There are many different options for small businesses in Collinsville, IL to connect to their customers. Two notable options are SMS text marketing and email marketing. Both methods of marketing have similar and unique ways of bringing information to your customers. As a business owner, you may be torn between the two and be unsure which type of marketing is more beneficial for your business. In this blog post, we would like to discuss the benefits of both marketing methods, and which is better.
SMS Text Marketing
One of the most popular methods for businesses looking to reach out to their customers is through SMS text marketing. With how many people in the world who own a cell phone now, you can count on your customers seeing a text message for your business. They can easily check their messages throughout the day. Text marketing allows for the sending of time sensitive information on customer appointments and emergency updates. While text marketing allows your customers to get information quickly and easily, you are only limited to 160 characters per text. This limit restricts the ability to give out more detailed information. Depending on how many texts are going out and how often, the cost to run text marketing may be a deterrent for people looking into starting a campaign. There are also special regulations set in place that businesses must comply with. Most notably, a customer must give explicit consent before you are allowed to send them text marketing messages.
Email Marketing
Another notable method for getting information to your customers is email marketing. Email marketing serves as an easy and cost-effective method to give detailed information to your customers. Small businesses in Collinsville, IL can use this method to include not only include larger amounts of text, but more helpful links, images, and attachments. The free range you have with emails also means you can make them more personalized to the customer. Email marketing, however, suffers from not being as frequently checked as text messages. You may still be able to get a large amount of people opening the emails your business sends them thanks to emails being accessible on most cell phones. One large issue you may run into is your marketing emails being sent to customer’s spam folders. If your emails are being treated as spam, your customer is likely never going to read them. Due to the large influx of emails being sent to your customers every day not only by you, but by other companies also hurts your chances of having your email be seen.
Which Method Should You Use
Despite both of their shortcomings, we could recommend either method. If your business can afford both, we would highly recommend utilizing both, otherwise, stick with the one that would be most beneficial for your type of business. If you need to send out time sensitive information, then use SMS text marketing. You can use this kind of marketing for ongoing or upcoming sales or to keep your customers updated on their appointments. Thanks to how quickly it can take for a sent text to be received and read, it makes it the superior choice for businesses looking to give out information quickly. It is the more expensive method of the two. If the information you are giving is not urgent, then we recommend using email marketing. You can use this method to send out newsletters to your customers. You can also use it as part of a loyalty program, send out welcome emails, invitations to events, upcoming promotional offers, reminders, feedback requests, and more. Of the two, this is the most cost-efficient. Evaluate the way either of these kinds of campaigns would benefit your business to find the right marketing method.
If you own a small business around the Collinsville, IL area and are looking for a company who can run your SMS text marketing or email marketing campaign, call Hometown Marketing Group. Our team works with our customers to build their ideal marketing campaigns to help them effectively get information to their customers. Learn how we can help get the word out about your business today.
