By bringing the benefits of two highly effective channels together, you can set yourself up for success.

Separately, email and SMS marketing are two of the most effective marketing channels available. But have you ever thought about how much more successful they could be when brought together?

Bringing these two highly effective marketing tools together allows you to understand better and serve your customers’ content based on their preferences. You’ll have the ability to collect twice as much data, send twice as many messages, and reach twice as many customers.

Combining email and SMS marketing is a great way to set yourself ahead of the competition and provide your audiences with the experience they want. In this article, we’ll help you understand the benefits of each channel, how they can work together, and provide you with several tools to help you manage your efforts.

Just looking to jump ahead? Here’s a list of the email and SMS marketing platforms we’ll cover later in the article:

• Listrak
• SendPulse
• Mailup
• ClickSend
• Sendinblue
• Klaviyo
• Omnisend
• Marketingplatform

Benefits of Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the most widely used tactics by businesses across various industries, and for a good reason. It’s proven to be one of the most effective ways to reach customers time and time again.

To give you a quick snapshot at just how effective email marketing is, here are a few important statistics:

• 47% of marketers rate email as the most effective marketing channel
• 72% of customers prefer email as their primary channel for business communication
• Email is 49% better at converting when compared to Facebook and Twitter

Now let’s dive into a few of the benefits that email alone can bring to your marketing strategy.

Personalization Is Easy to Implement

In today’s marketing world, personalization is essential. Without taking the time to send relevant and personalized messages, you’re missing a huge opportunity to increase customer engagement and convert leads.

In fact, personalized emails are said to deliver 6x higher transactional rates.

Sending personalized emails doesn’t always mean you have to get super granular. Even just adding a customized subject line to your message will dramatically increase your open rates. Image courtesy of AeroLeads.

Adding personalization to your email marketing strategy doesn’t have to be a difficult task. With all of the data you have at your fingertips, it should be a fairly simple task.

Here are a few examples of how you can integrate personalization into your emails to make a more significant impact:

• Segment your audiences to send more relevant content
• Track purchase and browsing behaviors to recommend products
• Use dynamic content to fill in specific information based on customer data
• Create triggered emails to respond to specific customer interactions

However you choose to use personalization, just know that no matter how big or small you start, it will positively impact your metrics.

Start to Build Brand Recognition

Email offers you an opportunity to show off your brand and start to build brand recognition. Because email allows you to incorporate imagery and design along with your marketing message, you can begin to build some recognition — in a cost-effective manner.

Having the ability to target customers and send messages to their inbox allows you to frequently engage with them. The more someone opens your emails and sees your branding, the more familiar they will become with your brand.

Over time, these customers will start to recognize and associate your branding and content with your company. So whether they see an ad on social media or a remarketing ad on another site, they’ll automatically know the message is talking about your brand.

Email marketing can help you start to build brand recognition and awareness among your audiences. With the right strategy in place, you can increase revenue by merely getting your customers to think of you when they’re ready to make a purchase. Image courtesy of Venngage.

Having a recognizable brand will keep you top of mind to your customers, and they will think of you when they’re ready to make a purchase. This is why brand recognition is such a significant benefit to email marketing and how it can help increase your business revenue.

Benefits of SMS Marketing

Just like email, SMS provides marketers with a few benefits of its own. Another extremely effective marketing channel, using SMS messages, nearly guarantees that your audience will see your message.

Here’s a quick look at some of the most impressive statistics that come along with SMS marketing:

• The average open rate for text message marketing campaigns is 98%
• 79% of smartphone users make their shopping decisions based on SMS opt-in or similar mobile device services
• 39% of US consumers find they use their mobile phones excessively
• 90% of messages are read within 3 minutes

Let’s take a few of the benefits that come with SMS when used as part of your marketing strategy.

It’s a Direct Channel to Your Audience

Text marketing is one of the most direct ways to reach your audiences. When you consider that people are obsessively checking their phones and that nearly all texts are read within 3 minutes, it’s easy to understand this benefit.

Simply put, with SMS messaging, your audience is going to see your message.

Nearly all smartphone users are already using SMS messaging. If you haven’t already invested in the technology, now’s the time. Image courtesy of Invenue Blog.

Most of your customers already have a smartphone and are already receiving SMS messages from other brands they’ve opted-in to. Tapping into this marketing channel can help you improve communication and directly reach your most engaged customers.

Two Way Communication Capabilities

Another great benefit of SMS marketing is that it’s an easy way to engage in two-way conversations with your customers. This means that you cannot only send general marketing content via SMS, but you can also gain valuable feedback and provide customer service.

Here are a few examples of how you can utilize two-way conversation to improve the customer experience with SMS messages:

• Surveys and polls to gather valuable feedback
• Reminders and confirmation messages
• Orders status and updates
• Direct lines to customer service departments

Text messages are increasingly becoming one of the most popular ways for customers to engage with brands, and for many reasons.

