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How Email and SMS Work Together to Strengthen Brand Marketing
Discover how combining email and text message marketing creates a powerful multichannel strategy that builds stronger customer relationships.
Table of Contents
When used together strategically, email and text message marketing create multiple touchpoints that guide your audience through their journey and respect their communication preferences. This integrated approach helps small businesses build stronger brand recognition, improve customer retention and drive more conversions.
This article is sponsored by Intuit.
While email marketing excels at delivering detailed content and rich visuals, SMS marketing cuts through the noise with high-impact messages that demand immediate attention. The power lies not in choosing one over the other, but in understanding how these channels complement each other — and taking advantage of tools that help you get the most out of both.
Understanding email and SMS marketing
Before we dive into integration strategies, it’s essential to understand what makes each channel unique. Email and SMS marketing serve different purposes in your communication strategy, and recognizing these differences helps you leverage each channel’s strengths effectively.
Email marketing: Your content powerhouse
Email remains the workhorse of digital marketing, with nearly 4.5 billion users worldwide as of 2024. The channel is known for its versatility, which allows for rich storytelling, detailed product showcases and comprehensive educational content. Businesses can include multiple images, videos, links and calls-to-action (CTAs) in a single message, making it ideal for newsletters, promotional campaigns and relationship-building content.
Email also provides robust analytics and segmentation capabilities. You can track open rates, click-through rates, conversion metrics and user behavior patterns to continuously refine your strategy. The relatively low cost per message makes email particularly attractive for small businesses looking to maximize their marketing budget.
SMS marketing: Your urgency driver
Text message marketing operates in a completely different sphere. SMS is useful for capturing your audience’s attention immediately, averaging 98% open rates. Most text messages are read within three minutes of receipt, making SMS the go-to channel for time-sensitive communications.
The concise nature of text messages – limited to 160 characters for standard messages – forces businesses to craft clear, actionable messages. This format is ideal for communicating urgent updates, flash sales, appointment reminders or order confirmations. The personal nature of text messaging also creates a sense of direct connection with your brand.
Creating synergy between email and SMS campaigns
The real magic happens when brands strategically combine email and SMS marketing to create cohesive customer experiences. This integrated approach ensures your message reaches customers through their preferred channels while reinforcing your brand story across multiple touchpoints.
Sequential messaging strategies
One effective approach involves using SMS to amplify email campaigns. For example, you might send a detailed promotional email about an upcoming sale, then follow up with a text message reminder on the day the sale begins. This sequential strategy acknowledges that not everyone opens every email, while the SMS serves as a timely nudge for those who might have missed or forgotten about your offer.
We recommend mapping out your customer journey to identify natural opportunities for channel integration. Consider these proven sequential patterns:
- An email announcement followed by a text message reminder 24 hours before the event deadline.
- A text message alert about limited inventory followed by an email with product details.
- An email receipt followed by SMS delivery notification.
- A text message welcome followed by a comprehensive email onboarding series.
Complementary content distribution
Rather than duplicating messages across channels, use each platform for what it does best. Email can deliver your monthly newsletter with industry insights, customer stories and detailed product updates. Meanwhile, text messages can alert subscribers to breaking news, flash sales or urgent updates that require immediate action.
This complementary approach respects the inherent differences in how people engage with each channel. Your customers expect different types of content from emails versus text messages, and meeting these expectations strengthens their connection to your brand.
Practical integration example: A seasonal campaign
Let’s walk through how a hypothetical small business – a local boutique clothing store called “Threads & Things” – might integrate email and SMS marketing for their spring collection launch. This example demonstrates how platforms like Mailchimp enable seamless multichannel coordination.
“Threads & Things” campaign timeline and execution
Timing | Marketing Activity |
|---|---|
Two Weeks Before Launch | Threads & Things sends an email newsletter featuring a lookbook of their spring collection. The email includes beautiful product photography, styling tips and an invitation to join their SMS list for exclusive early access. Using Mailchimp’s integrated platform, they can track which email subscribers also opt into SMS, creating a highly engaged segment. |
One Week Before Launch | The store sends a follow-up email to all subscribers with more details about the collection, including fabric stories and designer inspiration. They also segment their audience to send a special text to their VIP customers (those who’ve purchased three or more times), offering them a 24-hour early shopping window. |
Launch Day Morning | A text message goes out at 9 a.m. to all text subscribers: “Spring has arrived at Threads & Things! Shop our new collection in-store or online. First 50 customers get 20% off. Reply STOP to opt out.” This creates urgency and drives immediate action. |
Launch Day Afternoon | A comprehensive email showcases the full collection with direct links to product pages, size guides and styling videos. The email also includes user-generated content from customers who shopped early. |
Three Days Post-Launch | The store sends a targeted email to customers who clicked links but didn’t purchase, featuring the specific items they viewed. They follow up with a text message to high-intent browsers: “Still thinking about that spring dress? It’s selling fast – only 3 left in your size!” |
Setting up your multichannel workflow
Creating an effective multichannel strategy requires the right tools and processes.Using an all-in-one platform (rather than integrating separate email and SMS platforms) simplifies campaign management while ensuring consistent branding across channels.
