The boom of social media has made marketing channels like email and SMS underestimated. However, if we look at Shopify’s best marketing tools for the eCommerce list, we’ll find that email marketing is at the top of the list and SMS marketing is in the top 15. Now, if we think about it, there are more than 4.1 billion active email users and 83.72% of the world’s population owns a smartphone (6.648 billion). Not for anything, there are plenty of eCommerce email marketing agencies and SMS marketing agencies. So, we can safely say that overlooking these marketing channels is a mistake. However, here are 5 more reasons why email and SMS should be an essential part of your marketing strategy.
1. Flows and automations (work smarter, not harder)
Take the hand of your leads and your customers in their journey with automatically triggered flows. Effective email flows can help you convert missed opportunities into increased conversions and stronger customer relations. The best thing is, that you can create both email and SMS flows and integrate them for a stronger and more enjoyable customer journey.
- Let your leads know why your brand is awesome and why they will love your products with a Welcome Flow (you can also give out an incentive to boost sales).
- Reassure your potential buyers that your products are worth purchasing by answering their pain points with your unique selling points in Browse Abandonment and Cart Abandonment flows.
- Avoid buyers remorse and strengthen your relationship with your customers with a nurturing Post-Purchase flow.
2. Personalization and targeted messaging
Yes, social media is great. But only email and SMS marketing allow you to send super personalized and targeted messages based on your customer’s interests, characteristics, and behaviors.
You can do this by creating segments based on properties or actions taken by them. For example, if you’re launching a new shampoo for your “curly hair collection” then you definitely want to send out an email and a text message to people that have bought from that collection in the past or that have been browsing products from that collection several times.
3. Nurture your leads and customers on a budget
Sometimes businesses invest a lot of marketing efforts in gaining new customers. This is obviously important, however, we need to keep in mind that returning customers are our biggest source of revenue. Did you know that it is five times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to retain existing customers and encourage repeat orders?
Therefore, investing in channels like email and SMS marketing that will allow you to nurture those existing customers regularly and on a budget, is essential. You won’t only increase repeat purchases but also you can nurture them into becoming brand ambassadors.
This is because emails and texts allow you to reach your customers and leads directly at a time that is convenient for them. Take SMS as an example, customers engaged with texts faster than with any other marketing channel. It takes approximately 90 seconds for someone to answer a text message.
Integrate email and SMS to enhance and support each other in the creation of a great customer experience.
4. Easy to measure
Want to know if your marketing efforts are actually having an impact in terms of website traffic, conversions and revenue? Want to accurately calculate the return on investment? Email and SMS allow you to do this.
With email, you can track so many metrics, for example:
- Deliverability rates
- Open rates
- Click rates
- Placed order rates
- Revenue
- Spam rates
- Unsubscribe rates
- Bounce rates
Keep an eye out for them, since all of them tell you something important about your email marketing strategy and how to improve it.
For SMS, the metrics are a little different but equally important:
- The number of SMS/MMS sends.
- Costs
- Return of investment
- Click rates
- Placed order rates
- Revenue
- Unsubscribe rates
Frequently analyzing these will allow you to see the bigger picture of your marketing strategy. Just check this incredible case study this SMS marketing agency created (the numbers are incredible).
5. Learn more about your customers
Email and SMS will allow you to get to know your customer deeply and in a direct way. With A/B tests, surveys, and behavior tracking, these marketing channels will give you all the info you need to improve your database and marketing strategy.
According to some studies, 31% of consumers will respond to a SMS survey in over 5 minutes. Meaning you can get great results in a short period of time. You can also send short and fun surveys at the end of your email campaign and use the responses to create new and useful segments for your campaign segmentation strategy.
As you can see, email and SMS should be an essential part of your email marketing strategy. Don’t believe us yet? Check the numbers of this eCommerce email marketing and SMS marketing agency and see for yourself.
