How to run a successful SMS and Email marketing campaign

Personalized. Relevant. Seamless. That’s what customers expect of your marketing messages targeted at them. The best way to give this to them is through an omnichannel marketing strategy.  

Omnichannel campaigns can make a big impact on engagement, ROI, and Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) if done right. Many brands want to offer a true omnichannel experience and starting with two familiar and reliable channels like SMS and Email is a great place to start.  

There are some common challenges brands face when it comes to marketing that omnichannel interactions can help solve: 

• Integrated marketing: Ensuring consistent messaging across various platforms and tracking performance 
• Campaign strategy: Segmenting audiences, determining messaging frequency, and keeping messages compliant 
• Customer engagement: Fragmented customer data that make it hard to personalize messages across channels 
• Sales enablement: Weak follow-up strategy with low engagement that makes it difficult to move customers through the journey 
• Analytics: Unorganized data, lack of real-time analytics, and trouble tracking SMS and Email performance metrics 

If these sound like familiar challenges, we’ll show you tricks, strategies, and tips on how to combine SMS and Email for marketing to do the trick. Deep dive into everything you need to know about how to create a solid omnichannel campaign using SMS and Email.

Why should you combine SMS and Email for marketing campaigns? 

SMS and Email on their own offer brands tangible benefits for campaigns, but together they create a powerful omnichannel strategy that enhances customer engagement, improves conversion rates, and maximizes reach.

Richer data and better targeting 

Using both channels for marketing means brands have richer insight into their customer preferences and can tweak marketing strategies. You can collect rich insights from one channel to influence the messaging on another. For example, a customer engaged with an email newsletter about new sci-fi book releases. You can use that data to target them with a special offer on SMS for sci-fi books and encourage a purchase. 

Combining the two channels in a marketing strategy allows for a lot of flexibility with A/B testing campaigns to see which types of messages resonate on which channels. Collecting and analyzing data from Email and SMS campaigns can help improve future performance and optimize your marketing strategy. 

Higher engagement and open rates 

Since customers interact with SMS and Email in drastically different ways, the combination of the two offers brands an opportunity to customize marketing flows so that each message makes the biggest impact. SMS has an open rate of 98% which means your customers are highly likely to see time sensitive or urgent messages, while Email offers opportunities for rich and engaging content to pull your customers in. Together, they offer higher engagement and more effective targeting per message. 

Wider reach and accessibility 

Email and SMS are widely used across different audiences. Every mobile phone can accept SMS messages, and you’d be hard pressed to find a customer that doesn’t have an email. So, as you scale your marketing campaigns, you can continue to use both channels to reach the right people on the channel they prefer to use.  

Smoother customer experiences 

The perk of the omnichannel combo of Email and SMS is that based on the intent and goal of each message, you can leverage each channel for their strengths. That means within one marketing flow, you can interchange between SMS and Email.  

For example, you might send a customer an engaging email about an upcoming flash sale that will take place on the weekend, encouraging them to browse your inventory and planting the seed early for something that they would be interested in. Then the day of the sale you send and SMS for the best visibility and encourage them to access your web shop to take advantage of the limited time deals.  

If a brand had relied on SMS only, the first message wouldn’t have the same engaging impact, and if a brand used only Email, the second message might not have been open on time. Using both channels helps reduce missed opportunities and boosts conversions. 

SMS and Email go way back: A brief history of two classic channels 

In fact, today, majority of brands still place focus on their email and SMS messaging: 

Source: Conversational CX Maturity report 

So, customers are accustomed to using Email and SMS in their day-to-day. Both channels have their strengths and weaknesses but combining them together make for a bulletproof marketing team that can help push conversions.  

A quick comparison of SMS vs. Email: Open rates, message length, and similarities

SMS and Email are channels with very different features, which is part of the reason why they work so well in unison for marketing campaigns. Let’s compare the two to better understand when to use which.  

When to use SMS vs. Email for marketing messages 

SMS messages are ideal for the points in the marketing journey that need urgent attention, fast action, and high visibility. With only 160 characters, brands need to make their point short and sweet. This makes SMS perfect for transactional messages, notifications, alerts, and promotions. 

Send an SMS to alert customers about sales, promotions and discounts.

Email on the other hand works best when you want to engage customers, spark interest, and catch their attention with rich features like images, detailed promotions, or nurture flows. The use of images and custom design allows brands to show off their brand identity, put more detail into their communication, and create a more engaging message to nurture customer relationships.

Follow up with an engaging email to grab attention and give more detailed information.

The user experience with SMS and Email

If you’re wondering how exactly the user journey will look like for your customers, let’s follow a gardening business as it nurtures its customer, Jodi, from the awareness stage to re-engagement.  

