Technological innovations have greatly enhanced the efficiency and efficacy of marketing efforts, by enabling marketers to reach more and more customers with a single click of the computer. While marketers have been using email marketing campaigns for quite some time now, an integrated effort involving both SMS and Email marketing campaigns is yet to be utilized up-to its full potential. As both forms of communications are accessible via handheld devices such as cell-phones and tabs; the reach of these marketing efforts increases manifold. The fact email and SMS marketing can initiate an interaction with customers instead of mere relaying of facts, makes these tools all the more lucrative.
With over 90% of the texts sent being read within 4-6 minutes by target customers, SMS marketing has an unprecedented ability to capture customer attention and interest. By integrating SMS marketing with email marketing, the marketing strategy is diversified. With the audiences becoming increasingly comfortable with digital media, complimenting email campaigns with SMS ensures that majority of customers are covered. The following steps can be followed to achieve SMS and email marketing integration –
1. Identify the appropriate text to relay relevant information via email and SMS
2. Keep the information brief and preferable within the limit of 160 characters
3. Zero-in on a single agenda or topic for the SMS to avoid diversions
4. Establish a comfortable SMS frequency that doesn’t leave a market gap but also doesn’t irritate your customers
5. Attempt to get customer consent by encouraging them to sign-up for SMS alerts via in-store promotions
The information that can be shared in an email campaign is quite different from the one that can be shared via SMS marketing. This distinction is important to maintain as both media may work in complement to each other, but the target audience offers a very different kind of attention span for both marketing tools. For instance, a marketer targeting customers who are motivated to buy during a ‘sale’ should send an informative mailer to customers, several days before the sale begins. The mailer can elaborate about the product categories which would be on sale and the extent of discounts which would be offered. The SMS campaign, on the other hand, should be sent out on the day of the sale to encourage customer traffic on the site by mentioning additional discounts in the SMS.
Similarly, SMS and email marketing campaigns can work in integration to encourage more customer subscriptions. While text messages can encourage customers to sign up for email subscription, emails can motivate customers to subscribe for SMS alerts. In both cases, special incentives can be offered in return for subscription.
In yet another application, for a new product launch, email marketing campaign can be initiated weeks in advance; creating a buzz about the product. An SMS campaign can be more appropriately launched when the product is finally available in the market. The timing of both email and SMS marketing is crucial in order to achieve maximum impact and subsequent conversions. While devising integrated campaigns for services such as events, newsletters and contests; emails can be used to provide detailed information in advance. SMS on the other hand can create impulsive impact by being executed on the day of the event or contest or by sharing trending links of the newsletter.
Juvlon’s SMS marketing features personalized SMS, automatic link shortening, scheduled message sending and monitoring of campaign performance. Not only that, Juvlon also offers run data enrichment campaigns via both SMS and email media. Juvlon also specializes in trigger SMS and email marketing campaigns. By including tracking links to SMS campaigns, Juvlon can provide comprehensive reports about customer activity. Juvlon also helps clients realize the preferred channel of their target customers and improve campaign reach by reducing invalid addresses. With a single point support and monitoring for multi-channel subscriber activity, Juvlon offers the ultimate SMS and email marketing solution.
You can learn more about this at – http://www.juvlonkonnect.com/goodies/webinar-by-juvlon/sms-and-email-marketing-integration/