SMS and Email Marketing: Leveraging Both for Maximum Impact

SMS and email marketing allow you to connect with customers in quite a personal manner. The message goes directly into your recipient’s inbox. So, it’s likely they’d pay attention to what you’re trying to communicate, whether it’s a promotion, a new product launch, an event, or anything else.

Now, it may seem like a great idea to stick with only one marketing channel. But, if you can, wouldn’t it be better for you to maximize the potential of both platforms? That means you’d get even better results, right?

In this post, you’ll learn how to use SMS and email marketing for more impactful campaigns. 

SMS vs. Email Marketing – What’s the Difference?

Before we get into the details of maximizing SMS and email marketing for your digital marketing strategy, let’s see how they differ.

How They Work

Email marketing is a form of digital communication that allows you to send brand content directly to subscribers’ email inboxes. This can include newsletters, product announcements, event invitations, and promotional offers. 

The goal of email marketing is to build relationships with potential customers, generate leads, and improve your sales. To get started with email marketing, you first need to build an email list — a collection of email addresses of those who have signed up to receive your messages.

SMS (Short messaging service) marketing involves sending promotional content via text message. You can use SMS marketing to deliver time-sensitive messages like promotions, appointment reminders, flash sales alerts, or customer service messages. 

To start with SMS marketing, you’ll need to build an SMS contact list by getting interested leads to opt in for your campaigns. You’ll see how to do this later.

Content and Interactivity

Email marketing campaigns offer more flexibility and room for content. You can provide detailed information about your products, services, offers, or events. These campaigns also allow you to incorporate interactive media like images, videos, buttons, and similar elements into your messaging to make it more visually appealing and interesting. 

Here’s an example:

SMS has a 160-character limit. So, you don’t have as much room to provide context or any extra information in your messages. There’s also no room for adding visuals, or interactive elements, except with MMS (Multimedia Messages), which are rarely used. However, you can add clickable links to your text messages.

Time Lapsed Before Initial Engagement

SMS messages are usually opened within minutes (or at least 90 seconds) of delivery. Emails can take significantly longer (60 minutes or more) to be opened.

Ideal Use Cases

SMS marketing is ideal for time-sensitive messages or urgent alerts. It works if you aim to engage customers faster. So, you can use it to offer limited-time discounts, single product promos, requesting reviews, reminders, and so on.

Email marketing is more suitable for detailed messaging and campaigns that are not as urgent or time-sensitive. It’s perfect if you aim to nurture long-term customer relationships.

Pros and Cons of SMS Marketing

Pros:

• SMS marketing messages are delivered real-time.
• Messaging is designed to be concise and straight to the point.
• It has greater engagement potential. SMS marketing has higher open rates than email— often above 90% vis-a-vis email’s 39.7%.

Cons:

• The limited character count for SMS marketing leaves little room for complex information.
• You can only use one image per time. The image can’t be more than 500KB.
• SMS campaigns may come off as spammy if you send them too frequently.
• It costs more to send an SMS than a single email. SMS marketing typically costs between $0.01-$0.05 per message, depending on the platform you use or the audience you’re trying to reach. 
• Finally, there are many state and federal laws regulating SMS marketing. For example, in addition to getting consent, there are laws on when you can send marketing messages. Moreover, some of these regulations vary from country to country, which can complicate things, especially if you have an international audience. 

Pros and Cons of Email Marketing

Pros:

• You can segment your audience and send targeted, personalized campaigns.
• You can customize your marketing emails to reflect your brand identity. 
• Unlike SMS messages, email has no character limit so you can make your emails as long as you need for them to achieve their objective.
• Email is cost-effective and has a high ROI. A study by the Data and Marketing Association (DMA) discovered that every $1 spent on email marketing can yield a $38 return. That ROI highlights the opportunities to make money from your email list.

Cons:

• There’s a chance emails won’t get to the recipient’s inbox due to IP address blacklisting, problematic email attachments, and others.
• Email providers like Gmail or Outlook have spam filters that can prevent some emails from getting seen.
• Customers’ inboxes are often saturated with emails. This easily gets overwhelming for the recipient and can lead to declining email engagement.

Why Combine SMS and Email Marketing?

