It can be difficult to decide which marketing channels are best for your ecommerce company. There are many ways to do this and, let’s face it, there are pros as well.
We’ll be discussing two strategies that can have a positive impact on ecommerce merchants in this article. While email marketing is a well-known tactic and one that you may be already using, we will also discuss SMS marketing.
First, we’ll discuss what they are and give you the benefits and drawbacks of each. Then, we’ll explore whether these marketing pillars can be used together. We’ll also give you some examples to help you replicate these for your ecommerce store.
What is Email Marketing?
Email marketing allows for you to communicate electronically with current and potential customers.
It is a crucial tool for your company and can be used to create email marketing campaigns to promote you brand, introduce new products, highlight sales, or just to build a relationship between you and your customer.
These are the essential elements of email marketing.
- Design
- Content
- Reporting
- A/B Testing
It can be difficult to design an email if you’re just starting out, especially if your experience is limited.
This is where the right email program can be of great help. Sendinblue makes it easy to quickly create professional designs using their drag-and-drop editor. You can choose from a variety of templates or create your own.
What is SMS Marketing?
SMS marketing refers to the sending of text messages to customers.
Companies must get permission from customers to send SMS messages. This is required by GDPR regulations. This option is available to your customer, or potential customer, when they sign up for an account.
To drive users to your store, you can send them texts with a call-to-action (CTA). Although there are many SMS service providers, we recommend that you choose one that integrates with your marketing system.
HubSpot Marketing Hub Review – This is where HubSpot comes in handy. All your email marketing, SEO and live chat can be managed from one platform.
There isn’t much design work required for email marketing. However, we recommend using a URL shortener tool to make sure your URL links are shorter than email marketing. SMS messages have a limited character count. URL’s can be long so it is important to use an option like Bitly or Rebrandly.
Email Marketing: The Advantages
1. Engagement
Email marketing is permission-based, so click-through and open rates are very high.
These are potential customers and customers who have signed up for your communications. They want to hear from us. Statista estimates that 4.6 Billion people will use email by 2025. This is where you want to be.
2. Cost
It’s a cost-effective way to communicate with your customers. The ability to scale is dependent on the success of your business. Sendinblue provides their software free of charge. It allows unlimited contacts and allows for 300 emails per day. Email marketing is free. What you see is what your get.
3. Directness
Email marketing is a better option than traditional offline marketing because it allows you to direct users directly to the action. You can direct users to your website, whether it’s a flash sale and a blog post.
4. Brand Awareness / Design
Email allows you to send plain text or add graphics, and attach files. Many email marketing software makes it easy to customize your emails to match your website. This is crucial for increasing brand awareness.
5. Test
Most people think that A/B testing is limited to your subject line. Most software allows you to test different CTAs, email content, and images. Your website copy can be influenced by what works in your emails.
6. Reporting
Integration with Google Analytics is available for all email providers. This will allow you to track how many people clicked on your email, and more importantly, what pages they interacted with. This information can help you plan your digital marketing campaigns.
Email Marketing: The downsides
1. Spam
Email can be difficult to strike the right balance between being informative, and appearing spammy.
You can lose your message if you send too many emails with commercials. This could result in you losing your subscribers. Also, ensure you have the permission to email the person.
2. Deliverability
There are many reasons your email might not be delivered. Emails that are poorly designed, overused punctuation or contain words that sound spammy may not be delivered to many email filters.
It can also be time-consuming to ensure that your customer email lists are up-to-date manually.
3. Click-through rate
While email generally has a high CTR, it can drop when marketing emails are considered. If you send too many emails with offers, they could be ignored. Here, a less is more approach works best.
4. Devices
Your email may not be accessible on every device, mobile phone or computer. You should test the appearance of your email and ensure that you have covered all bases. These are two common problems: images not downloading and text that is difficult to read.
SMS Marketing has many advantages
1. Access
Because mobile phones and cell phones are so personal, the average person will carry them with him everywhere he goes. The user doesn’t need to be connected to the internet in order for them to use email.
2. Time-sensitive
If you have urgent offers, SMS marketing campaigns can be very effective. It is unlikely that people will check their email, so a text message with information about a sale closing soon to their mobile phone is more effective.
3. Deliverability
Text messaging is primarily plain text so you won’t be able to block the message by the phone. People tend to keep their phone number, which means that they will receive the message from someone else. If a user leaves a company, they can have multiple email addresses.
4. Engagement
Research shows that SMS marketing has open engagement rates as high as 98% .
It’s also much easier for people engage with and respond to your CTA because it is plain text. Think about it: When was the last time that you received a text message you didn’t read or understood? This increases the rate of response.
5. Targetting
You can personalize your messages based on the activities and purchasing habits of your customers if you have a good customer relation management (CRM) tool
SMS Marketing: The disadvantages
1. Content limit
The only problem with SMS marketing is its character limit.
The text must be concise. Most SMS messages also display a preview that is even shorter. This means that you only have 20-30 characters to grab their attention and then direct them to your website.
