With the immediacy, convenience, and brevity of SMS messages as compared to email marketing, it’s no wonder why consumers and businesses increasingly prefer texting as a communication channel. In fact, the average person now sends 25% more texts than emails on a daily basis. The open and response rates are also pretty impressive, with 74% of consumers reporting to have zero unread texts at any given time compared to only 17% for email.

The trend towards texting as a communication channel has many businesses jumping on board and adopting business text messaging software. You may be wondering, well, what about email? A big factor to take into consideration when launching your text messaging marketing programs is how you will best incorporate your message marketing into your existing email marketing.

Blending text messaging with your email marketing is a great way to maximize your reach and engagement with your audience. Start with the basics to create a solid foundation on which you can expand later.

Get started by learning a few basic first steps:

• How to opt your email marketing audience into receiving text messages while staying compliant
• How to use text messaging for nurture or drip programs
• How to determine which channel is most appropriate for the different types of content you send

Opt your email marketing audience into SMS messages

It’s important that you have permission to text your audience, even if they’ve already opted-in to email. Here are a few ways to get the permission you need to start sending texts:

• Add an opt-in check-box to your forms. Make sure to offer text-messaging as an option to receive company updates, promotions, and information on your website forms. This way if they don’t want to receive emails and instead prefer texts, you can reach out to them on the channel they prefer.
• Incorporate a keyword opt-in into your email content. Remind your audience that you also provide text messaging as a communication channel, and that they can opt-in at any time. For example, you can include a simple “Text INFO to 12345 for to learn more” and they will always have that option to opt-in. You can also use offers to compel your audience to opt-in to text messaging.  For example, a discount coupon, free demo or trial, a conversation with a key professor, special priority for new jobs or a free mortgage evaluation.
• Include text messaging as an option in your preference center. If you have an email preference center, add a check-box for your audience to opt-in to different types of text messages that offer relevant content.
• When you send the first text, make sure to confirm the opt-in. This is called a double opt-in, and it’s a great way to make sure your audience wants to receive texts from you while still giving them the option to unsubscribe at any time. You can send a message that says something like “You have subscribed to receive company updates, respond Y to confirm. To unsubscribe at any time, reply STOP”. This extra step is not required for text opt-ins, so you decide whether you want the extra step or not.

Start to build your text message-based nurture or multi-touch programs

You can easily start profiling your audience for message marketing campaigns by sending your opt-in list quick questions with keywords to determine what type of content they would find most valuable.

For example, you can ask them to respond with keywords that relate to the type of product they are interested in, and then only send relevant content based on their response. You can also give your audience the option to opt-in to certain types of texts, such as new product release announcements, tips and tricks, or sales and specials.

Determine whether to use email or SMS messages for the different types of content you send

To get the most out of SMS messages and email marketing, it’s important to make sure you’re using the channel that’s most appropriate for the type of content you are sending. Brief messages that don’t require heavy amounts of content are great for text messages. Some examples include announcements for events or promotions, scheduling confirmations and reminders, links to short-form content such as blog posts or quick videos and help with information about products or services. Email is a great way to deliver long-form content, such as educational documents like white papers or case studies, or other documents that are best viewed on a desktop screen.

Once you get an opt-in list to send texts to and an idea of what kind of content you should send to your audience, you’ve got a great start to incorporating your texting with your email programs. Take time to determine how to use text messaging in addition to email to deliver relevant, personal, and valuable content to your audience.

If you haven’t yet adopted business text messaging software, and are interested in learning more about what you can do with SMS, feel free to schedule a demo and we’d be happy to share our expertise with you, answer questions and show you what text messaging can do for your marketing results.