Many people find that communication via SMS messaging is less time-consuming, more convenient, and less frustrating than other channels. As people continue to use texting as their primary form of communication daily, these numbers will only continue to grow. Image courtesy of LiveVox.

However you cut it, SMS is a channel that your audiences want to communicate with you on. It opens the opportunity to create real and engaging two-way communication that you can’t get through many of the other channels you work with.

Benefits of Combining Email and SMS

Now that you know a few of the benefits that come with each of these two tactics alone let’s look at how combining them can help your business.

Their Both Permission-Based Marketing

Your subscribers have to provide you with explicit consent when they opt-in to both your email and SMS lists. This means that you’re targeting audiences who have already expressed interest in your brand.

While they may not always stay as engaged as they were when they first provided that consent, you know that they are interested enough to provide their data. Your job is to keep those audiences engaged over time and turn them into loyal, returning customers.

Build Stronger Customer Relationships

Working together, email and SMS marketing will help you build stronger relationships with your customers. By using both, you can provide your customers with the right information through the right channel.

For example, if you need to send a quick security alert to your customers, use SMS to ensure it’s sent to them in a timely fashion to build trust. Or use email to send detailed instructions on how to participate in an upcoming giveaway to build excitement.

Of course, you can still build solid relationships with your customers by only using one channel, bringing them together will take your efforts to the next level.

4 Ways to Combine Your Email and SMS Strategies

Understanding the benefits that come along with integrating your email and SMS strategies is only one step of the equation. You need to know how to combine these two channels when building a successful strategy.

From increasing your subscriber list to better understanding how your customers shop and interact with your brand across channels — there are plenty of ways you can improve from combining these two channels.

1.   Grow Your Subscriber Lists On Both Channels

Building a healthy subscriber list is one of the most important things you can do to improve your campaigns’ success. Without a substantial number of followers, who are also engaged, you’ll never reach your goals, and your monthly metrics will eventually plateau. 

Luckily by combining email and SMS, you can tap into both channels and encourage engaged users to interact with you in multiple ways.

There are plenty of ways to make this happen, but here are just a few examples of how you can encourage subscribers to join both lists:

• Share exclusive content on each channel
• Create email campaigns that require subscribers to text to win
• Send discounts for SMS subscribers to join your email list

Having your audiences subscribe to multiple channels will make them more likely to receive and read your message. That means that while your email may have gotten lost in their busy inbox, the follow-up text message was likely seen — and vice versa.

Both email and SMS marketing requires subscribers to opt-in to your content, which means anyone on your list has provided consent for you to reach out to them. They are interested and engaged with your brand. You just need to keep it that way.

2.   Send Announcements via SMS and Follow-up with Email

SMS marketing aims to send short, concise messages to your audiences, which makes it a perfect way to tease an upcoming email.

Whether you’re about to kick-off a big event or launch an exciting new product, SMS is a great option to send a quick teaser out to your audiences. Since you can’t provide them with all the details through texting, you can start to build up excitement and then announce the big surprise via email.

This is a great way to generate more awareness and grab your subscribers’ attention because chances are they’ll see the message within 5 minutes of receiving it.

People are constantly checking their phones, making it easy to understand why SMS messages have such impressive statistics. When you send a text to your subscribers, they’re likely to see it within 5 minutes. It could be hours or days when it comes to email. Image courtesy of Startup Bonsai.

Knowing that text marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach your audience, using it to tease upcoming news is a great way to keep them engaged — and keeping an eye out for the official announcement.

3.   More Customer Data For Better Targeting

When the competition is tough, you need to do everything you can to improve your content and provide personalized experiences. To do this, you need reliable data to understand better who your customers are and what they want to receive from your brand.

By using multiple channels to interact with your customers means that you’re gathering twice as much data. You can use all of this data to create more targeted and more personalized content — resulting in higher conversion rates.

Using a platform that can house all of your marketing data will help you better understand insights, including:

• When your subscribers are most likely to see a message
• What discounts or coupons resonate most
• Demographic details such as age and education levels
• Specific customer interests

The more you know about your subscribers, the more significant impact you can make with your messages. Whether you’re using personalization tactics in email or SMS marketing — a personalized message will always score higher open and click rates.

There are tons of different ways you can incorporate personalization into your email and SMS marketing campaigns. But before you can start to take advantage of this, you need to gather valuable data and know what your customers want. Image courtesy of Newoldstamp.

If you haven’t already taken the dive into personalization, now’s the time. Your subscribers are expecting that you know their wants and cater towards them. It can be as simple as sending a birthday email or sharing product recommendations in a text message.

