The Great Debate: Email Marketing vs SMS Marketing

Table of Contents

• What is Email Marketing?

• What is SMS Marketing?

• Email Marketing Vs SMS Marketing

• Email Vs SMS Marketing (Potential Expenses)

  • Email Marketing Expenses

  • SMS Marketing Expenses

• Email Marketing Vs SMS (Unlocking The Highest ROI)

• SMS Vs Email Marketing (Getting Started)

• Email Marketing Vs SMS Marketing (Closing Thoughts …

As a business owner, you’ve done the heavy lifting in creating a product or service your audience needs. With your creative juices flowing, you want to budget for a marketing campaign tool, and you’re thinking of email marketing because that’s what everyone does.

But wait, you read something about SMS marketing. What is that? Should you do email or SMS marketing? How do you know which one to choose in 2023?

Both offer excellent opportunities to reach your target audience and increase sales or leads. But the real question is—which one will give you the highest return on investment (ROI)? Let’s break down the differences between these two powerful marketing tools.

What is Email Marketing?

As a business owner, you want to leverage as many tools as possible to reach your customers, prospects, and leads. Email marketing uses emails to communicate with customers and potential opportunities. It’s an effective way to build relationships with potential customers and inform them about new products or services.

You can use email marketing for everything from promotions and discounts to newsletters and sales pitches. It’s a great way to stay in touch with your customer base and build relationships with potential customers. Many different email marketing tools are available; here’s an article with some of our favorites.

What is SMS Marketing?

SMS stands for Short Message Service. The technology lets you send text messages directly to consumers’ mobile phones. It has become increasingly popular as a tool for businesses that want to reach their target audience quickly and efficiently.

With SMS marketing, you can send personalized messages that appeal directly to customers based on their interests and preferences. This makes it easier for businesses to engage with customers and increase brand loyalty.

Email Marketing Vs SMS Marketing (Which Is Better?)

So, the big question is: Is SMS or email more effective?

The short answer is that both email and SMS marketing have their advantages, so it depends on your business goals. Let’s review some of the pros and cons of each channel.

Email Marketing Pros & Cons

Many businesses gravitate towards email marketing for its cost-effectiveness as a marketing strategy. It tends to be more budget-friendly than SMS marketing, where you would need to buy bulk phone numbers or pay for credits. Here are other positives about email marketing that many individuals and businesses have agreed on:

• Scalability - Email marketing is known for its scalability as a marketing strategy. You can craft a single email and send it to hundreds or thousands simultaneously.

• Segmentation - Email marketing not only helps deliver to a wide range of people—but you can also provide specific information about your target audience, such as age, job title, and location, to send your message to your exact audience.

• Personalization - Email marketing lets you get creative. It also lets your audience know who you are as a business and what you can provide them as a product or service. Additionally, email marketing can help your customers understand who you are as a leader. Giving an extra touch of personalization helps consumers to feel connected with your company.

• Everyone has an email address - Nowadays, most individuals have an email address (or two!) and are often quicker to share it than their phone numbers. This helps businesses find their leads via email marketing versus other marketing channels.

Email marketing also has some cons:

• Spam - Spam is one of the most significant disadvantages to email marketing. You spend all this time creating your message and vision only to be flagged as spam. This happens when your customer doesn’t want to receive an email from you or you do not follow the best practices for email marketing.

• Deliverability Issues - Email domains and service providers play a significant role in your email marketing delivered to your audience. If your email service provider or domain has a poor reputation, this could keep your emails from being delivered. Additionally, if your email marketing contains content that triggers spam filters, there’s a high chance your email marketing will not be delivered.

• Audience Engagement - As stated above, email marketing is highly effective in reaching a large audience, but it’s not often the most engaging form. Many people tend to ignore or delete emails without reading them, which can reduce the effectiveness of your email marketing campaign.

• Legal Compliance - Email marketing is subject to various laws and regulations depending on what country you’re in. For example, in Europe, you have GDPR laws; in the United States, you have CAN-SPAM laws.

Depending on your business goals, email marketing could be the tactic to help you take your company to the next level.