Awareness: Welcoming new customers 

Jodi is a first-time gardener and has come across the garden center “The Green Thumb”. She signs up for their monthly newsletter and opts into receiving SMS messages:

Consideration stage: Educating customers

Since we know Jodi is new to gardening, The Green Thumb can target her with a “first timers’ campaign” to help encourage her to start her garden: 

Purchase stage: Keep customers updated 

Jodi has decided to make a purchase during the special discount weekend on the web shop. After the purchase she will receive updates on her order to continue to nurture the relationship: 

Post purchase stage: Encourage loyalty

Even though Jodi has completed a purchase, her journey isn’t done. The Green Thumb wants to encourage her to join their loyalty program to keep their brand top of mind for any of her future gardening needs.

Re-engagement stage: A check in  

It’s been a few weeks since Jodi’s purchase of garden herbs. At this point they should be sprouting, and she has yet to make another purchase – time for re-engagement! 

Why does this channel combo work so well?

• SMS for urgency (instant engagement, reminders, updates) 
• Email for depth (rich content, storytelling, detailed offers) 
• Omnichannel strategy ensures customers receive messages on the best channel 

Strategies for integrating SMS and Email for marketing campaigns  

A combined SMS and Email marketing strategy enhances customer engagement, drives conversions, and maximizes customer lifetime value (CLV). By leveraging both channels strategically, brands can guide customers through the sales funnel effectively. 

Here are a few strategies that can help SMS and Email make the biggest impact on your marketing campaigns:  

Segmentation for better personalization 

Before you start coordinating emails and SMS messages for marketing, it’s important to understand who you are talking to, what they would find valuable, and what channel will give you the greatest impact.  

The emails are meant to grab attention ahead of the sale, offer more details and information to spark interest, while the SMS messages spark more urgent action and are sent at the start or during the sale. 

Automation and behavior triggers 

Your marketing messages should be smooth and easy to manage. That’s why automation and behavioral triggers are so important to improving your marketing strategy. Identify which behaviors warrant an SMS nudge or a detailed email for more information. Automation can help speed up and improve marketing processes that lead to greater conversions.

Using analytics and metrics  

Brands should strategically track metrics to better understand how well their marketing messages are performing on Email and SMS, so that they can make improvements and tweak their marketing strategies in the future.

How to keep your SMS and Email marketing messages compliant 

Your messages must be compliant with local regulations and laws. Make sure your SMS and emails closely follow these rules to avoid being blocked from sending customers messages. Each region and country will have their own compliancy measures, but here are some tips on how to avoid any issues with regulations:

• SMS and Email opt ins: You must collect explicit opt-in consent from customers to be able to send them promotional SMS messages and emails.
• SMS and Email opt outs: Both SMS and Email require brands to have clear opt-out options. Customers need to be able to easily ask to stop receiving messages 

• Watch message frequency: Be clear about how often customers can expect to get messages from you, and don’t overdo it. It will greatly affect the reputation of your brand if your customers think you are spammy, and you might be going against local compliance requirements 
• Comply with time restrictions: If you are sending SMS messages, ensure you follow your local time restrictions. This usually includes rules like no promotional messages in the middle of the night.  
• Store customer data securely: Follow data security laws like GDPR that are put in place to protect user data.  

Get more information on SMS and Email compliance with detailed checklists:

Marketing automation and integrations that make SMS and Email easy 

First brands need to strategically decide which platform(s) they will use for their marketing messages. You want to use a platform that allows for:

• Scalability 
• Omnichannel capabilities 
• Automation 
• Personalization 
• Analytics 

Infobip’s Moments as got you covered. Moments is a one-stop-shop for creating marketing messaging flows and automating campaigns. Let’s run through a quick comparison of Moments with a basic marketing tool to show how it can elevate your campaigns over SMS and Email:  

Quick summary: Why Infobip Moments is the better choice

• True omnichannel engagement beyond SMS and email 
• AI-driven automation & behavioral targeting for smarter marketing
• Templatized use case library
• Fast to deploy 
• Stronger compliance & security with direct carrier connections 
• Higher deliverability & conversion rates thanks to intelligent workflows 
• Seamless CRM and other integrations for a unified customer view 

Launch omnichannel experiences in just a few days with templatized read-to-use use cases on Moments.

Top integrations for SMS and Email marketing via Infobip:  

Infobip offers an entire ecosystem of platform integrations that make it easy to continue using your favorite tools but still get the most out of SMS and Email for marketing. Some popular integrations include:

• Braze 
• Shopify 
• Adobe 
• Salesforce 
• Oracle Responsys 
• Microsoft 
• Hubspot 

For a full comprehensive list of integrations check out our partner hub.

Discover brands that use SMS and Email for omnichannel interactions

SMS and Email marketing: FAQs