Why Use SMS and Email Together?

Integrated Marketing Campaigns

Using SMS and Email allows you to reach more customers, faster and more efficiently.  SMS (text messages) let you reach your target audience anytime and anywhere, and get instant responses. While email allows you to send targeted messages that customers can read at their own leisure. Syncing all of your contacts into a single contact management space where they receive a message or alert based on preferences creates a vastly improved user experience.

SMS Marketing Compliments Your Email Campaigns

Your customers have evolved, and so must your communications with them.  The majority of the people who walk into your shop will do so with a phone within reach. More businesses are adding text message marketing to their marketing communications strategy.

SMS is the perfect compliment to email marketing because both channels allow you to send the right message to the right customers at the right time. While email is great for sending detailed content to the customers’s inbox, where they already go every day, SMS is ideal for short, time sensitive communications.

How SMS Fits In With Your Email Marketing

 

1. Sign-Up Process. Common ways to gather sign-ups for your email list include lead generation forms, your website’s contact form, events, and other in-person collection.  SMS sign-ups can be done in those same ways, but also include some additional options.

The concept of texting-in to join a list allows your company to reach customers in places that were missing before – while riding the bus, waiting in line at the store, watching television, or walking down the street. SMS marketing allows your company to reach twice as many people in more ways.

2. Driving Revenue. Well done email campaigns have proven to drive revenue and bring relevance to content. However, the expanded use of our mobile phones has also changed the ways that we make purchases. Online and in-store shopping are still the highest, but the fastest growing channel is purchases through our mobile phones.

As of the fall of 2014, “51% of visits  to retailers’ websites are made via mobile devices.” (Mobile Commerce Daily).  So if you are reaching customers with a SMS message that has a link included, the likelihood of driving him/her to make a purchase has increased and your opportunity for driving revenue has too.

3. Engagement. There is a distinct difference between sending a message out like an announcement and asking a customer for input. Email is an excellent medium for blasting out an important message. SMS is a great way to engage your customers to find out what kinds of messages they want to receive, preferences around products, feedback on experiences, and other input.  When you bring those two together, it can create a harmonious balance in communicating with customers.

Want to discuss this more? Join us at the Dynamic Duo webinar.