SMS Marketing Pros and Cons

Since people tend to check their emails less often than their text messages, SMS has a higher open rate than email– meaning more people will see your message when sent via text message! Here are other positives about SMS Marketing:

• Personalization - You can personalize your text message by adding your customer's name and crafting a message directed specifically to them. SMS is an intimate form of communication, so get creative about telling your story here and seeing your engagement increase!

• Permission-based - When you send an SMS marketing to your customers, they ask for it. They gave you their number and permitted you to send them messages. You don’t have to worry about triggering spam filters as you do with email marketing.

• Response rate - Since people tend to check their text messages often, you get higher engagement and response rates than any other platform.

• Low competition - Despite being an effective marketing tool, only a small percentage of businesses use SMS marketing as part of their marketing strategy. For brands that use it, the low competition gives you a head start in reaching your target audience and converting them to customers.

SMS marketing sounds like a dream, with its potential to be personalized and high open and response rates. Unfortunately, SMS marketing does come with a handful of cons:

• Useless without phone numbers - Unlike email addresses, phone numbers are harder to obtain nowadays. As a business, you must ask your customers for their phone numbers upfront to generate your SMS list.

• Expensive - Depending on your SMS platform, you’ll have to pay for phone numbers, credits, and a service plan to send text messages.

• Message length - Text messages have a 160-character limit, unlike email marketing, where you do not have a limit. You must pay for another message if you want your SMS marketing campaign to be longer. As a business, you’ll have to get creative with your storytelling and get it into 160 characters because people expect text messages to be short and sweet.

• Strict legal requirements - SMS is highly regulated, so any business that practices SMS as a marketing strategy has to adhere to strict privacy laws. You must follow the rules and regulations - specifically regarding how you obtained the phone numbers - and have written documentation that your customers have permitted you to add them to your subscriber list. If you don’t follow the rules, expect fines and other legal ramifications.

• Poor UX - SMS marketing still needs to catch up in UX and visual design compared to email marketing. Not only do you have to keep the messages text-based, but there isn’t an easy way to embed links into your message or bold keywords for your campaign.

Depending on the nature of your marketing strategy, SMS marketing may be your option if you’re looking more toward maximum visibility or personalization.

Email Vs SMS Marketing (Potential Expenses)

Both email and SMS marketing come with expenses. In this section, we will review some of the best platforms for each type of marketing; ultimately, your business strategy and goals will determine which platforms (or both platforms) are best suited for your needs.

Email Marketing Expenses

Email marketing has initial costs associated with setting up mailing lists and creating and customizing templates. Additionally, some platforms will charge additional fees for bulk emails. Below, we have compiled a list of three of the best email marketing platforms.

beehiiv

beehiiv is an all-in-one newsletter platform. If you want to scale your business with email campaigns, beehiiv is your email campaign software. The platform has all your standard features, like designing, monetizing, and analyzing your campaigns. beehiiv's strong suit is in growth, offering different growth tools like referral programs and premium sponsors in the ad networks.

Price: You start with a free plan for up to 2,500 subscribers.

MailChimp

Often ranked as the best overall marketing platform, MailChimp is one of the most well-known email campaign management software. It's known for its drag-and-drop editor and email templates designed to meet various business goals. But it also has features to help you build and market your business online with a website builder, landing pages, and social media ads.

Price: You start with a free plan for up to 500 contacts.

HubSpot

Traditionally known as a CRM, HubSpot has become a leading email campaign management software contender. HubSpot Marketing is a powerful all-in-one marketing suite because of its tools and reporting capabilities across various channels (website, social media, email marketing, and more). Linking to their CRM, you can store all your contact information in one place and grow your business through their lead forms and online ads.

For organizations needing help tracking their contact list and being able to market on various channels, HubSpot has covered you with its features and online training resources.

Price: You start with a plan for $18 per month, with limited features and strictly email campaigns, including 1,000 marketing contacts.

SMS Marketing Expenses

SMS marketing requires more time and effort compared to email marketing. There are also upfront and monthly costs associated with SMS marketing for many platforms, like text message service plans and additional phone numbers.

