marketing communication: SMS vs. email

Last updated on 21 August 2024

Digital communications mediums

 

 

Commercial SMS messages are widely used and appreciated. At first glance, it would be tempting to think that, apart from their price and the size of their respective content, email and SMS are relatively similar. We might also think that the way to launch an email campaign is identical to the way to launch an SMS campaign… But as is often the case, the truth lies elsewhere, and we’re going to show you where the main differences lie!

 

 

SMS Marketing

SMS marketing is based on a financial arrangement between :

• A third-party aggregator (for example twilio) that acts as a buffer, receiving SMS requests from advertisers.
• The various cell phone operators (for example in USA: UScellular, VoLTE, LTE , Verizon, …).

When an advertiser requests SMS messages to be sent to its prospects/customers, the aggregator receives the order and routes them to the various operators who then send them to the end customers.
To do this, the aggregator uses specific legal advertising routes in the form of “short codes” (such as 30XXX or 85XXX), enabling end customers to identify at a glance that the sender of the SMS is a professional and that the type of SMS is “commercial”.

This mechanism is ruled by financial agreements with operators, who recover over 90% of the cost of the SMS billed! The remaining 10% goes to the aggregator. This financial split means that operators have no interest in implementing anti-spam policies, because they’re the big winners every time!

These arrangements between the parties mean that SMS is a communication medium with the advantage of being simple (you don’t need to understand anything in particular to send an SMS campaign correctly, all you have to do is pay), but with a very limited size (160 characters), no image and a very high unit price.

However, given the high costs involved for any advertiser wishing to use SMS marketing, a parallel market has expended for several years, with “low-cost” aggregators now offering to route SMS messages without going through official advertising channels (with short codes). The way used here is to send SMS campaigns directly through a stack of standard SIM cards (like +1 123-XXX-XXXX), in order to avoid the high costs incurred by operators, and thus reduce the total cost price of SMS marketing.
Although this process is still tolerated to some extent, it constitutes a circumvention of the marketing use of SMS (through SIM cards of personal phones), and may generate numerous problems for the advertiser (customers not being directly aware of the SMS advertising content before opening, as it is not clearly displayed through the short code 30XXX or 85XXX).
Moreover, given the operators’ loss of benefits from SMS marketing, it’s a safe bet that this misuse of SMS marketing will soon no longer be possible, or even legal.

In conclusion, SMS is a useful and attractive marketing medium, but it rarely stands alone. Hence the widespread adoption by advertisers of multi-channel mechanisms that combine SMS and email marketingEmail marketing, also known as Emailing, is a digital marketing strategy that uses email as its medium. It is one of the... More.

 

 

Email Marketing

Emailing world runs on totally different concepts from those of SMS. These concepts can give a false perception of complexity for those who are new to email marketing, or who have only worked with SMS campaigns.

However, as we’ll see later, the right word would be “challenging”, meaning that it requires more involvement from the advertiser (mostly a “time involvement”), which one will directly drive the results efficiency (which can be very different between two separate advertisers depending on the involvement made).

Let’s take a look at the mechanisms behind email marketing, and the different players involved.
Unlike SMS, the sending aggregator (also known as an “email router” on emailing) is not mandatory, even though it is mostly used by companies, as it makes the sending setup easier. End operators (such as UScellular, Verizon, …) are replaced by receiving domains, the main ones being Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, and others.

Unlike mobile operators, which make profits of each SMS sent, receiving domains don’t make any money for delivering emails to recipients’ inboxes.
It’s mainly in this specific difference that emailing complexity lies: it’s much cheaper because it’s not ruled by a business model between operators.
On the other hand, its very low cost means that huge quantities of emails are sent every day, and a large proportion of these are spam or other unwanted emails.

When it comes to email marketing campaigns, it is necessary to differentiate yourself from the mass of unwanted emails and be relevant about what you send. So it’s essential to show that the campaigns you send out are legitimate, i.e. authorized by your customers, and that they really want to receive and read your emails. If you fail on that step, then your emails will at best be directed to a spam box, if not rejected outright.

Various mechanisms have been applied by receiving domains to separate spammers from real marketers. All these mechanisms are based on the gradual assignment of a reputation metric that is attached to every advertiser who is sending email campaigns. It’s important to understand that as soon as you launch an email marketing campaign, the various receiving domains will assign you a rating. This rating, based on various technical (and user engagement) criteria, will be the key to your success, and can be can be assessed indirectly through metrics such as open and click rates of your marketing campaigns.
Of course, this rating evolves over time (positively or negatively), so it’s essential to be persistent on implementing “emailing best practices” on the long run, to ensure that the good reputation achieved over time can be sustained.
In the next articles, we’ll be taking a closer look at the main aspects needed to ensure that your domain’s reputation progresses over time, helping your email marketing campaigns to be a success.

 

 

Conclusion: is there a winner?

As you have probably already understood from reading this article, there cannot be any “winner” in this match, because that would be as subjective as claiming that sweet food is better (or worse) than savoury food… it depends above all on individual tastes and needs.
Here we’re in the same situation, where both channels are highly appreciated and allow you to reach your customers in a way that’s unique to each one, with advantages and drawbacks that are inherent to each method.

Ultimately, the best choice in order to benefit from the power of these two marketing tools is to work on multi-channel mode, i.e. to use both SMS marketing AND email marketing. Depending on the specific customer campaign goals, the content to be presented, the length of information to be transmitted, and the preferred choices of different customer segments, the final choice will sometimes be SMS and sometimes be email (and will vary other time). Both channel can also be used at the same time if you want to multiply marketing opportunities.

Of course, it’s important to keep in mind that SMS marketing setup is easy, but with emailing you’ll need to make some technical configuration of your web domain before sending, in order to really reach all the expected benefits.

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Next, a series of articles on the keys to success in email marketing.