Which One is Better for your Business?

Both email marketing and SMS marketing are direct ways to reach your customers, but which one is better for your business? Email has long thought to be the most direct form of business to consumer communication, but with the rise of smartphones and the millennial tech boom, more businesses are turning to SMS marketing.

Email is great for longer-form communication with a good deal more room to visually customize, but are your time-consuming (and sometimes expensive) email marketing campaigns going straight to spam? Both email and SMS marketing can cost money to implement, so it is important to compare the benefits before you decide which method is more cost-effective for your business goals.

Email Statistics 

Email marketing has long been called the most effective form of direct to consumer marketing, and email is still going strong. But, as technology and other forms of digital advertising advance, will email still be able to hold its power?

•  10 Times Per Day - One publication reported 50% of Americans are checking their email accounts almost a dozen times per day. The same report stated that consumers prefer email to social media, direct mail, push notifications, or mobile apps

• Open rates - The marketing emails with the highest open rates are related to the customers hobbies. The average open rate of hobby-related email is 27.35%

• 80% of business professionals think that email marketing is an effective way to increase customer retention.

• $350 Billion - is the estimated amount of money that advertisers will spend on email marketing in 2019.

• 46% of emails opened are on a mobile device - Just a little under half of all opened emails are read on a phone, tablet, smartwatch or other mobile device, showing the importance of optimizing your marketing for mobile.

SMS Statistics

Although SMS alert systems are still relatively new in the world of marketing, the staggering growth of mobile phone and text message usage across the world is showing explosive growth.

• Americans check their phone - 80 times per day, which is 30% more than the number of times per day consumers are checking their emails. That is great news for SMS marketing! 

• 5 billion people worldwide use SMS messages - that equates to 5 billion people worldwide! This number is expected to increase to 5.9 billion by 2025.

• 80% of people in North America use text messages - that’s 292 million people in the United States and Canada alone. 

• 75% of people are ok with receiving opt-in text messages from businesses - This means ⅔ of your customer base are likely to agree to receive alerts and marketing from your business.

Is SMS Marketing or Email Marketing Better for Your Business?

Consider your business goals when creating your digital marketing strategy. If you routinely send out monthly newsletters with team photos and company updates, email is the best option for long-form advertising. Text messages are significantly shorter, but if you are looking to increase revenue with more of a direct line to your customers, SMS messaging can yield the highest returns. Given that text messages have a 209% higher response rate than email, phone calls, or even Facebook, with the growth of text messaging expected to reach 5.9 billion users by 2025, it appears that SMS is the direction in which marketing is going.