4.   Tap into Cross Channel Marketing Opportunities

Cross channel marketing is an excellent opportunity for companies that are already using multiple avenues to communicate with their customers. The idea of cross channel marketing is to bring all of these channels together to create one comprehensive experience that builds brand awareness and drives people to complete a purchase.

Did you know that 70% of consumers use three or more channels when researching a product? By creating a multi-channel brand experience, people will start to identify and recognize your content, which will lead to more interest and sales.

Your customers go through many different steps on their path to making a purchase, and you need to be there every step of the way. You can integrate cross channel marketing into your strategy in several different ways, but email and SMS are a great way to cover all of your bases. Image courtesy of Design Rush.

Not only do people use multiple channels on their path to making a purchase, but they also use various devices. This is just another factor that proves how effective email and SMS can be together.

With email, you can reach your audience across all devices, but SMS goes directly to the one your customer always has with them — their phones. Using both platforms to reach your audiences means you’ll have an opportunity to reach them on their laptops through email and send a follow-up to their mobile device.

Marketing Platforms to Help Make the Most Out of Combining Your Email and SMS

Managing your email and SMS marketing channels can be challenging, especially when you don’t have the right tools in place. — but it doesn’t have to be this way. Today, numerous platforms can help you create, send, and monitor all of your marketing efforts.

Finding the right platform will depend on your business needs. You’ll come across platforms that focus on one specific channel and others that cover various marketing tactics. Knowing which tool is best for you depends on what you plan to achieve now and in the future.

In this section, we’ll look at a few different platforms that can help you combine your email and SMS marketing efforts. Each platform below provides you with the things you need to make the most out of both channels — and more.

Listrak

If you’re looking for a platform that can help you do more than just manage your email and SMS channels — Listrak is an excellent solution. With the help of machine learning and AI technology, you can improve your email and SMS efforts while making the most out of every engagement with your audiences.

Get the message out to your customers and increase conversions with cross channel capabilities. By building journeys that move your customers seamlessly from SMS to email, and vice versa, you can quickly increase visibility and engagement. Image courtesy of Listrak.

Here’s a look at what Listrak can help you do:

• Build comprehensive customer journeys that interact and engage with customers at the right time based on their real-time data and behaviors
• Highly targeted email and SMS campaigns that use predictive technology to provide the right content and products at the right time
• Intelligent triggered messages that engage your audiences based on specific events
• Improve cross channel integration to grow your subscriber list and gather more customer data

What their customers are saying:

“The experience with Listrak has been top-notch. We couldn’t have asked for a more dedicated and experienced team to help us reach our goals. 2020 will be our best year in history and our best profit year as well. Listrak has been a huge part of that success.” – Listrak Customer Testimonial

SendPulse

SendPulse provides customers with an all-in-one communication platform to manage various marketing channels — including email and SMS. Reach your customers through the channel that resonates best with them and send the most relevant content based on their personal interests.

Managing all of your marketing channels in one location will provide you with better data and make campaign development more manageable than ever before. You no longer need to jump around from program to program. With a comprehensive platform, you can see it all in one dashboard. Image courtesy of SendPulse.

Here’s a look at what SendPulse can help you do:

• Create emails with ease using their convenient editor and quickly put together your SMS messages
• Utilize automation to schedule and send both email and SMS messages to save you time
• Integrate personalization across channels to send only the most relevant content
• Track and manage customer data that is gathered through both channels to continue improving your messages

What their customers are saying:

“SendPulse is one of the best ways to reach your customers.” — SendPulse G2 Customer Review

Mailup

When looking for a platform to help manage various integrated marketing tactics, Mailup is one you’ll want to consider. Manage all of your email and SMS efforts and easily bring them together to gather better data and send more relevant content on both channels.

By integrating your email and SMS channels, you can keep your customers up-to-date and send them important reminders. It will build a more comprehensive brand experience and create more loyal and satisfied customers. Image courtesy of Mailup.

Here’s a look at what Mailup can help you do:

• Create automated and personalized email and SMS campaigns to improve your customer communications
• Develop specialized campaigns for every step in the customer journey from post-subscription to reactivation
• Integrate your email and SMS messages to provide a unique cross channel experience
• Set up automated workflows that interact with subscribers based on real-time data

What their customers are saying:

“Thanks to MailUp’s automatic workflows we can get in touch with our potential customers in every phase of the funnel: this also gives us the opportunity to optimize the conversions of already-acquired contacts and avoid new investments in lead generation” — Mailup Customer Testimonial

ClickSend

ClickSend is a platform that will help you reach your audiences across multiple platforms, all from one central location. Through various gateway options, you can manage all of your SMS and email marketing needs — and more.

Track and manage all of your campaigns run through ClickSend. This will give your valuable insights into improving future efforts and making the most out of your email and SMS strategies. Image courtesy of ClickSend.

