With new marketing trends and the regular emergence and development of advertising tools, it is crucial for businesses to choose only effective marketing channels to attract clients.
This often raises questions: which marketing tool is better to use, and where should the advertising budget be allocated?
These questions also arise when deciding on a communication channel with clients. Which is better: SMS or email campaigns?
This question is not easy to answer definitively, as each business has its specifics, goals, and strategies. Nevertheless, we'll try to help you decide.
To choose the right tool for your business, you need to objectively evaluate all the advantages and disadvantages of SMS and email marketing.
Email Marketing: Pros and Cons
Email marketing is currently at its peak! Many businesses use email campaigns to boost sales, improve customer loyalty, and establish communication with consumers of goods and services. Dedicated roles for email marketers and email copywriters have even emerged.
Why Does Email Marketing Attract Business Owners?
10 Key Advantages of Email Campaigns
- Low cost of sending emails via services, paying only for traffic.
- Driving website traffic by embedding links in the email content.
- Ability to send various types of emails for audience interaction (informational, product-focused, service-oriented, promotional, newsletters, and re-engagement campaigns). Providing useful or entertaining content keeps readers engaged, while product advertisements motivate them to use your services.
- No character limit in emails.
- Opportunity to add engaging content (videos, audio, photos) to involve readers.
- Flexibility to design emails in any format to visualize the core message.
- Option to include a logo for brand recognition.
- Ability for users to unsubscribe from the campaign.
- Comprehensive delivery reports, including integration with Google Analytics to analyze link clicks and user actions.
- With a high-quality and consistent email campaign, you can build your brand, position your company's mission, and demonstrate expertise to attract clients.
5 Main Drawbacks of Email Marketing
- Only 50% of users check their email daily and open promotional emails.
- Email open rates depend on the quality of the subject line and email topic. With a high volume of incoming emails, the likelihood of a user opening your email is not very high.
- The success of an email campaign relies heavily on copywriting quality. To create memorable and effective campaigns, you need a skilled professional familiar with email formatting.
- Lack of internet access can delay email checks. Since emails tend to accumulate, your email might simply be deleted.
- Spam filters often block suspicious emails.
Email campaigns are an excellent advertising tool for generating sales. They help establish trust-based relationships with clients. Alternating promotional, news, and useful content opens up growth opportunities for your business.
Features of SMS Marketing for Businesses
Mass messaging remains popular because it is a convenient tool for instant communication with clients. Moreover, SMS campaigns offer several advantages over email marketing. Let's explore them.
10 Benefits of SMS Campaigns for Your Business
- Most people keep their mobile phones close at hand, and a large part of the population uses them regularly.
- SMS doesn't require internet access to read.
- Messages are usually read immediately upon receipt. The information you want to convey to your clients will be read quickly.
- Brevity is the soul of SMS marketing. In 2-3 sentences, you can effectively describe your product or service and attract clients. This is particularly important in a world flooded with daily advertisements.
- Send informational, news, and service messages to maintain regular interaction with mobile users.
- Ease of sending. No need to prepare templates, develop a corporate style, or spend money on design and layout. Simply draft your message and send it.
- Time efficiency for businesses. Sending messages to your entire client base takes no more than 5 minutes, compared to the hour or more needed for preparing an email campaign.
- High delivery rate with detailed delivery reports for each SMS.
- Increased client loyalty through targeted audience segmentation and personalized SMS campaigns.
- Integration capabilities to include SMS campaigns in software systems.
4 Main Drawbacks of SMS Marketing
- The text length is limited to 160 characters in Latin and 70 characters in Cyrillic, which may not suffice to fully describe a promotional offer. Exceeding this limit increases the cost of the SMS.
- Mobile users often lack an option to unsubscribe from SMS campaigns.
- No visual elements or design—just text, the sender's alpha name, a link to your website, and contact details.
- Some users perceive SMS campaigns as spam and don't open the messages.
Three Striking Facts About SMS Marketing's Effectiveness
- 90% of messages are read within the first 3 minutes.
- On average, people check their phones 50 times a day, increasing the chances of your SMS being read quickly.
- 98% of SMS messages are read, compared to 20% of emails and 12% of Facebook posts.
SMS campaigns are a popular marketing tool for both offline and online businesses. Using SMS campaigns for service updates, delivery notifications, product availability alerts, and promotional offers simplifies and speeds up communication.
Supermarkets, beauty salons, car dealerships, restaurants, travel agencies, and many other businesses use SMS campaigns for regular client interaction.
What's the Conclusion?
Both SMS and email marketing have their unique advantages and drawbacks. By analyzing these, you can determine which tool will be more effective for your business.
However, we recommend using both tools together, as they complement each other well in your marketing strategy. For example, you can send fun content and company news via email and use SMS for service updates and promotional offers.
