Group Text Messaging Versus Email Marketing: Can They Work Together?

Your business needs a way to contact customers directly. That way, you can deliver promotional messages to those who are most likely to want your products and services. Broad marketing campaigns (e.g. radio spots, newspapers ads, etc.) lack targeting, are expensive, and often fail to pay for themselves.

Long ago, the only option available to businesses was to compile lists of their customers' mailing addresses. Companies would periodically send letters and catalogs in an attempt to spur sales. When consumers began to migrate from physical mail to email, many companies followed suit, collecting customers' and prospects' email addresses. Email marketing continues to drive substantial sales each year.

Today, with millions of people carrying mobile devices, a growing number of businesses are adding text messaging service to their marketing strategy. Since email marketing is still popular, it's worth considering which approach is better. We'll describe their similarities and differences below. We'll also explain why leveraging both platforms is preferable to choosing one over the other.

To understand why group text messaging and email marketing are both valuable, it's useful to consider the ways in which they are similar. Both are forms of direct marketing, a channel through which your business is able to reach people directly. Both rely on the delivery of electronic messages, which must be opened by the recipient.

SMS (short message service) marketing and email marketing can be used to send messages immediately or according to a schedule. Both approaches will allow you to reach tens of thousands of people at once. And (unfortunately) both are misused by companies and individuals who send promotional messages without securing permission from recipients - that is, they send spam.

Recognizing how SMS and email marketing are similar makes it easier to understand why both should have a place in your overall strategy. Having said that, it is instructive to note their differences. Doing so will reveal ways in which they complement each other.

Email marketing is arguably more popular than SMS marketing. But this is a doubled-edged sword. On the positive side, more people use email than text messaging to communicate with others. As a result, an email is more likely to reach, and be read by, your audience than a text. But this sets the stage for a number of challenges. First, more spam is delivered via email, which means people are more inclined to develop a blind spot to promotional messages. Meanwhile, it is not profitable for those who rely on spam to send unsolicited messages to people's mobile devices. This may change in the future.

Second, the open rate for email has plummeted over the last twenty years. Open rate is a measurement that reflects the percentage of messages that are actually opened by recipients. When email was new to the public - and thus, a novelty - most people opened nearly every message they received. Today, most messages are deleted unopened. Although SMS marketing confronts this same challenge, its open rate is still very high. This means more of your promotional messages will be read.

Another notable difference between group text messaging and email marketing is that most people still do not check, and reply to, their email on their mobile devices. They do so on their computers. By contrast, most people check their text messages via mobile. Moreover, they do so quickly, often within minutes of receiving them.

Both SMS and email marketing are clearly valuable tools. Countless businesses use both to generate a significant portion of their revenue. For this reason, it pays to leverage both marketing approaches, rather than abandoning one for the other. Promote your email lists to those who have subscribed to your group text messaging lists. Conversely, let subscribers on your email lists know about your SMS lists. This gives you two channels through which to reach your customers and prospects.

Send shorter messages to your text marketing subscribers when you need to create a sense of urgency. If you need to send longer messages, do so via email. That way, you're able to reach out to your audience in multiple ways, each of which accommodates the purpose of your messaging.