Background
Email and SMS Marketing are both strong channels that drive revenue are best used together. From awareness to acquisition and retention, email and SMS together drive customer experience.
Despite the fact that email and sms marketing have been around for 25+ years, email marketing is still powerful. With close to 4 billion active email users worldwide by the end of 2020 there isn’t a doubt that it still is one of the top revenue drivers. On the other hand, SMS messages have an open rate of 98% and 60% of people read texts within five minutes of receiving them. Nearly 80% of customers want to receive offers via SMS.
In 2022, nearly 5 billion people – 65% of the world’s population will send and receive text messages.
So why does SMS marketing have both a high open rate and engagement? This is primarily because SMS messages receive more attention than almost every other type of marketing.
And when DTC Marketers combine SMS with email marketing, you have access to two of the primary inboxes that every individual holds dear. This clearly helps DTC marketers stand out from the crowd, cut through the noise and grab people’s attention across touchpoints.
How Email and SMS Marketing are Complementary
To set the basics right, both email and SMS marketing will work and complement each other only when the DTC brand has the right product-market fit. If the product isn’t sound it will be very difficult to grow and scale the brand.
To start off it is important to align automation flows of both email and SMS marketing communications and map them through the customer journey. Evaluate core flows and timing to think about where SMS marketing could strategically fit in.
Email Marketing – A Storytelling Platform
Though there is increasing clutter in the email box and increased competition to grab the customers attention, email marketing still works!
In the case of email, your communication strategy should fundamentally be about storytelling. The email format is well suited to constructing long-form narratives and editorial content that offers real value to your customers. One can also segment audiences and personalize communication depending on the preferences of the recipient and track the success of your marketing through analytics tools.
Email Marketing remains the best medium to connect with audiences via long form brand storytelling content. Email Marketing is a fantastic community builder that can help establish a deep connect with various customer personae and enhance their customer experience across their buyer journey.
SMS Marketing – Instant Deep Engagement Real Time
While email marketing is suited to longer pieces of text – for SMS marketing to be effective clear, concise, and packed with value for the customer. Also, responses to your audience need to be prompt and reflective of your brands personality. In order to be effective one-to-one conversational messaging is critical and a designated person needs to be available at all times.
Hence both email and SMS marketing serve as complementary mediums to each other. Long format storytelling content via email and the opportunity to for instant conversations between the brand and the customer via SMS is an ideal mix.
5 Simple Ways to Leverage Email and SMS Marketing effectively
1. Identifying and Setting Channel Specific Goals
Before launching an email or SMS program or both programs it is important for brands to decide what goals they might want to achieve. This would mean identifying the right KPIs depending upon the brands objectives as well as aligning on growth and revenue expectations.
Email Marketing KPIs: Open rates, Click-through rates (CTRs), Conversion Rates (CVRs), Revenue Generated (per subscriber, per send), Number of new subscribers
SMS Marketing KPIs: CTRs/CVRs, Revenue Generated (per subscriber, per send) and number of new subscribers
The metrics you use to determine performance would depend on the brands objectives and the campaign specific objectives on hand.
For example, if the brand is running a sale or a promo offer then the likely KPIs your brand would leverage would be revenue and conversion rate. On the other hand, if the brand runs an in-store event to promote a store launch or invite subscribers to a special event led engagement campaign you might want to measure performance based on CTRs or the number of registrations to the event.
Revenue expectations too need to be aligned depending upon the channel objectives. If a DTC store introduces SMS marketing as a new channel it is likely that your consumers might communicate via both text or email. This could also mean email customers might begin to prefer shopping via mobile devices when prompted by SMS. The result of which could mean a gradual shift of revenue from email to SMS. This isn’t a negative shift, however. As a brand allowing customers to interact with your brand via a channel of their choice helps establish a better customer experience. Launching a new SMS channel with these customer behaviors in context will help set expectations for the impact of introducing a new channel.
2. Focus on Acquiring Audiences By List Building
Tactics for audience acquisition most often vary by channel.
