Text Marketing vs Email Marketing, which is better in 2024?
Every small business needs effective marketing strategies in order to communicate with their customers in order to improve their customer engagement and sales revenue. Both text marketing (SMS Marketing) and email marketing play very important roles in your overall marketing strategy.
Email marketing is a popular marketing channel that has been used effectively by small businesses for many years. Text marketing is more recent and is becoming one of the fastest growing forms of marketing. It was estimated that 48.7 million consumers have opted-in to receive business SMS messaging already.
Let’s explore the differences between text marketing and email marketing, along with their advantages and disadvantages, and discuss which is better to use for different purposes.
What is Text Marketing?
A marketing campaign that uses text messages to promote or advertise businesses is known as text marketing. It includes product discounts, sale announcement, simple brand awareness, new product launch, etc.
Since the popularity of smartphones, the advertisers have started including pictures and links in text messages. It allows users to visit the landing page immediately and purchase right on their mobile phones.
Most of the marketing texts are designed in a way that the viewer can place an order immediately. It increase conversion rate allowing you to expand your business.
Why You Should Use Text Marketing
Text marketing is extremely effective with unbelievable open rates. Advertisers are rushing towards text marketing due to its enormous benefits. In today’s world, almost everyone use a phone and checks it as often as possible. According to Pew Research, over 90% of adults in US own a mobile phone, for those under the age of 50, the stats jump to 97%.
According to various researches, text marketing has 98 percent open rate, and 95% of text messages are read within 3 minutes. Studies further reveal that 45% of text messages are responded to within 90 seconds compared to emails which take 3 days on average.
Text marketing can be a very cost effective marketing and communication tool when used in the right way.
What is Email Marketing?
A marketing campaign that includes sending emails to prospects and customers about new products, discounts, promotions, or anything you have to offer.
Email marketing is one of the most popular and highly effective tools used by businesses today. It allows you to create full rich content using html which includes pictures, videos, links, and unlimited text.
Instead of sending an email to a person, businesses use email marketing tools to design campaigns which can be sent to thousands of people at the same time. It not only saves businesses time, but if gives insights on who’s opening and clicking on their emails.
Importance of Email Marketing
According to the Radicati Group, 34 percent (2.5 billion) people use email in the world. With this data, you can imagine the reach and potential of email marketing. It is expected that the number will increase to 2.8 billion users in 2021.
Email marketing can be a very effective marketing tool because it can be targeted directly to your customers. According to a study by Forrester Research, nearly 85 percent of retailers prefer email marketing over other marketing methods. Email marketing is one of the most cost effective ways to reach your customers, although due to the spam catchers email marketers only typically get about a 20% open rate on average.
Email is a personal and customizable way of reaching your audience. You can set the tone of each email according to the taste of an individual. You can create groups with similar hobbies or preferences and send them a relevant email. Email campaign allows you to check the results and revise your campaigns if required.
Email is still the king according to volume. According to statistic.com roughly 306.4 billion emails were sent and received each day in 2020, the figure is expected to increase to over 361.6 billion daily mails in 2024.
So despite all the new forms of communication coming onto the market like Text messaging, mobile messengers, chat apps, Slack, etc. email still remains the #1 way most businesses communicate and market to their prospects and customers.
So Which is better Text Marketing or Email Marketing?
The answer is it depends. It depends on the type of content you need to send, and how important or time sensitive it is. See below for the best uses for each type of communication.
When to Use Text Marketing
If your message is time-sensitive or requires immediate action, then text / SMS is the most effective way to communicate. Use text messages when you need to send:
- Limited product offers and discounts
- Appointment reminders
- Urgent updates and notifications
- Personal alerts
- Purchase confirmations
- Information that requires two-way communication
When to Use Email Marketing
Due to fact that most email marketing is caught by spam catches, means that most of your recipients will never see it. Therefore email marketing is best for non-critical information that is not time sensitive.
Smart uses for email marketing include:
- Newsletters
- Long-form educational content
- Visual product announcements
- B2B campaigns that cover technical information
- Press releases or publicity updates
Advantages of Combining Email Marketing With Text Marketing
Now, we know the importance of text marketing and email marketing. What if we can combine both marketing channels? Will it be effective and produce quality results? Let’s find out the benefits of combining text marketing with email marketing.
Build Relationship Via Email and Secure Customers With Text Marketing
When it comes to email marketing, it is more suited for newsletters and long messages. However, you should stick to the point while sending an SMS.
Taking these facts into consideration, you can use email marketing to build relationships and attract new people. You can send them emails about company information and why you are the best choice for them.
Once they start responding, you can use text marketing to close the deal. With a higher open rate, text marketing is perfect solution to seal the deal.
Share Teasers via Text and Complete Message in Email
Short emails perform better and produce better results. However, sometimes it is not possible to send the complete message in a short email. For instance, you are launching a new product and you want to share complete details like what is the product, how it works, etc.
You can send a text message about the new launch and prepare prospects for an upcoming email. Since they are already interested in detail, they will definitely open and read your email.