Provided you follow SMS and email marketing best practices, you can level up your campaigns with these two combined. You can use one channel to make up for what’s lacking in the other.

Here are specific reasons to combine SMS and email marketing. 

Unified and Cross-Compatible Dataset 

When you combine SMS and email marketing, you get to create a unified dataset that provides a comprehensive view of customer interactions, preferences, and unique attributes. Your CRM tools can record email addresses alongside phone numbers and other data that’ll help create a more informed and effective marketing strategy. 

You can also use email data to enhance your SMS marketing campaign, and vice versa. More on this later.

More Effective Segmentation and Personalization 

Email marketing platforms allow you to segment your target audience based on their preferences and demographics. 

If you connect these platforms to your website, you can access information related to user behavior, buying patterns, and product interests. This allows you to use dynamic content and send personalized campaigns that resonate with your audience at the different stages of the customer journey.

Because their data sets are compatible, you can use data from your email marketing platforms to segment your SMS contact list and vice versa, too. That’s one way to tailor your email and SMS campaigns better to customers.

Further Reading: 8 Personalized Email Marketing Strategies You Don’t Want to Miss (with Examples)

Higher Multi-Channel Engagement

Customers engage with brands through various touchpoints. Combining SMS and email marketing can reach them on their preferred channel, improving potential customer engagement.

An example of an automation workflow, that first sends an email, then checks if the recipient converted, and then follows up with an SMS message. 

Higher Conversions 

Complementing email marketing with SMS marketing can also help you facilitate product conversions. 

You can send texts that link to specific products which may interest potential customers. When they click, they’ll end up on your product page and easily make a purchase. 

Also, you can complement your automated emails with timely SMS reminders. For example, after sending an abandoned cart email, you can send customers a text like the one above urging them to complete their purchase.

Further Reading: Email Marketing Conversion Rate: What It Is and 10 Ways to Improve It

Improved Deliverability through Better Compliance

Both SMS and email marketing operate under strict regulations (like GDPR, CAN-SPAM, etc.) against sending unsolicited emails or spammy messages. 

A unified approach to collecting and protecting customer data or managing your email/contact list reduces the risk of compliance failures so you can continue to connect with your leads.

Better ROI 

We’ve already seen that SMS and email marketing yield significant returns on investment individually. However, a combination of both channels can lead to even better results. That’s because if you send the SMS and emails as part of one campaign, you can narrow down your audience and potentially skip texting people who have already converted or opted out of your communication.

Finally, since you can assess the performance across both platforms, you’re in a better position to review and revise your strategy to maximize ROI.

Further Reading: How to Measure Your Own Email Marketing ROI

Understanding Consumer Preferences

Consumer preferences vary even when it comes to communication channels.

A survey found that 37% of consumers like to receive brand emails. More than 30% of consumers say they like receiving text messages from brands.

Although the data isn’t industry-specific, it gives you a good idea of what’s generally effective. If you combine both channels, you can reach more potential customers than if you use only one platform.

How to Use SMS and Email Marketing Together

Now that much has been said about combining email and SMS marketing, let’s see how you can use them together.

Build a Comprehensive Database 

The first step to making the best out of your SMS and email marketing strategy is to build a comprehensive database. Your database will include important information like names, email addresses, and phone numbers. 

Make good use of your online touchpoints by collecting client details through:

• The contact page on your website
• Your product checkout process 
• An email sign-up form 

Offering incentives like discounts, exclusive updates, and content is a good way to encourage leads to share their information. See how Exploding Kittens uses a discount code as a lead-generation incentive. Notice how they initially offered 10% off in exchange for an email address but then increased it to 15% to those who also wanted to provide their mobile phone number:

You can collect contact details offline, too. Attend networking and industry events and share your digital card. Various digital business card options allow you to create a QR code that prospects can easily scan to access a page where they can share their details.

What if you only asked for email addresses in your forms to ensure good completion rates? Just send your now-subscribers an email encouraging them to opt into your text messages. Communicate the value of these messages. You can say they provide real-time updates on juicy deals, can help them get early access to important sales, among others. 

Start with a Targeted Email Campaign

Once you have a solid database, use targeted emails to connect with your subscribers. 

