As a business owner, you’re always looking for effective ways to connect with your audience. Email marketing allows you to deliver timely, personalized messages straight to your audience’s inbox, and that’s great, but is a person’s inbox as sacred as it once was? You already know the answer to that—it most certainly is not. Every business on Earth (it seems like) now leverages email marketing, and the result is overcrowded inboxes, low open rates, and a general sense of being lost in the crowd. You deserve better.

While there are ways to avoid getting lost in the crowd with email marketing, here’s the thing—every business on Earth is NOT using SMS or short message service marketing. A text notification is still an exciting little moment in a person’s day, and most of us can’t help but reach for our device to check it out. (Unless we’re driving! No texting and driving. 😘) 

So, is SMS the new email?

Yes, and no. 

SMS is the new email in that an SMS (or MMS) message cuts through the noise and reaches your audience directly in a way that emails used to. And yet, SMS can’t replace email marketing, because there are inherent limits to this type of communication method—specifically, length. Just like texts haven’t replaced emails IRL and emails haven’t replaced phone calls, your text marketing strategy can’t and shouldn’t take the place of an email marketing strategy. But it can enhance it, and this is especially true if you have a product-based business or are going after Gen Z/Millennial customers.

Here are three reasons to adopt SMS marketing alongside an email marketing strategy:

1. Texting is a commonly preferred method of communication. And since you’ll be making opt-out super easy, you can be sure that you’re only reaching people who actually want to be texted.
2. Open and read rates for SMS messages are better than email. When you’re texting your audience, you’re reaching an engaged audience—an audience that is more likely to take action based on your message.  
3. SMS marketing can offer a lot of value by bringing customers time-sensitive communication, reminders, special offers, and more. When used alongside emails, you can deliver a one-two punch of effective marketing communication.
4. SMS is currently underutilized as a marketing tactic. Your competitors may not be using it yet, and, if that’s the case, then you should beat them to it. 

When using SMS marketing, follow these best practices: 

• “Focus on useful and actionable pieces of information that you can deliver at their moment of peak value.” ←Yep to what Gartner said. Keep it concise, keep it valuable, and deliver it at the right time. (P.S. 2 AM is not the right time.)
• Define the relationship from the get-go by telling people what to expect when they give you their phone number. Make it easy for folks to change their communication preferences and opt-out.
• Don’t overdo it. Don’t be that person who gets someone’s number and then blows up their phone with texts. Nobody likes that person.

Are you sold on SMS marketing? We’re here to help you take the next step.