SMS marketing vs. Email marketing: which has higher conversion

The fact that the advertising market is oversaturated and attracting attention to your product is becoming more and more difficult is something many marketers feel. Therefore, the value of the ability to directly reach out to customers — through newsletters — is evident. Remind them about your brand with a holiday greeting or invite them to a master class on weaving African braids. Offer a discount on perfumes, seedlings, and kites, as well as a presentation of a revolutionary video surveillance system for entrances.

Usually, direct communication is done through SMS or email. Each of these communication channels has its supporters and opponents — as well as risks and advantages. But what do the numbers say? Which method of customer interaction will bring a higher conversion rate and greater profit to your business — read on.

Potential audience for SMS/Email marketing: what’s the difference?

Mobile phones are owned by the vast majority of people from 5 to at least 85 years old. This means that they also have the ability to receive SMS messages: this is an embedded app in every device that is technically impossible to delete or block.

Another factor is that the cellular network always passes incoming messages, regardless of whether mobile Internet is available or not.

Approximately 90% of the adult population has an email inbox. Most of them only check it “from time to time” or for work purposes.

There are certainly niches where the advantages of email marketing are self-evident, and this marketing tool works best either on its own or in combination with SMS newsletters. However, there aren’t many of those niches. Moreover:

• SMS is opened by more than 90% of recipients within 3 minutes of receipt;
• Emails are read by 20-30% of people; others selectively browse their inbox and send all unnecessary emails to the trash, including advertising offers.

There are four possible reasons:

1. Recipients have lost interest in your product — they’ve outgrown it, moved on to something else, or found better or cheaper options;
2. Your emails come too often and are perceived as annoying and useless. Therefore, people mark them as “spam”;
3. Spam filter settings in the inbox play a role — you may not even know that your email automatically went to this folder;
4. Over the last 25 years, we’ve developed a clip-like way of thinking. Information overload has increased, the pace of life has accelerated, and everyone multitasks more than ever, meaning texts are less well-received than visual images. In simple terms, a significant percentage of people don’t read long texts: they’re not used to it, can’t, and don’t want to.

In this regard, SMS newsletters have clear advantages, as a 160-character message has a better chance of being read than an informational message of 1,000-2,000 characters. And if the message is concise and includes product benefits and value, recipients may even click the link. Plus, they’ll remember it better — if only because it’s text, not just another beautiful TikTok video.

Spam and the Law

Until recently, the common belief was that any kind of mailing is spam by definition. Since the signing of the Ukrainian “Advertising Law” and the “Personal Data Protection Law”, several years have passed, but that time was enough to stop viewing email and SMS messages negatively. Here’s why:

• Every phone has the technical ability to unsubscribe from a mailing.
• Companies must have the person’s consent to receive your offers.
  This requirement was initially met by marketers with some reluctance, as it meant extra hassle. Over time, the economic advantage of this approach became clear: with consent, budget leakage is minimized, as the message is received by a loyal audience already familiar with your company or product.
• In the case of SMS mailings, the presence of an Alpha name plays an important role, making it clear which company is sending the message. To set this up, consult professionals — there are nuances to consider.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Each Mailing Method

Among the advantages of email-based mailings:

• Solidness and representativeness,
• Broader opportunities for result analysis,
• Cost of mailing.

Solidness

This concept is subjective — each business defines it according to its own taste and knowledge of its audience. Undoubtedly, for selling real estate, cars, or yachts, it may not make sense to use SMS, but this more applies to the fact that such products are rarely bought more than once a year.

It’s always worth trying all available methods of promotion — the effectiveness of mass sendings can sometimes surprise businesses.

A case involved sending an SMS from a reputable insurance company. The $250 spent on the mailing was fully recovered, as clients signed 120 contracts in a short period, each of which cost not much less or even more.

Cost Comparison

Sending 2,000 SMS messages and 2,000 emails is certainly a different cost. Especially if the SMS are sent not only within the country but also abroad. However, one must also consider the time and money spent on creating the mailing.

For emails, you need not only to write a concise readable text with the right accents but also to format it properly, create illustrative material, and ensure the email looks presentable on different devices — there are no trivial details in this preparation work. Therefore, the cost might turn out to be nearly the same, especially when calculating conversion.

Analytical Approaches

As for methods of measuring conversion. Email allows for automated data collection and analysis via Google Analytics integration. This enables a better understanding of the audience and its reactions, influencing the final outcome of the marketing campaign.

But here’s the question: “How informative is this analytics if only a quarter of your database opened the email?”

How to Calculate Conversion?

The formula for calculating conversion (CR) for SMS/Email is the same:

CR = number of target actions / total number of visitors x 100%.

Let’s say you sent 2,000 messages. 580 people visited the site, 100 of them made a purchase.

100 / 2000 x 100% = 5%

There are also formulas for other types of CR. In particular, you can calculate the level of visitor engagement. The formula looks like this:

(number of conversions / number of sessions) x 100%.

This helps calculate the profitability of the resource.

There is no clear number for what level of CR is considered acceptable — much depends on the specific niche.

For example, the conversion for pet supply store mailings might be 2%, while a spring sale for a sportswear store might be 5%. To determine the “average temperature of the niche”, additional research is always required, both within the niche itself and regarding your audience.

In Conclusion

Average open rate:

Email — up to 21% (according to MailChimp).

SMS messages — over 90% (there are different studies, some showing this rate reaching 98%), depending on the niche and audience (and also the marketer’s ability to segment the audience for each campaign).

Thus, advertising via SMS has much higher chances of not passing by a potential customer than email. Email campaigns should be used as an additional channel for non-urgent communication — if you are sure that your audience at least checks their emails.