Create drip campaigns or automated email sequences that welcome new subscribers and introduce them to your brand. Tell them about your products and why they stand to benefit from them like Mecene did below:

Also, use emails to deliver insightful content to your leads. For instance, why not share blog posts from your website? 

You can also send other types of updates like special offers, events, or even new product releases. Leverage holidays like Christmas or special days like birthdays to connect even more with your audience.

Further Reading: 7 Best Practices In Creating Automated and Targeted Email Marketing Campaigns

Supplement with SMS Marketing

Supplement your email marketing with SMS to boost engagement. So, if you sent an email about an upcoming sale, you can shrink the email content into a short text message to be sent to your contact list. AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Axios’ AI conclusion generator allow you to summarize email content.

If you sent promotional emails about exclusive offers, create counterpart text messages about them, especially if the offers are time-sensitive. This way, you create urgency and drive quick responses, both from customers who may have seen your email and those who may have missed it. 

For event emails, use text messages to provide real-time updates like location changes or last-minute details you don’t want customers to miss.

You can also use SMS to facilitate transactions and offer customer support. So, when customers make purchases on your site, send transactional messages confirming the order and communicating the status of their purchases.

Similarly, you can also use SMS to promote store-wide promos or target them individually for events like customers’ birthdays.

Example of a simple automated SMS marketing campaign that sends a text message 14 days before a customer’s birthday.

Measure Engagement and Follow up with Timely SMS & Emails 

Tracking the performance of your SMS and email campaigns is crucial for optimal results. Monitor key metrics like:

• Open rates
• Click-through rates
• Bounce rates
• Conversion rates

Based on the results, you can also create follow-up campaigns. For instance, you can run re-engagement campaigns for inactive email subscribers to boost sales. You can also send an email and a text message reminding them of the previous feedback email they didn’t respond to. Emphasize the information will be used to assess customer satisfaction and determine how to improve your products and services.

SMS and Email Marketing Best Practices

First, be compliant. I already mentioned that there are regulations in place to protect subscribers. The CAN-SPAM Act, for instance, requires that you don’t send misleading information in SMS campaigns or emails. So, you must:

• Have a clear medium through which people can subscribe to receive your emails and text messages. 
• Indicate your message is promotional
• Use the right subject lines, headers, and sender information 
• Provide your accurate business location
• Have a clear opt-out option.

For SMS, the Telephone Consumer Protection ACT (TCPA) requires the following on your opt-in page:

• The type of SMS program 
• Sending phone number or shortcode 
• Expected message frequency (weekly, monthly, etc.)
• A link to your terms and conditions or privacy policy
• Contact and support information
• Opt-out instructions

Beyond the regulations, your SMS and email marketing campaigns should create a great experience for potential and existing customers.

So, after someone opts in to receive your text messages, confirm their registration through an SMS. The initial text should include your business name and a phone number the recipient can recognize.

Here’s an example of an online retailer, Gymshark, following the above guidelines in their SMS opt-in process:

For email, after they sign up, you can send a welcome email to new subscribers.

Other SMS and email marketing best practices include:

• Maintaining a moderate frequency. Don’t overwhelm your recipients by sending too many messages.
• Keeping text messages relevant and concise.
• For email messages, using engaging visuals and clear copy. 
• Using straightforward CTAs
• Checking that embedded links are accurate.

Finally, use professional email service providers to create and manage your campaigns. 

Further Reading: 8 Best Email Marketing Best Practices for 2024

Shifting Toward Cross-Channel Marketing 

Businesses across industries continuously seek ways to get the attention of prospective customers. So, there’s a lot of “noise” coming from them, especially online. 

Relying on a single marketing channel is no longer enough to capture a share of the market. Cross-channel marketing is the way to go if you don’t want to miss out on profitable opportunities.  

SMS and email marketing, in particular, work well together.

While SMS delivers an immediate and attention-grabbing means of reaching leads, email provides a more detailed and content-rich platform for nurturing and converting them. You can enjoy benefits like better personalization and segmentation, higher engagement, more conversions, and increased ROI by combining email and SMS message marketing. 

Now go ahead and reap those awesome benefits.