SMS Marketing vs Email Marketing: Which Should You Use?

In the modern business world, there are so many kinds of marketing: email and SMS marketing, social media and telemarketing, paid media advertising, and so on.

All of them have their own advantages and disadvantages, but there are still a couple of strategies that are a bit more popular among business strategists.

People prefer using email and SMS marketing for promotions since they are the most convenient and reliable way of getting in touch with your customers.

Customers tend to check their phones and emails on a daily basis and tend to think of emails as more serious and official ads compared to those that they see on social media.

Thus, the chances of establishing business relations while attracting clients via email are quite high. SMS-based advertisement tends to have a higher response rate, especially if you are using text message testing. But now we would like to take a closer look at these 2 ways of marketing and compare text vs email advertisement.

What Are The Key Differences Between SMS And Email Marketing?

So, when it comes to choosing between these two strategies, let’s, first of all, take a look at the main difference between texting and email.

Text messages are sent out with your mobile phone while emails are obviously sent with an email service. SMS texting is suitable for instant messaging while sending emails tends to be a more reliable and secure way of communicating with your customers.

You need to have your personal email and password to be able to log in and send an email, which may be a little time-consuming. What is more, you can use different devices to send emails (laptops, tablets, PCs, and mobile phones).

SMS messages, on the other hand, can mostly be sent out from the phone only. But with modern API, you can improve your messages and even add URLs in SMS messages.

What Metrics Should We Compare For SMS And Email Marketing?

When comparing email vs SMS marketing, there are a few features we should look at. If you are selecting what strategy to choose, you need to check which one is more cost-efficient and has a higher response rate and conversion rates.

However, you cannot also forget about the most important criteria, which are your own preference and what is better for your own business.

Pros And Cons Of SMS Marketing

So now that we know the criteria, let’s take a closer look at the pros and cons of each marketing strategy. Starting from SMS, it is safe to say that these texts have the highest response rate.

People can read your SMS pretty much as soon as you send it to them and if you are using a 2-way marketing strategy, you can respond immediately. 

Next, you can always optimize your campaigns by using  SMS testing API. Thanks to that, you can increase the response and deliverability of each of your campaigns.

The next major plus is that SMS marketing is really affordable. No matter what provider you a using, sending a bunch of bulk SMS messages won’t cost you a fortune. Also, note that is worth connecting API for bulk SMS testing.

Lastly, SMS marketing tends to show the highest conversion rate compared to email marketing, Google, and Facebook advertising.

The major disadvantage of such campaigns is that you always need to grow your lists of recipients. For that, you need to install special widgets so more customers would sign up for receiving SMS while visiting your sites.

Plus, to make campaigns successful, you need to always monitor and add keywords to your messages, which can be time-consuming.

Pros And Cons Of Email Marketing

As for the emails, probably the biggest advantage is that emails are flexible and allow you to include all sorts of information and design in your letter. You can add hyperlinks, change fonts, add pictures and add more text compared to SMS since those have a limited amount of symbols.

Moving on, emails are easy to share. If the client knows someone who also may be interested in your offer, forwarding your email will take just a few clicks. Thus, there is a high chance that your message will reach a better audience.

The next thing that we like about email marketing is that it is measurable. By using business analytics software, you can check whether your campaign was successful or not.

The downside of email marketing is that a lot of emails may be marked as spam. Thus, you need to make sure that you are targeting the right audience and that people won’t get irritated by your offers. Email letters also tend to be less personal than text messages and thus, may have a lower response rate.

Email Marketing vs. SMS Marketing: Who Is The Winner?

To wrap the whole thing up, it is hard to determine a winner in the SMS vs email standoff.

We consider SMS marketing to be just a tad more convenient as it is easier to reach your potential customers and keep them engaged.

But of course, it is only up to you to decide which marketing strategy suits your business model more and what will help you to boost your selling performance.

You can even combine these two strategies to get impeccable results, so the possibilities are really limitless.