The communications landscape has changed a lot over the last decade; connected devices have now become a ubiquitous feature of the average person’s everyday life. People are connected to these devices by the hip, and said devices demand unprecedented levels of attention from their owners.
A recent study commissioned by Nokia found that the average person, in the 16 hours that they’re awake, checks their phone 150 times; a truly staggering amount! The widespread nature of mobile phone ownership, and the comparative ease with which the average consumer can now be communicated with, has led to marketers reassessing the communication mediums that they utilise on a daily basis. Email has long been seen as one of the most effective mediums with which to communicate with customers, being cheap and easy to send en-mass, simple to design, and the ideal medium with which to link to other content. The increased use of SMS may be posed to shake up some of these existing assumptions, so in this article we’ll compare the effectiveness of both mediums to better understand their individual strengths and weaknesses.
Advantages
SMS messages
One of the most obvious advantages of SMS messaging is that it’s a very active form of marketing; instantly reaching the recipients that you have chosen to contact, and increasing the odds of an instantaneous response, if one is required. The average response time for a text message is 90 seconds which, while fast regardless, is also considerably faster than the average response time for an email, which is 90 minutes. This is of little surprise, as a Morgan Stanley study revealed that 91% of all US citizens have their mobile device within reach 24/7! Another major advantage of SMS marketing is that it is a far more unspoiled marketing landscape; that is, there’s far less spam to dilute your communications, or put off customers. Overall, 90% of emails are considered to be spam messages, only 1% of text messages are!
Email provides a similar range of advantages to marketers, being particularly strong in specific areas. One of the most easily apparent is the versatility that emails provide. Unlike SMS messages, which are limited in terms of communications to a finite number of characters, email provides marketers with a far greater palette with which to communicate with customers. Different fonts, styles and sizes can be used to add emphasis to particular sections of texts; but that’s really just the tip of the iceberg. Images and illustrations can be utilised with absolute impunity; animations, sound files and videos can be thrown in with reckless abandon. As well as offering a more creative and versatile platform, email marketing is also far less intrusive to recipients, providing a warmer reception for your marketing messages. Given the choice between someone waiting patiently to communicate something to you, or someone barging right in and demanding your attention; almost everyone is going to pick the more polite option. Email delivers exactly that; it’s available for consumption whenever the recipient chooses, earning plenty of good-will from customers, at the cost of immediate results.
Which (if any) is superior?
Neither method can be seen to be completely ascendant over the other at this point in time; it really depends on how they’re used, and what your goals are with the message. Both marketing methods, when used at the right time, can be extremely effective. When something needs to be actioned immediately by a client, an SMS message is the ideal medium; this could be a reminder of a delivery or appointment, or it could be an alert regarding a sale or event which is about to start imminently. In the same way, when a broader, less essential communication needs to be sent to colleagues or clients, emails are able to more fully take over the role; allowing the information to be dealt with in greater depth, and with a larger degree of creativity. The fact that emails can be readily accessed from smartphones in no way decreases their appeal. In essence, email and SMS marketing are both exceptionally good at completing specific tasks! Indeed, the fact that email and SMS marketing services are often offered by the same company, illustrates just how necessary both are as part of a business’ marketing portfolio; only by covering all bases can businesses truly gain an edge.
By Tom Chapman, content specialist for Graphic Mail.
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