Insight
SMS Marketing Vs. Email Marketing and Other Channels
SMS marketing has grown in popularity as a marketing channel, but how does it compare to other channels?
According to our 2024 State of Business Texting Report:
66% of people get fewer than 20 texts per day
74% of people read every text they get
62% of people read and respond to those texts within a few minutes
Good marketing is all about meeting your audience where they’re at, and these stats show they’re clearly on their phones texting. So how do you mix SMS marketing with the other channels you use?
Below we’ll cover how SMS marketing compares to other channels like email, social media, and traditional.
What Is SMS Marketing?
SMS marketing is the practice of sending promotional or informational messages directly to customers’ mobile phones via text message. SMS marketing can include Multimedia Message Service (MMS) messages, which are commonly called “picture messages.”
This guide will compare SMS marketing’s ability to create positive outcomes in comparison to other traditional and digital marketing channels.
Why Use SMS Marketing?
SMS marketing is primarily used to:
Get your message in front of your audience
Stand out from competitors
Drive revenue
Create experiences that customers love
Increase subscriber engagement
All of which ultimately helps you increase revenue.
What Are the Benefits of SMS Marketing?
SMS tends to work well, because people spend most of their time on their cell phones. This results in stats like:
Higher open and response rates
Immediate delivery and engagement
Personalization and direct communication
In fact, 54% of the people we interviewed for our 2024 State of Business Texting report said that text messaging was the most effective channel for getting actual responses and driving action from them.
Below we’ll cover how to use SMS alongside other marketing channels.
How Does SMS Marketing Compare to Email Marketing?
Both SMS marketing and email marketing have distinct advantages and challenges that are geared toward different marketing objectives. For example, texts are obviously better suited for short and sweet promotions and updates, well email is better suited for complex and long-form updates.
Consider texting for:
Appointment reminders
Flash sales
Consider emailing for:
Weekly newsletters
Detailed reports
Graphic heavy promotions
SMS boasts an exceptional return on investment (ROI) of approximately $71 for every dollar spent, which beats email’s estimated $36 per dollar invested nearly 2x over. The key to getting the most returns is knowing when to use each channel and when to combine them.
Open Rates: SMS Marketing vs Email
Texts have a 98% open rate, while emails have an average open rate of 32%. Texts are more likely to be seen before an email, which is why SMS campaigns are ideal for things like time-sensitive promotions, flash sales, or urgent updates where immediate action is required. 62% of people read and respond to those texts within a few minutes.
Emails are prone to getting lost in a crowded inbox, which is why email marketing campaigns should entail content that isn’t exclusively time-sensitive. Things like detailed newsletters and long-form content make more sense in an email. Time-sensitive emails can also be really powerful. For example, flash sales or “Take Action Immediately” type emails tend to outperform those that are not time-bound.
Unsubscribe rates for SMS subscribers are also less than 5%, which means when people do subscribe, they’re typically highly engaged. This is in stark contrast to email marketing, where approximately 20% of subscribers leave each year.
Personalization and Engagement: SMS Marketing vs Email
Both channels allow for a degree of personalization, but it’s a matter of how in-depth you prefer your message to be. Character limits constrain personalization options for text messages, but customers can opt to receive a specific type of text by texting in a keyword related to their interest, or being segmented into a customer persona group by your team.
Emails allow for extensive personalization, which is great for highly targeted campaigns based on user behavior and demographics. Things like exclusive offers and personalized product recommendations work perfectly for email.
Customers spend more, refer more, and report higher satisfaction when they get personalized messages. Ultimately, when it comes down to grabbing an individual's attention with personalized messages, the average conversion rate for SMS marketing messages is between 21% and 30%, which is ten times higher than the average email marketing conversion rate.
When should you combine text and email marketing?
Advertising promotions to both your SMS and email subscribers is one of the fastest ways to grow both. You’re also more likely to get a customer to take action when they see a back-to-back texts and emails about a new offer you have.
Follow up with subscribers on both platforms, and use data from your email campaigns to better target your SMS subscribers. Text messaging is just like any other marketing channel in that you will see the most returns when you use it in tangent with your other channels.
Incorporating an SMS follow-up to a promotion email has shown to increase open rates by 20-30%.
How Does SMS Marketing Compare to Social Media Marketing?
The average ROI on social media ads is $5 for every one dollar spent, while SMS’s ROI is $71 for every dollar spent.
Social media is broader. SMS is more granular. It’s not a question of which one you need more, but how you are leveraging each of them for the best effect. You need both to reach your specific audience.
Reach and Immediacy: SMS Marketing vs Social Media
The average social media advertising click-through rate (CTR) worldwide is 0.98%, which pales in comparison to the average SMS CTR of 36%. The average cost-per-mille (CPM) of advertising on social media is also $6.06 dollars, while it costs $0.01 to $0.05 per SMS text message sent.
Why such a big difference?
Text messages are sent and received immediately, whereas social media content is consumed as people are scrolling. The algorithm and user behavior patterns also influence where your post ends up on someone’s feed.
Social media can be better for reaching a new audience beyond the contacts who have opted in for your texts. Content is easily shared among each social platform’s large user bases, and targeting tools help place your content in front of your ideal audience. It often makes sense for social media content to be your customer’s first digital touchpoint, as well as an ongoing one.
Once a customer engages with your social media posts, you can invite them via your posts to opt in to your SMS marketing texts. It’s like a drip campaign. Similar to how you would lead a customer from your website to your email newsletter where they can be further nurtured.
