To reach today’s customers, businesses need to engage with them on their mobile devices. With the average person spending up to 3 hours and 50 minutes daily on their phones, many companies are finding that sending SMS text messages is an effective way to share promotional and transactional information in a quick, personal, and time-sensitive manner.

Marketers, particularly those in midsize companies (10-500 employees), are leveraging the combination of long-term email marketing success with SMS messages, which boast an open rate of nearly 98%. When used together, SMS and email marketing can significantly boost sales, revenue, and customer loyalty.

Koen Pauwels, a marketing professor at Northeastern University, notes, “We receive texts from our loved ones, while emails come from everyone, making SMS a more intimate form of communication. SMS messages are less likely to be ignored compared to emails, increasing the chances that consumers will engage with them.” However, marketers face challenges in integrating SMS into their strategies. Pauwels emphasizes, “With great power comes great responsibility; it’s crucial to make SMS messages relevant and give customers control over the relationship.”

Key Takeaways:

• SMS messaging has become an effective way for companies to communicate with customers quickly and personally.
• Combining SMS and email marketing can lead to increased sales, revenue, and customer loyalty.
• To build trust, businesses must clearly communicate what customers are signing up for when they opt-in to receive both SMS and email messages.
• Balancing SMS and email strategies is essential, as is developing best practices for effective messaging, ensuring regulatory compliance, and offering easy opt-out options.

Jewelry store Joyeria Daisy, a midsize company in Rio Grande City, Texas, has implemented an automated, multichannel approach to personalize their messaging at scale. Their digital marketing director, Roland Hernandez, explains, “As a family business, we focus on giving each customer a personal touch, even with mass marketing. We personalize messages with customer names while ensuring they don’t come across as too robotic or overly sales-driven.”

This report delves into how the combination of SMS and email marketing can drive customer engagement, boost retail traffic, and foster loyalty and trust. It also discusses the challenges organizations face and explores how some businesses use technology to seamlessly personalize their messaging, driving better sales and customer lifetime value.

The Benefits of SMS Marketing

Email marketing has long been a favored and effective channel for marketers due to its high return on investment (ROI), its ability to drive traffic to a company’s website, and its impact on brand awareness, especially among new customers. It’s a cost-effective method that generates significant revenue. With around 50% of the world’s population using email, and a reported ROI of 3,600% according to EmailToolTester, it’s no surprise that businesses value this strategy.

Adding SMS marketing to an email strategy allows companies to engage with their customers directly and promptly. SMS not only has higher open rates but also fosters conversations between companies and customers, helping build stronger relationships, loyalty, and trust. Companies have found that while email is suitable for long-form, image-rich content, SMS is most effective when kept brief and focused. For mid-market companies, including a call to action (CTA) in SMS messages is essential to grab attention, and adding a link enables tracking of click-through rates.

Roland Hernandez, digital marketing director at Joyeria Daisy, explains, “We’ve experimented with various approaches, but we find short SMS messages with a specific landing page link work best. Adding emojis also helps to create a friendly tone.”

Joyeria Daisy successfully uses this CTA approach in their SMS communications, particularly for payments and account updates. This allows them to personalize messages with financing details, such as reminding customers of the time left to use approved financing. Hernandez highlights that their unique approach includes offering extensive payment assistance options.

“Since we provide financing and leasing options, we needed an extra communication layer to remind customers about payments and inform them of special offers. Adding SMS messaging has significantly improved our customer interactions,” Hernandez adds. “It’s allowed us to engage in meaningful conversations with our customers.”

Joyeria Daisy uses SMS as a call to action for both transactional and promotional purposes, such as sending order tracking information, notifying customers when a product is back in stock, and sharing financing details.

They’ve also adopted “conversational commerce,” utilizing SMS to facilitate customer service and shopping transactions. When a customer responds to an SMS marketing message, they receive an automated reply asking their preferred language and informing them that a sales associate will connect with them shortly. This personalized approach enhances their customer service experience.

“While email newsletters are effective, they didn’t offer the level of interaction we needed to drive sales,” Hernandez says. “Once we incorporated SMS messaging, we noticed an increase in customer engagement and communication.”

Discover the winning formula for SMS and email marketing—read and download the report now!

• SPONSOR PERSPECTIVE
• The Benefits of SMS Marketing
• Overcoming SMS Marketing Roadblocks
• Cohesive Coordination
• Building Customer Loyalty and Trust
• Marketers Turn to Technology for Help
• Conclusion

Number of Pages:

• 11 pages

Pricing: 

• Free