Emails have served as the main tool for businesses to connect to their audiences. It has helped them in promoting themselves to a large number of people and gaining responses. However, with the increased use of mobile phones, SMS( short message service) has now become a quick way to reach out to the people. But does that mean that the usage of emails has become obsolete? The biggest question that people try to find an answer to is Email marketing or SMS marketing, what should we choose? Well let’s try to answer this:
Audience reachability
Various researches done by mobile companies show that the chances of a person opening a SMS are 60% higher than them checking their mails. Also while aiming for a marketing tool, one should always keep in mind their audience. SMS also helps people get in direct contact with their desired customers. Also 90% of the times a SMS gets viewed in the first five minutes of being sent providing companies with immediate attention.
But that does not mean that one can completely discard the use of emails as a medium of marketing. In the past two years, internet usage has gone up by 70%. As of 2020, there are about 4.6 billion email users. This increase in audience has provided a strong platform for businesses to market themselves to an online audience that can turn out to become potential customers. Emails also help people to get in touch with overseas audiences. It provides them a platform to expand their trade and commerce to foreign countries. Emails also tend to be a more authentic source of communication. People believe that the chances of a SMS being fraud are more than an email sent from a valid address.
Cost efficiency
The cost of sending bulk SMS is always higher than sending out emails to multiple addresses. In the present digital world, data packs are available at a very low price as compared to SMS packs. All that one needs is a high quality net pack to send unlimited emails but for the same amount of SMSs the cost that one would have to invest would be much more.
Rate of reply
An email takes about 30 minutes to reply but on the other hand it only takes 3 minutes to reply to a message. People tend to reply faster when the message is concise and easy to read. But sending to the point SMSs also comes with its own disadvantages. SMSs often have a character limit which can make it difficult to send long messages. Also emails can often comprise images and other graphics which can make them look visually more appealing.
Software support
A notification pop up is likely to catch the attention of people which makes the chances of viewing the SMS even more. But that is not the case with digital set ups. Gmail, Facebook and other social media websites usually filter down data according to the choice of user. The set up the categories such as spam or promotions on various dashboards makes it more apparent for your mail to get dumped in the not so important section reducing the chances of it being viewed.
So what should you use?
The selection of Email marketing or SMS marketing completely depends upon the type of audience one is aiming at. Also different messages will comply different medium to reach . Therefore knowing the type and purpose of the message is valuable. At the end using a fair balance between the both is crucial and a powerful tool for marketing.