Modern Marketing: Comparing SMS to Email Advertising

For many years, email advertising has been king on the internet. Many advertisers have been making lots of money by creating lists for their businesses and clients. Because of their similarity in nature, there are a lot of comparisons of SMS to email marketing. Both forms of marketing utilize both online and offline avenues of list building in order to create a long-lasting relationship between businesses and the consumers.

So which is the better way of list marketing? It really depends on the business’ resources and needs. The following a breakdown of both forms of marketing.

Email Advertising

With this form of advertising, businesses have been able to make empires. Email has been around for a while, so with a combination of either search engine traffic or paid traffic such as pay per click platforms, advertisers have been able to put together targeted lists of customers. These lists, if managed properly, can generate long-term revenue through the drip feeding of emails.

When comparing SMS to email marketing, advertising through email allows for longer sales pitches to help pre-sell consumers. In addition, attractive images as well as designs for the messages can be implemented to improve conversion rates. This creates a full experience for the consumer.

For years, this has worked for many marketers, and it’s still a marketing medium that will be around for many years. Does the novelty of SMS advertising have a leg up over it?

SMS Marketing

Advertising through text messages is the new, up-and-coming marketing medium that is growing due to the sudden increase of smartphone users. Only a few years ago, there were few people using smartphones for everyday use. Most of these people were businessmen and women who used Blackberries for their jobs and also personal use.

Now, everyone seems to be using smartphones and texting on a daily basis. Since people are more inclined to read text messages over email, advertising to customers through text has a higher rate of readership compared to emails which tend to end up in the junk mail or spam folder. This means a potential for more sales.

This untapped source of traffic is perfect for demographics that are heavy users of smartphones and text messaging services in general. Both large companies and local businesses can take advantage of this by issuing surveys or forms for consumers to fill out that will act as an opt-in for this text messaging list.

Once on the list, the businesses can continually send consumers text messages regarding business news, updates, or even coupons that they can redeem by showing the text message they received.

This is Only the Beginning

At the moment, it’s tough to compare SMS to email advertising, as text message marketing is still in its infancy. Email marketing is a method that has been around for many years and still continues to rake in the cash for various businesses. SMS advertising is a breath of fresh air in the advertising world, and with the growth of cell phone and smartphone use, marketing through text messages can possibly cause a revolution.