tailor your communication with them. For example, you may be able to get away with sending more text messages to the subscribers that consistently click the links in your SMS messages.
SMS also has a 98% open rate, while email has an average open rate of around 20%. This is why they offer the ideal channel to complement time-sensitive email campaigns like flash sales.
How to Combine Email and SMS Marketing
Ready to consider the email and SMS combination? Let’s start with this list of strategies:
- Promotional offers and discounts
- Detailed information about your product or service
- Reminders about upcoming events or sales
- Customer testimonials or case studies
- Exclusive coupons or promo codes
- Customer polls about their satisfaction with your product or service
- Customer feedback or reviews
- Alerts about new blog posts or other content on your website
- Behind-the-scenes information about your business
SMS marketing is a great way to supplement your email marketing efforts. By sending a text message along with your emails, you can increase open rates and click-through rates.
Here are three further methods of combining the two strategies:
Event marketing
It’s important to keep your attendees actively engaged during the day of your event, especially when it’s virtual. To make sure attendance remains high, we recommend using your SMS messages as reminders to complement your emails for example try sending an SMS:
- A day before or the day of the event to remind attendees of the start time and anything they may need to bring
- After the lunch break or intermission encourage them to come back
- As a reminder to enter any competition you may be running on the day
- After the event to thank your attendees for participating, this message is a great opportunity to link them to your feedback survey
Take a look at our Pre- and Post-Event Comms Workflow how-to guide to see how to set up your event automations.
Flash sales or new releases
Looking to promote a special event or sale? In the final days of your sale, you can follow up your email campaign with an SMS campaign, that draws attention to the limited-time offer. Here are a couple of SMS examples you can create for your next promotion:
- Abandoned cart SMS reminding customers of the limited stock
- Reminder one of their saved items is on sale
- A return of a favourite product is back in stock
- Exclusive access to new product launch or release
- Final hours of a flash sale or special offer
Reminder and confirmations
Email works well for more detailed information like order receipts or confirming flight times, dates, and scheduled appointments. While these types of transactional emails usually get a high open rate, it’s much easier to confirm an appointment via text. This is why SMS is perfect to send last-minute reminders to customers so they don’t forget or they can confirm their attendance closer to the date.
Engage email subscribers
Integrating SMS with email as part of a promotional campaign can be a very effective way to capture people’s attention, particularly when people aren’t reading your emails. Consider this example SMS message that seeks to drive people back to their email inbox to register for an event.
Matthew, last chance to register for Vision6 webinar. Registration closes tomorrow. See your inbox for more & hope to see you there. Reply stop to unsubscribe.
Wrapping up
SMS marketing and email marketing are both effective ways to reach out to your target audience. However, they each have their strengths and weaknesses. With the right targeting, these sorts of messages can work really well to entice people towards opening your email and following through on your call to action.
When used together, SMS and email marketing can complement each other to help you engage your audience, build relationships, and boost sales.
Start creating your first SMS marketing campaign with a free Vision6 account.
