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6 reasons Why You Need both Text and Email Marketing

Posted by Sophorn Chhay on Jan 08, 2016

56578481_l-1.jpgCopyright: zinkevych / 123RF Stock Photo
It’s easy for Team Text to poke fun at the “old workhorse” of email. In some people’s eyes, email is slow and clunky, while modern texting can be quick and fun.


Email has been around for more than four decades, while texting, which started in 1992, is barely old enough to legally drink.


When looking at the activity of text and email marketing, texting clearly has the numbers: 8.3 billion were sent world-wide in 2014. Cisco has predicted that by 2017, 4,4 billion people will be texting, and business texting will account for more than 537 million.


Email pales in quantity, with 205 billion sent daily in 2015, and 2 billion emailers world-wide are predicted to send 246 billion by 2019.


Texting requires you to get your point across in 160 characters or less, while email lets you ramble. Anyone can also send and receive texts just by picking up their mobile devices, while actively emailing requires opening a browser, writing a subject line and other steps.


But don’t be too quick to dismiss email being as past its prime, or say that texting is the only form that matters. Both text and email marketing can be important parts of your outreach plan. Simply put, not everyone receives reads email and not everyone reads texts, so if your business uses both, you’re more likely to connect with a larger audience than if you focus on one or the other.


Here are some reasons why.

  1. Texts can be blocked. Some wireless customers specifically ask to not receive texts. This could be due to costs, perhaps they have an older flip phone that makes texting a challenge, or they don’t like the format.  If someone is accustomed to the slower pace of email, or even talking, they may not like the immediacy of texting. A marketing plan that relies on texting only may not reach as many people as one that involves email.

  2. Emails can be forwarded, texts can’t. This is the second gripe of marketing expert Michael Hyatt, who says his biggest gripe is the interruption factor. Forwarding could be handy for campaign and referrals, even a simple message like “if you like what we have to say, forward it to someone else who might too.”

  3. Emails can be stored and searched easier than texts. Most email browsers let you look for details like sender, date, subject and keyword, while texts are usually just categorized by the sender or who participates in groups. However, you can see complete conversations easily through texts, which is not always easy to do with email. In a campaign, you’ll want people to have a permanent record of your messages, which can be in their email boxes or text boxes.

  4. Tease with text but offer more detail with email. Different writing skills are needed for each format – a text gives you a small amount of space to get recipients excited enough to click a provided link for more info. Email gives you much more space to make your argument, so you can paint more impressive word pictures.  Or you also could embed photos or graphics in a responsible email, something that can’t be done in a traditional sms text, and may use up extra bandwidth in an mms text.

  5. Text and email marketing can be coordinated. Some modern text software and services can be customized to allow you to send different types of messages in different formats, or to different segments of your database. You may have a group of customers who want more info about a particular product or service, so you can target them first with a text, and then follow up with an email with more detail. A longer campaign can even follow up an email with an additional text. These types of cross-channel communications can send similar info via text, email, or social media. There are even methods to compose and send an email that is turned into a text message.

  6. They can promote each other. However someone discovers your business, make them aware of the easy ways to interact. This can go beyond “follow us on Facebook/Twitter” to “sign up for our texts” or “sign up for our email newsletters.” And then mention all of these in every communication, such as a section in your newsletter about texting. This could go a long way to building loyalty – especially if there are distinct advantages for trying each format, such as different deals and promotions.

The goal of a good marketing campaign is to get your audience excited about something, hopefully enough to buy, but at least to find out more info. Email and texts can both accomplish these, either quickly or slowly building up, which is why both are quite useful. For additional campaign strategies, visit Trumpia.com

 

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