Do you need to think differently with email and SMS marketing?
For most e-commerce businesses and B2B, email marketing is more or less a critical part of sales and growth. It is easy to implement and provides both a longer CLV and better sales.
However, what many miss is the incredible value of SMS marketing coupled with emails. Many e-commerce businesses see between three to ten times higher revenue when they use SMS in their marketing strategy.
Today we're going to take a closer look at what KPIs exist for SMS, as well as how you, who are used to email marketing, can build your success with this high-converting marketing channel.
Email and SMS, what's the difference?
Those of you who are used to email marketing can breathe a sigh of relief. Email and SMS marketing share many similarities.
With email marketing, the most critical metrics are open rate, CTR and conversion. With SMS marketing, you have no overview of the open rate other than that it is almost always over 90%. Click rate and conversion can be tracked via the links you use to determine your campaign success.
Both zero-party data that the customer provides on their own and first-party data that you collect are included in email and SMS. But since SMS stands out as a more personal channel between the customer and brand, collecting zero-party data becomes much more effective.
SMS is an effective attention grabber
During promotional periods such as Black Friday, SMS has proven to be a fantastic channel for initial contact. An American survey found that the click-through rate for SMS is 20-35% during campaign periods, i.e. up to 600% higher than the annual average of emails.
When launching sales or new products, it's always a good idea to at least use SMS as the first point of contact and as a reminder before the sale is over.
SMS is your VIP list
The world is seeing the same trend regarding SMS marketing – customers are less likely to sign up to the SMS list than email, but the customers who sign up shop more often and for more significant sums.
If your SMS sign-up form is according to the GDPR rules and sign-ups aren't auto-opted, everyone on your SMS list trusts you enough to let you into their personal space - their phone.
And although it varies quite a bit, you can count on a subscriber to your SMS list being about three times more valuable than a subscriber to your email list.
Email is for branding and volume, and SMS is for conversion and retargeting.
No one likes to be spammed with either SMS or emails, but with email, you can get away with a little more frequent and detailed messages.
Email is not limited by how many words you can put in your message, and it's easier to ignore if you are not interested. That's why we often say that you should treat your SMS list with more respect because it is almost guaranteed that the recipient will read your message.
As we learned with one of our clients, Lace Laboratory, they primarily use SMS as a form of retargeting for the email list that doesn't engage with the email. This is an effective way to reach the entire list instead of only 20-30% of it.
So what have we learned?
All your KPIs are measured in the same way with email as with SMS, and with a smart platform like Jojka, you can easily integrate your CRM and segment, automate and retarget with SMS marketing.
SMS is also a more effective approach to conversion, but should always be treated with respect and not as frequent as emails. That's why it's crucial to set up a strategy on how to process your email list and SMS list in symbiosis and not blindly send to either.