Email, social media, text messaging - it can be difficult to decide which marketing channel is going to work best for you. While SMS marketing is on the rise, there are businesses that feel a little hesitant to hop on board yet another new marketing bandwagon.
But the numbers are in, and statistic show that SMS marketing has some powerful strengths, especially in terms of open and read rates, which far outweigh those of email and social media.
Here we take a look at how SMS stands up against email and social media. Remember, these are all complementary marketing tools, and you don’t have to choose one and ditch the others. They work best when they’re integrated, giving your brand a strong, consistent voice across all of its communication channels.
SMS Marketing Power
Text message marketing may be the new kid on the block, but it already boasts some impressive numbers:
- A 98 per cent open rate
- Most texts are read within just a few minutes of receipt
- Coupons sent via SMS have a 10 per cent higher redemption rate than email
- Roughly 32 per cent of mobile subscribers respond to offers
- Click-through rates are also at a high 29 per cent
- SMS eight times the engagement rate of email marketing
As more and more of us communicate via text and messaging apps, these statistics show just how open we are to text message communication now.
Email Marketing
Email has been used for marketing purposes for a long time now. It’s established and effective, when used correctly. Pretty much every business has some form of email communication with its customers today. The problem with this is the risk of oversaturation - so much so that every email client, like Outlook and Gmail, boast ever more powerful spam filters. For this reason:
- Email marketing has a relatively low open rate of between 28 and 33 per cent
- Email’s click-through rate is between six and seven per cent
Social Media Marketing
As social media platforms continue to edit their algorithms, your organic reach has likely diminished. This means your posts might not be reaching nearly as many of your followers as you think. Facebook now charges you more, the more you want to reach people.
- The organic reach for Facebook posts ranges between 2 per cent and 47 per cent
- The more followers you have, the lower your organic reach rate
- Less than 1,000 followers? You likely average about a 22 per cent reach rate
- More than 100,000 followers? You likely average about a 6.6 per cent reach rate
- Twitter advertises that you can reach 30 per cent of your followers every week, but has been shown to have a 2 per cent organic reach