2. Cost
SMS marketing is more expensive than email marketing. Integrations with HubSpot can cost you at least $100 per month.
Because the owners of those integrations will need the services of a mobile agency. Pricing plans can also be based on the volume of delivery, the level you require and whether your business operates internationally. You may also need to include your business name in the text. This will add an additional cost if you need to view gifs or interactive media via a multimedia message service (MMS).
3. Spam
Although it is unlikely that text messaging will be viewed as spammy, it has been growing over time.
It is important that your business name and permissions are used in the text.
4. Contact List
People are less likely to give their phone number to you than their email address. It is important to not require mobile data when someone creates an account.
You might think, “How do I get their number?” You risk losing their number if you make their mobile number mandatory. It’s worth taking a look at your CRM system to determine if SMS marketing is worth it based on the number of contacts who provided that information.
Email Marketing: Examples of good practice
We’ve already discussed the obvious benefits of email, but which marketers are thriving in this area?
Statista shows that 90% internet users use email and have sent at most one email within the last month. So how can you make sure you stand out from your competition?
Quiksilver
This email was sent to me by Quiksilver recently. It was absolutely wonderful.
This is a great way to use a gif in an email. It shows the choices that are involved with the shorts. Although it’s almost clickbait, the vague statement that “iconic for some reason” is very tasteful. It encourages users to explore more.
Quiksilver’s email has been very successful in that they have not mentioned a price. It’s about creating a story around the product, and giving users a reason to purchase.
An email includes a brief story about how the shorts were worn in surfing competitions. They use a wonderful language to show how theirs is superior, noting that others have “ripped off” their design.
Quiksilver has a clever way of promoting its range by showing items that complement the shorts.
The landing page must match the email. Quicksilver’s board short page mirrors what was in the email but also provides other media that could have slowed the email down, such as video.
Tesco
Tesco makes email work well. They are particularly careful with their subject lines.
People want to feel part of a special community, and get something in return for being customers. Tesco uses the term “special” to do this. This is a great way to increase CTR by using synonyms such as “exclusive”, “private”, or “individual”.
You will also be able to see that Tesco doesn’t use the word ‘we’. While companies are eager to brag about their achievements, customers really want to hear what you can do to help them.
MyProtein
Email communications should be relevant and current. MyProtein was used in this way, coincident with gyms opening up again with a deal.
This subject line was the strongest I’ve ever seen. It asked pertinent questions and included an offer as well as a time-sensitive step.
The flash sale was also indicated by an emoji. Although there is much debate about whether emojis can be beneficial for your brand, a study done by Search Engine Journal found that they do improve click-through rates and work best at the end the subject line.
Is your product seasonal? How can current events affect your business? Check out the news and social media to see how your customers react.
Examples of SMS marketing are excellent
What about SMS? How can you make use of this high-open rate marketing strategy to promote your business? It’s not easy to come up with creative solutions and put them together like Quiksilver. SMS is all about getting to the point.
These are three excellent examples, and one poor one.
Size?
Is Size an Ecommerce giant? Their SMS is a very important part of their business and they clearly value it.
First, their name is prominently displayed to make it easy for people to recognize. To entice users, they have included key brands. You could also use your CRM system for personalisation based on user.
It is also important to note that you have an easy option to opt out or OPT OUT. It makes it easily visible to customers and shows Size? They care about the preferences of their customers.
Hello Fresh
You don’t have to use all of your text messaging to promote a sale. Hellofresh does a fantastic job of notifying the recipient of an item and almost promoting their prize drawing.
Hello Fresh benefits from customer reviews and customers feel they are being rewarded.
Muscle Food
Marketers will always be aware of the competition. It’s a good idea to mention them occasionally.
This is not a positive example, but it’s more like what Muscle Food has done below. What makes you different from your competitors? Are you cheaper? Do you offer a quicker delivery? Are you able to offer returns for no cost? Include your unique selling point in the SMS.
Muscle Food also used a shorter URL, which is different from the other options. This helps increase CTR because it’s branded. It also reduces the SMS character count.
Papa Johns was a bad example that I felt it would be worth pointing out. They sent me this text despite the fact that I never bought more than one pizza. Someone who lives alone would not be interested in a family deal, which made me a little annoyed. It’s crucial to use your CRM well and ensure that your customer demographics are current.
Combining SMS and Email Marketing
It’s easier to get someone’s email address than their mobile number, as I said earlier. You can also use email marketing to get customers’ mobile numbers.
Here’s another example from MyProtein, where you can sign up for SMS when they send out product reviews. It is important that the landing page directs the user to their account. There’s also an easy way to opt in to SMS.
Conclusion
It doesn’t matter if you use SMS marketing or email marketing for your marketing efforts.
Each strategy can be used to help your company, and each has its own advantages and disadvantages. CTR is the only thing that can be compared between them.
Email marketing is more cost-effective and customizable than SMS, while SMS has better open rates and better deliverability.
Do you plan to use one or both of these communication channels in your marketing? Let us know what you think by leaving comments below.
