Email marketing and text message marketing both pander to businesses, that are searching for affordable, bulk communication strategies. Email Marketing and text message marketing both inspire brands to send exclusive and/or limited offers, as well as – invaluable information. Although, these two marketing methods may appear immensely alike, when you look deeper, you will take notice of the different benefits each marketing strategy has.
Email marketing has been around for quite sometime and has earned a notable fan base. Text message marketing and/or SMS marketing is relatively new in the digital marketing sphere.
The average open rate of text message marketing is about 99 percent and email marketing ranges anywhere between 28 and 33 percent. Click through rates are exceedingly different. When you include links on text messaging marketing you will quickly notice a click through rate (CTR) of approximately 36 percent. However, on email marketing the CTR is typically around 6 to 7 percent.
Research has shown that email marketing requires more messages. The more you message, the more likely that you’ll have a more successful email marketing campaign. For email marketing it is advised that you send 4 to 6 messages per month.
Text message marketing screams – exclusivity. However, email marketing has a better engagement and response rate on a monthly basis.
Needless to say, text message marketing and/or SMS marketing isn’t the end be all, as they do have a high level of effectiveness. Also, recommended you should never center your digital marketing efforts on just one method. At the end, digital marketing is basically about ROI.
Choose the strategies that offer you the most for your money. Different goals should be set with each individual marketing campaign. Always know what results you would like and adjust your expectations accordingly. Do you want to increase sales? Do you want to compile hundreds of relevant leads? Perhaps, you’re trying to increase brand awareness and that’s okay.
Here are some other factors, which you should consider in regards to mobile text messaging marketing and email for marketing:
The usage of smartphone users is expected to rise to two billion just this year, which represents more than a quarter of the world’s population. It is expected to see an estimated increase in 2018 of 2.56 billion – a 3rd of the global population.
The increase in the usage of mobile devices has changed digital marketing in an array of ways as different businesses are now able to target their audience in a direct way. You will be able to reach your targeted audience through their mobile device at any time.
Two essential ways that such can be accomplished is by:
- SMS Marketing/Text Message Marketing
- Email Marketing
How do you figure out which marketing strategy works best for you?
Email marketing has been around for awhile and although effective it requires that many messages to be sent out. An estimated amount of 97 percent of emails are read within 15 minutes. However, text messages are much more personal. Receiving a text message from a familiar brand gives people the feeling of receiving a text from someone that they know. With that said, it is recommended that you don’t bombard customers with too many text messages.
With email marketing – you can send many messages, though many of these emails might remain unnoticed and unread. Many are also, simply deleted without being opened. On average, 20 percent of emails will be clicked on. This is why the more emails you send, the more chances there are for one of them to be actually be opened. Click through rates are very different on text message marketing and email marketing. You see, with text messages you can expect to receive a CTR of approximately 36 percent and with email marketing you can expect a mere 6 to 7 percent of CTR.
Keeping these statistics in mind – when choosing which marketing method is most ideal for your business, it is pretty clear that SMS marketing is now on top, due to the fact that you can send a lot more text messages. Also, you’ll bang more on your buck!
Furthermore, keep in mind your targeted audience, because if your targeted audience is of a younger generation, who typically check their phones constantly they’ll be more likely to check in on text messages. Older generations most likely view emails as something they would check on their personal computers and not while they’re on the go…
Email Marketing Providers
There are some great tools and companies out there to automate your email campaigns.
Constant Contact – It has been out there for a long time and is extremely user-friendly. They have great and easy to use templates and you don’t need to have a technical background to use these. Their prices start from $20.00 a month for 500 emails and goes up.
Active Campaign – If you are looking for automation with your website and track communication and data then active campaign is a great tool. It learns contact behavior and sends personalized emails. You can also integrate with your Customer Relation Management tool. You can integrate with Shopify, Woocommerce or Big Commerce and sync your customer’s emails right in your account, eliminating any manual work.
Remarkety – is an eCommerce marketing automation solution, enabling merchants to drive revenue through email, mobile and social campaigns. This integrates with Magento, Shopify, Prestshop, Opencart and other shopping carts. Remarkety also integrates with automated tools like smile.io for royalty points and wheelio for coupon games.
SMS Marketing Providers
It is essential to automate your website to eliminate manual data work. You can integrate text messages with your shopping cart to sync your customers contact infomation.
Text Marketer – Based in UK, provides high quality gateway for text messaging. Their bulk prices start from 1.65p for 1-10,000 number of credits
Slick Text – It has some great features like Facebook integration, text to win contests, coupons, personalizations. the basic plan starts from $29.00 for 500 texts.
Protexting – It has an API that can connect to any other systems. You can also connect to your social media channels like twitter and Facebook as well as to an app or ecommerce store. The startup plan is for $49.00 monthly.
In any case, the fact of the matter, is that the majority of people check their phones and/or mobile devices frequently. The engagement on any given mobile device platform is way higher than with non-mobile digital marketing platforms. Mobile digital marketing grows more with each day.
What is crucial for you to remember at all times is – DO NOT rely on just one marketing strategy. Successful, digital marketing campaigns utilize all types of online marketing methods to support marketing campaigns.
Check in on Mystic Web Designn’ Blog regularly for the best tips on digital marketing strategies and much more!