Here’s a look at what ClickSend can help you do:

• Easily turn emails into SMS messages that are compatible with multiple email providers
• Send transactional messages to your subscribers after they complete specific actions
• Tap into automation capabilities to schedule and send messages based on specific dates, interactions, and more
• Data and reporting capabilities to help you better understand the needs of your subscribers

What their customers are saying:

“My trusted SMS Blaster program for my business. Always reliable and have significantly helped increase our sales and revenue.” — ClickSend Trustpilot Customer Review

Sendinblue

Sendinblue is a great marketing automation tool for businesses looking to reach their audiences across multiple channels and platforms. Having the right technology will allow you to work smarter by integrating automation capabilities and understanding your customers’ needs.

Get your audiences excited about upcoming sales and promotions with a quick SMS message, then bring them to your site once the promotion is live. Integrating both email and SMS to promote these sales types will get more eyes on your messages and land more sales. Image courtesy of Sendinblue.

Here’s a look at what Sendinblue can help you do:

• Create personalized content across both channels to pique the interest of your readers
• Make email design simple with predesigned templates and an easy-to-use editor tool
• Ensure your contact lists are up-to-date and you have the most relevant data
• Track and analyze all of your messaging campaigns to continue to evolve and find new ways to engage your audiences

What their customers are saying:

“As a small team, simplifying our workflow is a top priority, so having our contacts, SMS, and email in one place helps us a ton!” — Sendinblue Customer Testimonial

Klaviyo

If you’re an eCommerce-based company looking to grow and expand by integrating your email and SMS strategies, Klaviyo is a great option to consider. You can easily reach your audiences with the right messages and connect with your online store — resulting in more engagement and higher revenue dollars.

Manage all of your channels from one central location and build a more detailed customer experience. From sending a reminder SMS message to encouraging someone to come back to your site via email — it can all work together to achieve your goals. Image courtesy of Klaviyo.

Here’s a look at what Klaviyo can help you do:

• Develop targeted and personalized messages that will resonate with your audiences and result in higher conversions
• Use list segmentation capabilities to group similar customers and make sending relevant content easier
• Create customized user experiences with an easy-to-use drag and drop editors
• A/B test messages to experiment and learn what elements of your content are most engaging

What their customers are saying:

“I’ve really enjoyed using Klaviyo as a platform to connect with our customers. It’s very intuitive once you get familiar with the tools, and their support team is incredibly helpful.” — Klaviyo Customer Testimonial

Omnisend

Omnisend is a marketing platform that allows businesses to manage their email, SMS, and automation capabilities. From developing newsletters to sending targeted SMS messages, you can manage all of your digital marketing needs in one central location.

Creating automated workflows allows you to reach your audiences across multiple channels with ease. From abandoned cart messages to discounts and event promotions, you can develop integrated email and SMS to achieve any goal you set. Image courtesy of Omnisend.

Here’s a look at what Omnisend can help you do:

• Quickly and easily build shoppable emails to generate more sales
• Integrate dynamic content and personalized into every messages
• Develop automated omnichannel messages to interact with your audiences in real-time across platforms
• Easily build your subscriber lists through website popups, landing pages, and more

What their customers are saying:

“It’s just the ease of the automated workflows. I’ve worked with quite a few different online platforms for emails. With Omnisend, it’s so easy to set up, and it’s so easy to be able to make changes if you need to.” — Omnisend Customer Testimonial

Marketingplatform

No matter what industry or function your business is in, Marketingplatform can help you take your marketing into the digital era. With email and SMS marketing capabilities, you can reach your customers when it matters.

Creating marketing messages doesn’t have to be a time-consuming process that can only be done by someone who knows code. With the right platform, you can easily build and send professional messages in no time. Image courtesy of Marketingplatform.

Here’s a look at what Marketingplatform can help you do:

• Create a professional email with the easy to use campaign builder tool that provides you with pre-made templates and more
• Gather and use customer data to develop personalized messages and build stronger relationships
• Integrate customer data with your CRM to provide all of your team members with detailed customer historical insight
• Easily send SMS messages in addition to your current email marketing to reach your customers

What their customers are saying:

“Helping our customers on their journey is the prime focus for marketing, and we found that MarketingPlatform was pretty unique when it came to providing us ALL of the tools we needed to make sure abandoned carts were followed up, complimentary products offered, and a stream of communication specifically to the individual customer is being sent out in a timely fashion. Happy to say it was a relatively easy implementation, we got the necessary support, and it was part of the great result that we had access to the consultants and experts from MarketingPlatform in the process” — Marketingplatform Customer Testimonial

Get Started with Your Email and SMS Strategy

So what are you waiting for? Combine your email and SMS marketing efforts to start taking advantage of all the benefits these two platforms have to offer. By strategically integrating these two channels and finding the right tool, you can make the most out of your digital marketing efforts and reach more customers than ever before.