Email Marketing Sign-Up Strategies
a. Sign-Up Overlays
An on-site pop-up is a proven method for acquiring new email subscribers. Include an incentive for site visitors to sign up for your email. If your brand can’t offer discounts, you can entice shoppers with free shipping, or through the lure of exclusivity, promising subscribers will “be the first to know” about product launches or other brand updates.
b. Checkout Flows
Adding a checkbox in the checkout flow for email sign-up is a great way to capture a new subscriber at a “high intent” moment. It is far less expensive to retain an existing user leveraging alternative channels than acquiring a new customer as we know.
c. Embed Sign-Up Forms Across the Website
Add a persistent email capture form to your site header or footer to capture high-intent subscribers. If a visitor is seeking out a sign-up opportunity they’re likely to be a more loyal customer and a good source of future revenue.
d. Leverage Social Media to Drive Acquisition
Utilize Facebook lead Ads to secure email addresses from prospects from social media without requiring them to visit your site. One can also trigger an immediate welcome message to drive traffic and get those new subscribers shopping.
e. Use Gated Content as an Incentive
If your brand has something valuable to share such as skin tips to prevent ageing, how to manage small spaces or how to check for the right trouser fit people are more likely to subscribe and share their email addresses.
SMS Marketing Sign-Up Strategies:
a. Include On-Site Form
Prompt website visitors – on desktop, mobile, or both – to sign up for your text messaging program. Include both SMS and email sign up options on a single pop-up.
b. Encourage “Text-To-Join” Opt-Ins
Scale your text messaging by reaching high value shoppers with offline promotions. Use a memorable keyword or short-code that potential subscribers can text to drive opt-ins
c. Create a VIP Program
Offer subscriber only promotions to your most loyal customers in return for signing up to your brands messages. Use VIP messaging to communicate and encourage them to sign up.
3. Integrating Email and SMS Marketing in the Customer Journey
Email and SMS marketing should be approached as interconnected and complementary. By facilitating communication across multiple channels, DTC brands enable the customer to be in the driver’s seat.
As consumers switch seamlessly across devices and platforms, each channel presents its own unique advantages for engaging audiences across the customer journey.
Triggered Messaging or Automated Messaging:
Triggered or automated messages are sent to subscribers based on a certain action a user has taken (browsing the site, abandoning a cart, etc.) or sometimes an action they’ve not yet taken (buying from a particular category, repurchasing within a specific timeframe, etc.). These highly personalized messages encourage engagement and conversions with timely and relevant content unique to the individual subscriber
Read more about 6 Incredible SMS automations to scale DTC Growth here !
Email Marketing:
One can start with core email flows and consider creating the following:
a. Welcome email for when someone opts into your email list
b. Abandoned cart email nudging the customer to finish the transaction
c. Browse abandonment email encouraging the customer to complete purchase
d. Post purchase email thanking, educating the customer or even cross-selling
e. Informational emails that focus on driving awareness about your products, offers or founder stories
As your DTC store grows in revenue size, one can begin looking at adding more email flows and campaigns to scale revenue but this is a good start.
SMS Marketing:
There are two types of SMS campaigns transactional and promotional. Transactional SMS can be sent to any customer at any time of the day but promotional SMS messages must be sent during waking hours i.e., 800 AM – 1100 PM EST for campaigns and 1100 AM – 900 PM EST for automations.
SMS Core Flows:
a. Welcome Series
When a subscriber joins an SMS list its common practice to welcome them with a special message. The key focus areas that the welcome messages could focus on are product education, demos, founder stories or even a promotional offer. This is a perfect example of where SMS can complement email.
b. Cart Abandonment Series
This is particularly useful when customers abandon the cart and give consent for SMS communications. DTC brands can then send you a text message and incentivize you with a CTA to complete your order. These work well for customers with high purchase intent. Consumers open text messages more frequently than personal emails, hence this is no surprise why cart abandonment rates reduce when these texts complement email.
Ensure the abandoned cart email and SMS messages mirror each other in terms of content and timing.
c. Post-Purchase Series
SMS plays a key role in post-purchase communications that aim to focus on shipping updates, cross-sell and upsell, provide delivery notifications, order confirmation updates, promotional messaging or invite high value users to subscription offers.
SMS Subscription Flows
a. Reply-To-Buy
Reply to Buy is a super easy way for customers to make a purchase while on the go. It not only enhances customer experience for on-the-go shoppers it also helps brands reduce churn and increase cash flow. This particularly well when we invite customers into a one time or an ongoing subscription offer. This automation helps improve brand engagement and lifetime value.
b. Skip An Order
This text message allows the customer enrolled in a subscription offer to skip an order. Customers might choose to skip an order if they no longer need the product, find a better product, are well stocked already, or have a life changing situation that does not require them to purchase the order again. This helps in reducing subscriber churn considerably.
