Email and SMS are becoming the perfect pairing, much like wine and cheese or peanut butter and jelly. They elevate each other to a new level and can help brands engage more effectively with customers in the long haul. 

In the new state of marketing using first and zero-party data (i.e. data that you own, or that customers explicitly give you) is how brands will need to communicate with customers. Since both email and SMS are permission-based, this creates an easy win for brands. What that means is consumers are giving direct consent to hearing from YOU about what matters to them, so use this privilege wisely.  

With our new integration with Attentive, an industry-leading SMS provider, customers can make that perfect pair and leverage both email and SMS data to simplify cross-channel optimization and drive ROI.  

Here are a few statistics that prove the power of SMS and email. 

• The average person checks their phone up to 96 times a day and think about it, we’re conditioned to look at texts right away (I know I do!). 
• With over 3.8B smartphone users SMS allows you to reach users in real-time whereas email can get buried in the inbox (most text messages are opened within the first 15 minutes of receiving them.).  
• According to Campaign Monitor, it’s estimated that the SMS industry will become a $12.6B industry.  
• Users who signed up for SMS were more likely to buy and 63% who subscribed to at least one brand’s SMS program reported making a purchase from a text message in the last 3 months
• Email still has the highest ROI for any digital channel roughly $36 for every $1 spent 
• Marketers who use segmentation can see a lift in overall revenue
• 55% of site traffic is generated on a mobile device (Statista, 2021) so even more reason to get into the game

When Ometria surveyed 2,000 consumers we found that, overall, consumers were happiest to hear from retailers via email. But for younger consumers, and those that shopped most frequently, SMS was growing in popularity.  

Emails have been the driving force for communicating with customers because of their low cost and because they offer a large virtual canvas to inform customers about the brand. However, while SMS has character limitations, a well-timed message can be the difference between keeping a customer and possibly losing them.  Email as a channel allows brands to foster relationships and deliver more content to consumers, but SMS can be the urgency or quick touch a consumer needs to come back to the site or solicit a response.

Brands that start to lean into SMS as another channel will be the clear winners in the coming years, but knowing how and when to engage your customers with text messages is key. As a brand, you need to think about consumer behaviors and consider how your customers want to engage with you. As a starting point, think about how you like to engage with your favorite brands, and how SMS would fit within that. From top-of-funnel to post-purchase, SMS can be used at several steps of the customer lifecycle. 

Rather than considering the two channels as separate channels, consider how they can be used to complement each other, from cart abandonment to win-back workflows. By leveraging customer data collected through SMS and email, you’ll be one step closer to reaching your customer at the right time, with the right message. 

To truly find the most effective combination for each retailer and customer base, brands must test different customer journeys to see which have the desired impact. Setting goals and identifying the metrics you want to track, and then running tests on these different channel mixes will let you know how your customers react. 

Customer retention is at the center of every successful business, and brands are leveraging SMS to build those long-term relationships. When it comes to loyalty programs, consumers usually signed up for three main reasons: loyalty perks, first access to sales, and product launches. You could treat your high-value customers as VIPs by offering early access or timed offers via SMS before sending an email to your other contacts. 

Now more than ever, brands need to meet consumers where they are and use different tools to engage and foster loyalty. Understanding how channel affinityplays into how different consumers respond in order to build experiences that they really care about. By leveraging zero, first, second and third party data, brands are able to build a well-rounded personalization strategy and change the way consumers engage with the brand.