Communication is always evolving. And, with this evolution comes more channels for communicating with customers.
In this day and age, all marketers and businesses should know the ins and outs of email marketing. However, moving away from a simple email marketing strategy can be a daunting prospect.
That’s where SMS (short message service) comes in! SMS can actually help your email marketing in more ways than one.
Here are 5 reasons you should consider combining your email marketing with SMS:
Entirely Permission-Based
First, SMS must be warranted in your email marketing strategy. In other words, customers cannot simply receive SMS notifications without providing consent.
Whether this is people entering a short code on their phone to join a mailing list, a tick on the site about shipping notifications and SMS messaging, or signing up directly for a newsletter, they are consenting for you to communicate with them via SMS.
For example, you’re a package shipping company asking the customer asking if they want to receive SMS notifications on where their package is. If they say “yes,” then they’ll be notified via text message or mobile device on where their package is, as well as the expected delivery date of said package.
This means you get a higher quality database of customers that you can target with a more personalised solution to marketing. It also has the added bonus that the customer already knows your brand.
Good for Quick Responses
Emails are much easier to ignore than SMS messages, this means that interaction tends to be much lower via email. SMS messages should be short and to the point, keep it to a maximum of 160 characters, and so customers are more likely to instinctually read the text as they don’t need to scroll through screeds of text.
“SMS messaging is great for unexpected opportunities and flash-sales,” says technical blogger Andrew Goss, Write My X and Australia2write. “You can combine with an email for more detail, but the text provides a good way to get the opportunity to customers quickly.”
Better Customer Experience
Offering a variety of personalised communication methods means that customers get a better experience which you can tailor to your business and the customer’s needs.
While you may want to use email for longer messages like detailed event invites or further information on a new product launch, SMS is a great way to provide reminders and quick notifications to your customer. It also means customers get quickly informed of important information, whether that’s simply the shipping or delivery details or a more serious security alert. This proved true during the recent COVID lockdowns as customers could be quickly informed of disruptions to service or new protocols that were in place.
Just be sure to keep long-form content to emails.
It’s Cost-Effective
It’s already well known that email marketing is one of the more cost-effective strategies available, but it’s worth noting the low cost of sending an SMS as well. This allows for not only cheaper alternatives to marketing, but also a more engaged customer base when you combine both email and SMS.
Securing Customer Commitment
“Getting a customer relationship is one thing but the thing we all strive for in business is customer loyalty and commitment,” reminds Julie Letourneau, Assignment Help and Britstudent.
The personalised element of communication goes a long way to keep customers coming back again and again. As said before, this combination of email and SMS provides a better customer experience, and can be personalised more towards the customer. As you build a relationship with your customer, they begin to feel more connected to your business and like their custom truly matters to the company.
Planning a Strategy
From what you’ve read, it’s likely that you will be interested in starting a combined email and SMS marketing strategy. The first step in doing this is to check the willingness of your customers to opt-in to the system, if they won’t opt-in it doesn’t matter how cost effective it is it provides no benefit. After this you will want to work with the marketing department in conjunction with other key players in the business to decide what your communication strategy should be and what you should send in each channel.
Overall, the combination of SMS messaging and Email marketing is something your business should consider going forward It’s cost-effective nature and the benefits offered in terms of customer relations make it almost a no-brainer of a decision. We are all dealing with information overload, we’ve signed up to several newsletters and are constantly being bombarded with social media posts. However, this simple SMS messaging addition is likely to increase your customer engagement and make customers feel valued.
About the Author
Business development manager, George J. Newton, Write My Thesis and PhD Kingdom, has spent a decade of marriage learning to perfect the art of the apology. In his spare time, he writes for Nextcoursework.com.