SMS Transactional Flows:
Instead of selling specific products or services to customers transactional SMS messages focus on providing vital information to consumers.
a. Order Confirmation
Focuses on informing customers that their orders were placed. A confirmation with order details, price and day is usually communicated.
b. Shipment Notifications
help customers track where their shipment has reached
c. Delivery Notifications
Postal carriers, DTC stores or Amazon usually provide delivery SMS updates
SMS Monthly Campaigns:
a. Cross-Sell and Up-Sell Campaigns
These are great SMS campaigns to introduce other SKUs in your product portfolio or introduce something new. This not only enhances CX for customers, but also helps increase AOV and are a great complement to email marketing communications. Brands should look at what days of the month they are sending promotional or educational emails to various segments and should try to incorporate SMS sends on those same days to similar customer segments.
b. Promotional Campaigns
These campaigns are great revenue boosters, be it special holidays, a flash sale or bundled offer led promotions, text messages help drive conversions and a sense of urgency to make a purchase within a limited time period.
4. Testing and Optimization
Testing your emails and text messages allows you to gain insights into content, creative and offers that resonate best with your audience. It’s important to test just one element at a time so you can identify the causal factors of the variations driving a lift in engagement or conversions. AB 50/50 split testing is what is recommended.
a. Segmentation
Segmentation allows marketers to group subscribers together based on common attributes – such as age, gender, geographic location, past purchases, or recent browse history. Segmentation is a critical first step to enable DTC stores to send more relevant and personalized messages. The attributes DTC stores collect from subscribers influence how you would segment.
Learn how to kickstart email marketing with a powerful segmentation strategy here.
b. Cadence and Timing
Determining the correct timing and frequency for your email and text messages is key to driving engagement. Cadence and timing would vary between email and text marketing so therefore it is important to test both these channels separately.
c. Message Creative and Copy
Email and text message marketing have similar messaging best practices. While these best practices are an ideal starting point, both channels can be optimized by testing creative and content to determine what resonates with your specific audience.
When your test comes to a close, you may find the results weren’t what you expected or that it doesn’t follow best practices. We recommend running a test that reaches statistical significance at least three times, with the same results, before implementing an optimization across your entire program. Share summaries of your testing with your team so it’s clear why you’re pivoting in a new direction. Testing can be fun, so don’t forget to experiment and get creative!
5. Cross-Channel Acquisition Tactics:
Cross-Channel Sign-Up Strategies
Consumers don’t consume content only on one device. They seamlessly move from one device to another depending on their consumption convenience and preferences.
a. Infer Channel Preferences
Infer channel preferences: Optimize your sign-up flow by inferring shoppers’ preferred channel based on the devices they use most frequently to browse your site. If a customer is shopping on desktop, prompt them to sign up to receive your brand’s emails. And if they’re browsing on mobile, encourage them to sign up for texts. Communicating with shoppers where and how they prefer means that they’ll be more receptive to your brand’s messaging and more likely to sign up to stay engaged
b. Target Returning Visitors for Cross-Channel Sign-Up
For customers who sign up for text messaging, show an email capture pop-up when they next return to the site, regardless of device type. On the other hand, for email subscribers, use the welcome series or other email messages to acquire mobile number. Being able to reach customers across devices will allow for more sophisticated campaign targeting based on the best channel for the message.
c. Encourage multiple channel subscriptions
Attentive offers an “Email First” sign-up option to help marketers capture both email and phone numbers. After a shopper enters their email address on your mobile site, they are prompted to complete their sign-up by opting in for text messages. Using Attentive’ s patent-pending “two-tap” sign-up, the subscriber taps the sign-up button to load a pre-populated text message.
Then simply tap “Send” on the text to opt-in and begin receiving messages. This creates an easy, seamless sign-up process for the shopper while allowing you to simultaneously grow your lists of email subscribers and text messaging contacts.
Concluding Thoughts
Using email and text messaging as complementary channels offer a huge opportunity for brands to engage with subscribers across devices at every step of the customer lifecycle. When done well, both email and SMS work together to maximize returns for your store.