More often in the case of social media ads, opting into texts would just be an extra step. It may make more sense to just send people to your website for them to take whatever action. That just takes a click.
Personalization and Engagement: SMS Marketing vs Social Media
Text messages are easier to personalize for an audience with tools like Templates and Groups to target specific contacts. However, texts need to be short due to character limits, so that means you need to frontload important information and get your message across as quickly as possible. Texts are also more likely to be read and engaged with before a social media post.
Platforms like Facebook and Instagram give you lots of space for long-form messaging and storytelling with different forms of media. People will engage with social posts on their own time when they come across it, so that makes it ideal for sharing information that isn’t time-sensitive.
Big picture, a text is going to be better for something super targeted, time sensitive, and easy to digest. Social media is going to generally be better for something that's not as time-bound, and it can afford to be richer and take longer to consume.
How Does SMS Marketing Compare to Traditional Marketing?
Traditional marketing channels are great for delivering messages in a digestible way. TV commercials, billboards, radio advertising, and print advertisements are all examples of traditional marketing methods that have been around for decades.
While SMS marketing provides a direct, immediate, and highly engaging communication channel with measurable results, traditional marketing offers broader reach through established channels. There are exceptions—for example direct mail can be very targeted and personalized—but ultimately an SMS campaign is quicker to put together and share than most traditional channels.
That said, traditional channels also tend to offer richer engagement opportunities than a text. A radio ad gives you a tone of voice and emotion. A billboard gives you colorful imagery. A commercial at its best is entertaining and educational.
The choice between SMS and traditional marketing depends on factors such as target audience, campaign goals, budget, and the need for immediacy and personalization. Integrating a mix of traditional channels can help businesses leverage the strengths of each to achieve comprehensive marketing objectives, but texting may be a more efficient way to get more bang for your buck.
Ultimately, while SMS boasts an ROI of $71 for every dollar spent:
Radio is $6 for every dollar spent
Billboard is $6 for every dollar spent
TV is $7.31 for every dollar spent
Direct mail is $7 for every dollar spent
Below we’ll take a look at some reasons why.
Personalization and Engagement: SMS Marketing vs Traditional Marketing
SMS marketing boasts high engagement rates with open rates around 98% due to the direct and personal nature of text messages. The biggest difference is that texts are going to specific people, while traditional ads are going to people who have a matching characteristic, like living in a certain area for billboards and radio.
Traditional marketing engagement and response rates can vary widely and are generally lower due to the passive nature of mediums like TV, radio, and print, and the overall difficulty of tracking engagement. There’s also little to no interaction that can occur with traditional marketing, unlike text messages which customers can respond to directly.
Tracking and Measuring Results: SMS Marketing vs Traditional Marketing
When it comes to traditional marketing methods like print or TV ads, it’s tricky to measure the results of a campaign. For example, you can track engagement from billboards by your CTA or by tracking website traffic in that geographic area pre- and post-billboard, but that takes more digging in comparison to pulling up stats from an SMS marketing campaign.
Any time you create a mobile marketing campaign, you can track all the important metrics that help you see how successful it is—including open and click-through rates. Marketers rely heavily on data, which is why SMS marketing works better for proving ROI.
How Does SMS Marketing Work?
SMS marketing works by:
Getting contacts to opt into receiving messages from you
Batch sending those contacts info, updates, or promotions
Segmenting contacts into lists to continually improve results
To do this, you’ll need a business phone number to send mass texts, ways for contacts to opt in, and something to offer them for giving you their contact info. The number you use also needs to be 10DLC registered.
What is 10DLC registration?
10DLC is an abbreviation for a 10-digit long code phone number. It refers to a standard phone number, like 423-218-0111.
10DLC registration is the process of verifying your business number and the use cases you message your customers for as legitimate, so mobile carriers know you are not a spammer.
We’re happy to help you through the steps. Just ask, or review our 10DLC regulations guide.
Mobile carriers like Verizon and T-Mobile put 10DLC regulations in place to make sure businesses only text consumers who’ve expressed an interest in receiving text messages. In other words, it keeps SMS a spam free channel for everyone.
How do you get SMS opt-ins?
SMS opt-ins are contacts who have expressed a clear desire to be text messaged by your business. Contacts opt in by:
Texting you first
Establishing a business relationship with you (making a purchase or requesting a service)
Giving you their phone number via web or physical form
Expressing verbal or written consent for you to text them
You can encourage SMS marketing opt-ins by:
Adding a place for a phone number on your sign-up or contact forms
Adding an SMS Chat widget to your website
Advertising keywords
SMS Chat is a widget clients can use to start text conversations with you directly from your homepage. This gives clients the power to immediately reach an actual human being, and improves your overall customer experience. The widget can even be customized to route to all your different locations, so clients can reach the one that is closest to them.
A keyword is a unique word or phrase customers text to your business to opt-in for specific information, like DISCOUNT. Keywords are primarily used to send a preset message to anyone who texts in your keyword, or to build a group of subscribers, so you can update them on that topic as needed.
People opt into texts because they want something specific from you, and as long as you give them that thing without bombarding them, they’ll stick around for a long time. That’s the golden rule of SMS marketing.
Ready to Start Creating SMS Marketing Campaigns?
Texting a ton of contacts at once and managing all their responses won’t be possible from your personal phone. You need a platform with mass texting, so you can send one message to multiple contacts, but no one can see who else got it—like BCC email.
You can send mass texts with Text Request, plus get access to other helpful features to maximize your SMS marketing efforts. Contact our team to get started.