Use Text Marketing for Quick Deals
When you are introducing a new product that will stay in the market for a year, it is not a big deal. You can send an email and wait for people to read it later. However, if you are launching a sale for a short period, text marketing is a better option. People will read your message instantly and respond quickly.
Combining both email and text marketing will produce better results in the long term.
What is TextP2P?
TextP2P is a marketing platform that offers both text and email marketing for small businesses to increase their customer engagement and sales. We were named one of the top rated sms-marketing companies by SoftwareAdvice.com based on ease of use and customer satisfaction.
TextP2P allows you to send messages from a local number and replies come to one inbox. With an easy to understand platform, you can easily manage your campaigns. TextP2P allow you to easily follow up with your prospects and convert into buyers.
TextP2P automated workflows allows users to setup drip campaigns which can automatically communicate with your customers and leads on a user specified interval. Your workflow campaign can include text messages, emails, as well as ringless voicemail drops (see example below). Ringless Voicemail allows you to drop a voicemail message to your customer’s cell phone without ever ringing their phone.
Check our our feature pages to learn more about these services:
How to Get Started Immediately with TextP2P
Getting started with TextP2P – The Ultimate Messaging Platform is easy and free.
TextP2P is an easy to use web application designed to used on a computer or mobile device. TextP2P provides a SMS & MMS text marketing and email marketing platform designed to help small-midsize businesses cultivate better relationships with customers and streamline follow-ups. Send your customers text messages from a virtual 10 digit local number with a maximum of 1600 characters! It offers features like: Sending bulk personalized texts, emails, text surveys, drip campaigns, Ringless Voicemails, keyword signups, scheduling, and more.
At TextP2P we offer a FREE 14 day trial where you will receive 100 text credits to use.
How Does the Free Trial Work?
✅ Sign-up for a FREE TextP2P account. Take a tour of the system and watch a demo.
✅ Sign up for a FREE trial by entering your credit card to start and immediately receive a local area code phone number matching your cell phone and receive 100 FREE text credits and 100 FREE email credits. You credit card will not be charged until your trial is over unless you go over your 100 free credit limit. After the trial ends your membership begins for just $21/month with our Starter Package Plan.
✅ You’re in control! Upgrade, Downgrade, Buy Additional Credits, or Cancel at Anytime.
Creating Your First Text Marketing Campaign is Easy
Once you have activated your account by starting your free trial or subscription, you easily send your first text message marketing campaign in just 3 simple steps and in less than 2 minutes. Watch the video below to see an example of how easy it really is.
Step 1 – Create New List
The first step to simply create a new list to organize and store your contacts. You will name your list whatever you like, optionally indicate what website the contacts came from, and then check the box that the contacts have opted-in to being contacted by you.
Step 2 – Import Your Contacts
The next step is import your contacts from a .csv (Comma Separated File) which can be created from Excel or Numbers. Most CRMs and existing systems support exporting data directly to a .csv format. When you import you will asked to label / map each field. Any fields you don’t want to import can be set to ignore.
Step 3 – Create New Text Campaign
The final step is to create your text message campaign which will be sent to your entire list. Simply name your campaign, select your list, and type your message. You can optionally schedule your message to go out at a particular date and time, add multimedia like pictures, videos, pdfs, or audios), and filter your contacts further by tags. Once you are done editing, hit SEND… and you’re done.
Learn why hundreds of small businesses are converting to Text Marketing with TextP2P
TextP2P is new text marketing platform designed to be better than the competition. It’s very easy to use, affordable, and has every text messaging feature you will need including: sending bulk personalized texts, surveys, drip campaigns, Ringless Voicemails, keyword signups, scheduling, and more.
What You Need to Know About Text Message Marketing
Text Message Marketing can NOT be used for SPAM as there are very strict rules against that are defined in the CAN-SPAM act. All your text message recipients must have given you their number and have agreed to allow you to contact them.
At TextP2P our text messaging system service may only be used to send messages to verified opt-in subscriptions. Further, it is designed so that all subscribers can opt-out quickly, easily, and permanently from unwanted messages. This is done by simply replying to any message one of our clients send to you with the word STOP, STOPALL, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, or QUIT. You can read more at our anti-spam policy page.
How to get verified opt-in subscriptions?
You can get your contacts into TextP2P in the following ways:
File Import
You can simply export your customers from your existing CRM or database and put them in a CSV (Comma Separate Value) file that you can generate from Excel or Numbers. As long as the contact has a phone number it can be imported. TextP2P will automatically filter out any non-mobile numbers when the campaign is sent.
Text Keywords
You can setup unlimited keywords for users to text to your local number in order to gather new leads. TextP2P automatically can ask for their name and email address along with opting them into your list.
Online Forms
Online forms are a great way to have new leads opt-in simply by adding cell phone to your existing website and landing page forms. TextP2P integrates easily with over 1500 web applications through Zapier. Also be sure to check out our WordPress Widget plugin for easy and quick integration.