Short message service or SMS marketing and Email marketing are two of the most effective lead generation strategies in this digital age. The question is, which approach is more suitable for your business? After all, not every company is the same, what works for one may not work for another.
To determine which strategy will support your company objectives in less time and less money, you need to consider factors such as cost, click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, level of engagement, open rate and return on investment (ROI).
In this blog post, we will shed light on the SMS and email marketing debate. We’ll define each strategy and show you how they work, their pros and cons, when to use them and whether you should hire us at Muriendas Web Solutions for email services and SMS marketing services.
What Is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is an effective way to communicate your message to a large number of people at one time. This marketing strategy allows you to create a list of people who have opted-in to receive information from you, and send them emails. Email marketing is a reliable marketing strategy that you can rely on to help you reach a large audience. You can create and send content on a weekly or monthly basis, and you can also send one-off emails in response to current events or newsworthy items.
Email marketing can be seen as a more traditional form of marketing. With this type of marketing, you want to make sure that your content is interesting and well-written, so the reader will want to take the time to read it. You can send email newsletters to inform subscribers about new products and services you have to offer, provide tips and tricks, and let them know about upcoming events that they might be interested in. The best thing about email marketing is that you can create multiple email campaigns and send them at different times, so you aren’t being too repetitive.
The Pros And Cons Of Email Marketing
There are approximately 125 billion emails sent every single day. Email marketing is an essential part of any business, and it’s best used for delivering more detailed information. Its ROI is also a lot better than many marketing channels, and it’s quite versatile. You can use an email campaign for product updates, subscriptions and promotions.
Email Marketing Pros
Here are reasons to use email marketing:
It is cost-effective.
If you’re sending messages that aren’t urgent or time-sensitive and you’re sending them to many people, then email marketing is a clear winner. Marketing managers usually spend 20 per cent of their budget on email marketing, a great way to improve brand awareness at scale.
Emails can be personalized.
Emails can be crafted to reflect your brand’s personality. Any reputable email marketing agency expert will tell you that this feature allows you to connect with your audience, helping boost the email marketing conversion rate.
It’s a versatile tool.
You can use emails to provide detailed product information, make short announcements, send reminders, welcome new customers, touch base with leads or just say hi to your audience personally.
It appeals to user habits and intent.
Around 44 per cent of users make it a habit to check their emails at least once a day. When people open emails, they usually do it with a particular intent, such as looking for updates, product information, customer service and others. This is one of the primary reasons why email marketing is important.
It directs people to your website.
Emails are a great way to drive traffic to your website. You can use targeted email marketing services to increase the number of site visitors looking for your products or services. Using targeted traffic boosts email marketing ROI.
Email Marketing Cons
There are many reasons why email marketing is important to your overarching marketing goal. But there are also downsides:
A saturated market makes it challenging to grab the audience’s attention.
On average, we all receive around 121 emails each day. If you have to sort through those emails daily, it’s easy to throw everything into the spam folder. However, you can hire an email marketing expert to craft headlines and content to improve your open rate.
Emails can be prevented from getting into inboxes.
Email servers now have powerful filters. If your email looks too spammy, it may be prevented from reaching your receiver’s inbox. Experts from email marketing companies can help you craft emails that have a better chance of getting into your audience’s inbox.
People can easily delete emails or unsubscribe.
Faulty graphics, poorly crafted headlines, unreadable texts and blocked images can make people want to delete your emails or unsubscribe from your list. Working with an email marketing expert can help you avoid this pitfall.
What Is SMS Marketing?
Short Message Service (or SMS) is a type of marketing that allows you to send promotional content to your customers via text message. SMS marketing is an extremely effective form of digital marketing. You can reach a wider audience by communicating your message via text message to customers’ mobile devices. If you are looking for an efficient way to send content to your clients, SMS marketing is a perfect choice. Not only will it reach a wider audience, but customers will also appreciate the convenience of receiving content directly to their mobile devices.
When coming up with an SMS marketing strategy, you can think of it as similar to sending a text to a group of your friends. You want the message to be short, direct, and to the point, so the receiver doesn’t have to spend too much time trying to decipher what the message is about. Your SMS marketing campaign can include things like sending out a coupon for an upcoming sale, letting subscribers know about a new product you have released, or even giving news updates. Any type of information that is relevant and timely can be sent via SMS marketing.
You can send the following SMS marketing examples:
1. Promotional SMS: These are SMSes intended to increase brand awareness, promote products or services and increase sales.
2. Transactional SMS: These are texts containing information your customers need, such as delivery updates, product specs and order information.
Other SMS marketing examples may include text messages that just sync up with your potential customers. But, again, you’re not particularly sending promotional messages, but you’re just keeping in touch with your target market.
Pros And Cons Of SMS Marketing
In the discussion of SMS marketing vs. email marketing, SMS has the advantage of immediately grabbing the recipient’s attention. Your phone alerts you when you receive a text, holding your full and undivided attention right then and there. This is why the SMS open rate is higher than the email marketing open rate.
This sense of urgency created by that alert is both a pro and a con for SMS marketing. On the one hand, it can prompt your customers to take immediate action about your promotion. But, on the other hand, when sent at the wrong time, these texts can turn off users, who will either ignore them or delete them.
Let’s go over the specific pros and cons of SMS marketing.
SMS Marketing Pros
Here are the advantages of SMS marketing:
Your customers don’t need internet.
It’s interesting to note that 15 per cent of Americans today have little or no internet access. So you’re looking at 52.5 million people you can only reach through text messages. So it’s a huge market outside the reach of any email campaign.
It has a higher response rate.
Text messages get read within three minutes on average. Compared to social media, email or even phone calls, that’s a response rate of up to 209 per cent.
It has high engagement levels.
Like emails, SMS is a marketing channel with higher engagement levels than other lead generation strategies. On top of that, higher engagement levels mean the SMS open rate is higher.
SMS Marketing Cons
Here are the disadvantages of SMS marketing:
It suffers from limited content space.
You only have 160 characters to work with. However, it takes a lot of creativity to deliver powerful messages that way. Hiring experts from SMS marketing agencies can help you craft compelling copy that moves people to take action.
It’s costlier.
The cost of running an SMS campaign is higher than that of an email campaign. However, you can reduce costs by working with seasoned SMS marketing agencies to optimize the process.
It can reduce customer trust.
Sending unsolicited text messages or SMS with poor structure reduces customer trust. It can cause them to opt out, as well. When you send text messages at night or at other inappropriate times, it may also annoy customers.