The long-time champion in the marketing world for cost-effectively driving sales and creating new revenue for businesses has been email - but not for long. There’s a very strong contender that will take the lead within the next few years - SMS text messaging.
Advanced automation and technology innovations have made email an attractive way for businesses to create customized customer experiences based on behavior. If you’re a marketer or business owner you probably know at least a dozen or more CRM solutions in the market, but you might not even know of one solution for text messaging automation.
Without a doubt, email marketing has been around for longer and it is widely adopted by businesses today. The same is not true for SMS text messaging. But this only means that early adopters are and will continue to win big before it reaches massive adoption.
Email vs SMS Marketing
Both email and SMS text messaging serve a unique purpose in your overall marketing and advertising strategy. And there are some important distinctions between these two communication channels.
Email is a great medium for longer-form communication, catchy headlines that make us click-through, and beautiful html graphic design that helps us identify with brands.
SMS text messaging on the other hand, is a fantastic way to have a short-form personal communication with your customers like you would texting family or friends.
Email Marketing Adoption
When email came to the scene it was quickly adopted by businesses and consumers alike. As a result, it caused an overload of marketing emails being sent out daily to anyone and everyone with no filters. If these emails were only trying to sell products relevant to us, but that wasn’t the case. This hasn’t changed much today, as we continue to get heaps of non-relevant emails everyday.
Email brought about ease of communication between both parties, businesses and consumers. But shortly after, regulators had to crack down on email to protect privacy and email service providers came up with spam filters and junk folders.
The massive adoption and volume has been great for business, but it has also lead to a significant year-over-year decrease in open and response rates. Even if emails make it to our inbox we tend to delete or ignore most of them if the headline does not catch our attention. Most of us have short attention spans nowadays.
SMS Marketing Adoption
Today, SMS marketing is in its early adoption phase for businesses. But with mobile now being the preferred device for consumers of all ages, SMS text messaging is poised to be the most important shift in business to consumer communication. In fact, it is now adopted my the majority of big brands who deploy strategic mobile marketing plans.
Consumer attention flocking to the mobile phone presents businesses and brands an opportunity to use this medium of communication for marketing purposes. We must meet our customers where they are spending the most of their time having real-time conversations with their family and friends and that is on the mobile phone.
There’s no doubt mobile consumers today carry their phone with them at all times whether it is in their hand or pocket, and this guarantees reach. I’ve personally never known of someone who doesn’t have notifications on their text messages or deletes them before even opening them. After all, the Messages app comes pre-installed in every phone and can’t even be deleted.
I've previously written about how to increase consumer adoption of your product or service without an app. But not about how exactly does email and SMS stack up against each other. That's coming up next!
Email Marketing vs SMS Marketing
In order to debunk some of the myths, I’ve collected some important statistics and facts to compare and contrast email marketing vs SMS marketing. I’m sure this will answer most of your questions, if not all of them.
How much is email used?
How much is SMS text message used?
How many emails does the average office worker receive a day?
How many texts do millennials receive a day?
How much of email is spam?
What is the average email open rate?
What is the average SMS text message open rate?
What is the average email response rate?
What is the average SMS text message response rate?
How long does it take to respond to email on average?
How long does it take to respond to an SMS text message on average?
How fast are SMS text messages read?
How many people would like to receive offers via SMS text messaging?
How effective is SMS text messaging for businesses?
There you have it! A round up of the most valuable data for businesses to compare and contrast email marketing vs SMS marketing. Combining these two channels should be an essential part of your businesses' in-place marketing and advertising strategy.
Are you wondering how you can use text messaging for your business? Wonder no more because I’ve identified and written about 9 ways businesses can use text messaging for marketing.
Want to get started with SMS marketing today? Get Started Now.
P.S. Everyday we are helping hundreds of businesses generate millions of dollars in new revenue with SMS marketing.
Our unique and proven checkout experience at ReplyBuy is guaranteed to increase your overall audience engagement by 4x when compared to phone calls, email, and social.
It will also increase your conversion rate by 5x when compared to other mobile funnels using links vs a string of text to power purchases.
Are you ready to experience ReplyBuy? Yes, I Want To Get Started Now.