Technical advancements
in the past 10 years have had a dramatic effect on how we market our products
and businesses. A 2013 report announced that 7 in 10 people in the UK (aged
16-64) now own a smart phone. This gives companies the opportunity to reach
their clients in a whole variety of ways, including text, email and social
media. However, the best way to blanket message the most people and target your
marketing remains SMS and email. Here, we examine the pros and cons of both
email and text marketing and their benefits against each other.
Email marketing allows for better presentation and hyperlinks.
Email marketing is a
great way to send your company's top news frequently. Offers and information
can be displayed in aesthetically pleasing ways, and companies can take
advantage of using pictures and hyperlinks to drive potential customers
directly to their sites. Presentation wise, the subject line of the email is a
fantastic way to give people the headline of your announcement, whether it’s a
special deal or new product. However, Text Message Marketing has advanced greatly over the past few years. Companies
are no longer restricted to text alone, and can now send picture messages to
make their marketing more visually pleasing. However, hyperlinks via text are
far less effective than email, leaving people usually with one link to click on
instead of multiple promotions.
SMS doesn’t end up in your junk
mail.
A benefit of text
marketing over email marketing is that people are much more likely to open
their text and read it. The downside to email marketing is that sometimes, your
message can find itself in people’s junk mail, where things often get ignored. Another problem
with emails is that a large percentage of them will get deleted before they’ve
even been opened. This is because people are unfortunately subjected to great
avalanches of email spam that clog up their inboxes. It is for this reason that
Barack Obama announced that Joe Biden would be his running mate in the 2008 election
via text message: so he could effective reach out to his supporters without
risking an email getting lost or ignored.
SMS marketing is fresher and more exciting.
Another benefit of
text marketing is that it’s more unique. Consider how many times you receive a promotional
Text Service compared to a
promotional email message. Hardly ever. This ignites interest far more than
email and means that your recipients are far more likely to pay attention. A
great advancement in technology means that SMS messages can now be sent via
email, which makes blanket marketing via these means easier and more
constructive.
However, email messaging is more effective.
Although text
marketing is more unique, a 2013 study by predictive analysts firm, Custoda,
reported that email is still the most effective way to attract customers to
your business online. They state the reason for this being that email marketing
is based on permission. People have given you permission to target them;
meaning they’ve shown an initial interest in your product or services. They
also reported that email is the most popular activity on people’s
smart phones, which would argue that email is in fact the most effective way to
reach people.
Email marketing allows you to analyze the click-through rate.
Another fantastic
benefit of email marketing is the ability to analyze the click-through rate
(CTR). The CTR helps you to measure the success of your digital campaign by
calculating how many people have opened an email and clicked through to landing
pages. This gives you an idea of how effective your campaign actually is
(rather than just how many people are being contacted). The CTR also gives you
a way of quantifying your digital campaign without relying on customer feedback
- as the data is very easy to acquire.
In conclusion, email
and text marketing both carry plenty of benefits that are sure to increase your
company’s profile and drive more traffic to your website. Due to the
positives of both forms, a great idea is to use email marketing as your primary
method and save SMS marketing for more important, prolific messages.
