SMS > Email Marketing

I truly do believe 2016 is the start of SMS marketing on a whole new scale. The stats don't lie and I'm not alone, but digital marketers and Retail software systems have to optimize it, and we have to figure out how to make it cheaper so it can really compete with Email's amazing ROI. This is a part of my #marketingtrends series, if there ever was one. 

But from the perspective of the consumer, what really matters is they prefer it. There's no channel like a smartphone, that pulls on the heart-strings already, that's the gateway to better customer relationships. 

The Big Picture 

It's been how many years since the invention of the internet? Does anybody still remember. 1991! That's 25 years and now all you hear about is mobile and omnichannel. 

2015 showed some serious signs of the decline of CTR and conversion via Email marketing, if you don't believe me, look it up. 

Let's just look at some numbers: 

OPEN RATES 

Email = 20% if you are lucky: in reality: 

For Retail verticals, here are some numbers. 

OPEN RATES SMS

SMS tends to outperform Email by a factor of about 4x, so instead of 20%, expect to see around 90% (usually within the first 5 min of sending). Some studies suggest this is even as high as 98%+.

So obviously, if you want your offer to actually reach your customers, you'd get their phone number, not bug them with a phone call but just send them a short nice text. 

Conversion 

For this usually it's the clicks, otherwise called CTR (click through rate) that digital marketers look to. 

For Email marketing this tends to be between 2-5%. 

For SMS, expect about 10x better performance on CTR rates. One study, reported the average conversion rate for SMS was 32%. 

Conclusion 

So why is SMS > better than Email marketing, in terms of reaching consumers? It's direct. 

SMS therefore has when compared to Email: 

1. Up to 10x better conversion 
2. Up to 4.5x better open rates. 

Digital Natives more open to SMS than Email 

It doesn't take research to understand this, just a bit of common sense:

• 98%: the average open rate for SMS.
• 7.3 billion: the number of confirmed active mobile devices in existence.
• 90%: the number of participants in an SMS campaign who felt they had gained value from it.
• 80% the number of consumers who say they have not been marketed to by SMS.
• 57%: the number of consumers who said they would be interested in opting-in to an SMS loyalty program.
• 5%: the opt-out rate for SMS marketing campaigns.

 Millennials by very definition, grew up on their smartphones and mobile devices and with the advent of wearables, notifications are more pervasive than ever. Retail marketers keep talking about how digital natives will be the biggest consumer group by 2020, so isn't it about high time we started to take SMS marketing seriously?

I'll be returning to this topic in the future many times, but for now if you want to subscribe to my articles, click here. 

I'm going to leave you with some infographic snippets on SMS marketing: 

• Be an early adopter, do SMS before it goes mainstream. 
• SMS is the go-to-market way to reach younger Millennials and iGen 
• Do customer service on SMS

• Test for speed
• Must load in 2 seconds
• Average CTR is 19% for SMS (compared with 4.2% by Email)

• Send SMS messages and offers with extreme restraint, and make the copy short and non-intrusive. 
• SMS does well during the lunch hour or just before the end of the work day.