SMS Marketing vs Email Marketing: Which Channel Is Right For Your Business?

When it comes to digital marketing, email has been there and done that. It’s been one of the most preferred online marketing channels for brands for decades. But at the same time, online marketing is not static. It develops rapidly, some trends come and go, and channels emerge that perform better than the old ones. SMS marketing is one of those channels, making a comeback as smartphones become the number one digital tool for millions of people. It’s fast, cost-effective, and reliable, becoming a near-ideal marketing tool for brands.

As a result, more and more marketers start to draw comparisons between email and SMS, trying to understand which one attracts the attention of the audience more and brings more ROI. But the answer to the question is not so straightforward. Sometimes SMS performs better, sometimes email wins. Sometimes both can achieve the desired result with the same level of effectiveness, and often cooperation between both yields the best result.

To help you figure out which channel is better for your business, and which one you should concentrate your efforts on, we’ve assembled a list of factors that you can consider.

SMS vs Email: What To Consider?

The fight for customer attention in the digital realm has never been this fierce, and often, brands can find it hard to figure out which channel is better for this purpose. When it comes to choosing between SMS and email, here’s what you need to pay attention to.

Open Rate

When it comes to open rates, SMS marketing has a clear advantage over email. SMS boasts a 98% open rate, compared to the 21% open rate of email. As a result of this, the response rates of SMS are also higher than those of email.

One reason for this difference in the open rates is that SMS has more direct deliverability, reaching the customer on their smartphone and notifying them instantly, increasing the chance of being seen and opened. Generally, text messages are opened during the first 3 minutes after being delivered.

Deliverability

Every day, around 330 billion emails are sent back and forth, and this number is only expected to grow. However, 50% of these emails end up in spam or promotions. This significantly reduces the deliverability of the emails, and if you are not in control of every single step in your email marketing channel, the chance of your email ending up not being seen can be high.

In contrast, every day around 6 billion SMS texts are sent. And because there are no spam filters for text messages, once sent out, the SMS is sure to land on the smartphone of the recipient.

Of course, both email and SMS are opt-in marketing channels, and you can only send your messages to people who opted in to receive them. And in the case of both channels, people can choose to opt out through unsubscribing and blocking. However, in the case of SMS, the deliverability rate is higher, as is the chance of your text being seen.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

The next thing to pay attention to when choosing a marketing channel is the average CTR. SMS boasts a staggering 19% CTR. This is in part because of the laconic nature of SMS: the texts are short, and the recipients scan them quickly and click the link to see the offer. In the case of email, the average CTR can vary from industry to industry, being higher for hobbies, for example, and lower for promotional content. The average email CTR for all industries as of February 2022 was 1.27%, significantly less than in the case of SMS. The length of emails also has to do with this: because they are considerably longer than texts, people often don’t have enough time to read through the entire email to reach the call-to-action and click on it.

Cost

Both SMS and email are quite affordable and accessible channels, but the overall cost will depend largely on your needs. The price for text marketing campaigns may depend on the character count, the number of texts sent by the carrier, and the service provider. Email marketing campaign costs, while sometimes more affordable than texts, can also vary depending on the customization options you choose to go with, again largely depending on the service provider you partner with.

Customization

Because of their shortness, SMS texts are less customizable than email. Because of being limited to a certain number of characters, there is so much you can do when personalizing your text messages. There are ways, of course, to tailor your texts to the audience, but they need to be short, precise, and to the point. Using visuals can also be a problem, as not all providers offer the service, and not everyone on your contact list will have MMS set up on their phone. A solution to this is using SMS marketing to contact users through messengers like Viber, allowing a little more personalization.

Email, on the contrary, offers plenty of customization options, from different fonts and templates to graphic visuals. It also allows sending attachments and includes hyperlinks, making it a better choice if you want to provide in-detail information in your message instead of redirecting the users to your website or landing page.

SMS vs. Email: Who Wins?

Well, none. Both SMS and email are valuable tools in the arsenal of brands as part of their digital marketing efforts, and both come with their benefits and disadvantages.

SMS offers higher open and click-through rates, but may not be the best option if you are looking for wide customization options. Additionally, because of being a new channel, it is not yet as widely trusted as email, which has been around for a while now.

Email, on the other hand, can get easily lost in the crowded inbox, and as a result, has significantly lower click-through rates. However, being an affordable channel, it brings a high ROI. And because email has been there since the dawn of the Internet, people are used to companies communicating with them through email.

Conclusion

Habits of the users continually evolve, and so do the marketing strategies of brands. Both marketing channels discussed above are effective and come with a list of strengths and weaknesses. Using them both in your marketing strategy is likely to yield the best result, but if you are choosing one of the two, the right option will solely depend on your business goals.

Are you considering SMS as a marketing channel for your business, or looking to see which strategy will work best for your brand? We're here to help. Drop us a message, and our team of experts will be happy to guide you and answer any questions you may have.