Here are three SMS marketing platforms that are at the top of their class:

Birdeye

Leading review and customer experience all-in-one platform, Birdeye also ranks as a fierce competitor in the SMS marketing field. Birdeye offers 2-way messaging, automated responses, mass texting, scheduling, and third-party integrations - all great tools for businesses trying to build clientele.

Compared to other platforms, Birdeye’s primary focus isn’t SMS marketing; it’s building a brand reputation through reviews, surveys, and scanning social channels. Not being designed to handle SMS marketing can lead to weak customer support if you have questions about your campaigns. They are an excellent option for small businesses looking to grow their reputation.

Price: You can start a free trial, and then their paid plans start at $299 per month.

TextUS

An excellent SMS tool for sellers, TextUS is paving the way as the leading consumer engagement platform on the market! TextUS offers SMS messaging, mass texting, and contact management. Their user interface and dashboard are easy to maneuver, and they have extensive reporting tools showing sent and delivered, bounced, and opened messages.

Unlike other platforms, organization on TextUS is weak; there isn’t an option to create new folders to lump messages together.

Price: You can start a free trial, then choose between two packages, the lowest starting at $250 monthly.

Textedly

If you want to scale your business through SMS marketing, Textedly is your platform. Textedly has a user-friendly dashboard and offers different marketing tools and a range of pricing options. Unlike other platforms, Textedly offers free incoming messages and the ability to schedule SMS campaigns.

Price: You can start with a 14-day free trial, and then their paid plans start at $24 per month for 1,200 text messages.

Email Marketing Vs SMS (Unlocking The Highest ROI)

When comparing email vs SMS marketing regarding ROI (return on investment), there isn't a clear winner—it all depends on what works best for your business model. Optimizing your messages for maximum engagement is essential for email and SMS campaigns.

Email campaigns may require more effort and resources upfront, but if done correctly, they could yield better long-term results than SMS campaigns. On the other hand, SMS campaigns may require less setup but could also result in lower ROI due to fewer clicks or conversions than email campaigns would produce.

Here are a few tips for maximizing ROI:

• Personalized content is critical. If you send everyone the same bland, generic content, your readers are unlikely to engage (if they even open the text or email, to begin with).

• Send time and frequency can make a massive difference in the open rate.

• Focus on providing value over making sales. About 80% of your content should be value-based, and 20% or less should be about sales.

• Include clear calls-to-action (CTAs). You won't see engagement if your audience isn’t sure what to do when they finish reading. CTAs should be big, bold, and straightforward.

• Segment your list so your messages feel natural (see personalization above).

• A/B tests different variables, like content length or CTA wording.

Ultimately, companies need to experiment with both types of campaigns before settling on one as their primary form of communication with customers.

SMS Vs Email Marketing (Getting Started)

Now that you have a better understanding of SMS and email marketing, the differences, and an idea of price point, your next step should be determining what your marketing business strategy will be, and what your budget is for that strategy.

After determining the budget, you should choose which marketing tactic (SMS vs email marketing) you would like to use and which provider will best fit your budget. Sometimes, the answer isn’t one or the other; you may find that using both is within your budget and will provide you with a marketing plan that will bring awareness to your customers about your company.

Your next question may be how hard it is to get set up with SMS marketing vs email marketing. The good news is that SMS marketing and email marketing campaigns can be set up relatively quickly—all you need is an idea of what message you want to send out and a template drafted with the visuals and the message.

For example, if you have a loyalty program for customers who purchase from your store regularly, then sending them exclusive offers via text could be an effective way to increase their engagement with your brand. Sending out weekly newsletters about upcoming sales or promotions via email could also help drive traffic to your website or store location.

Email Marketing Vs SMS Marketing (Closing Thoughts)

Email vs SMS marketing is an age-old debate, but the answer concerns personal preference based on how each channel works best for each business model. Both tracks have unique strengths when used correctly, so do plenty of research before deciding which is right for you!

Ultimately, unlocking the highest ROI will come down to creating engaging content that speaks directly to each customer's wants and needs while utilizing tools like A/B testing to track results over time. With these tools in hand, you'll be well on your way toward achieving success with either type of campaign!

If you’re looking for an all-in-one email newsletter software tool to maximize growth, beehiiv offers the best option in the market!