Technical setup and integration
Start by establishing a unified customer database that tracks preferences across both channels. When customers provide their email address, include an opt-in checkbox for SMS communications. Similarly, when collecting phone numbers, ask if they’d also like to receive emails. This dual opt-in approach builds a more complete picture of customer preferences while ensuring compliance with privacy regulations.
Modern marketing platforms allow you to create automated workflows that trigger based on customer behavior across channels. For instance, if a customer clicks a link in your email but doesn’t complete a purchase, you can automatically trigger an SMS reminder after a set period. These intelligent workflows ensure timely, relevant communication without manual intervention.
Segmentation and personalization strategies
Effective multichannel marketing requires sophisticated segmentation. We recommend creating segments based on:
- Channel preference (email-only, SMS-only, or both)
- Purchase history and frequency
- Geographic location and time zone
- Engagement levels with previous campaigns
- Product interests and browsing behavior
These segments allow you to tailor not just your message content but also your channel selection. High-value customers might receive exclusive SMS alerts about VIP sales, while blog subscribers might prefer email digests of your latest content.
Getting started with your multichannel strategy
Launching an integrated email and SMS marketing strategy doesn’t require a complete overhaul of your current approach.
- Choose a platform that simplifies multichannel management. All-in-one solutions like Mailchimp eliminate the complexity of managing separate systems while providing unified customer data and reporting. This integration ensures you can easily coordinate campaigns, track performance and maintain consistent branding without technical headaches.
- Start collecting phone numbers from your existing email list by offering an incentive for SMS opt-in. A discount code, early access to sales or exclusive content can motivate subscribers to share their phone numbers. Remember to clearly communicate the value they’ll receive through SMS and how often they can expect to hear from you.
- Start small and scale up based on results. Begin by adding SMS capabilities to one existing email campaign, such as your abandoned cart sequence or event reminders.
- Segment your audience as you add more phone numbers to your list. You may already have strong segmentation on your email list that you can rely on. If not, this is a great opportunity to segment your audience for better message targeting.
- Expand to additional campaigns as you grow more comfortable with multichannel coordination. Add SMS to your customer onboarding flow, create cross-channel nurture sequences and develop sophisticated triggered campaigns based on customer behavior across channels.
Measuring success across channels
Effective measurement requires looking beyond individual channel metrics to understand how email and SMS work together to drive business results. We recommend establishing both channel-specific and cross-channel key performance indicators (KPIs).
Channel-specific metrics
For email marketing, track traditional metrics like open rates, click-through rates and conversion rates. But also monitor list growth rate, forwarding rate and email-driven revenue. For SMS marketing, focus on delivery rates, response rates, opt-out rates and SMS-attributed conversions.
Benchmark your performance against industry standards but remember that your unique audience might behave differently. According to data from Mailchimp, average email open rates across industries hover around 35.6%, while SMS open rates remain consistently above 95%.
Cross-channel attribution
The real insight comes from understanding how channels influence each other. Track metrics like:
- Customers who engage with both email and SMS versus single-channel users
- Conversion rates for multichannel versus single-channel campaigns
- Customer lifetime value differences between channel preferences
- Time to conversion when using sequential messaging
Platforms like Mailchimp provide unified reporting dashboards that make cross-channel analysis straightforward, helping you understand the true impact of your integrated strategy.
Common mistakes to avoid
Even well-intentioned multichannel strategies can fail when businesses make certain common errors. We’ve identified the most frequent mistakes and how to avoid them.
Over-communication and channel fatigue
The biggest mistake businesses tend to make is treating email and SMS as completely separate strategies, leading to message overload. When customers receive too many messages across channels, they tune out entirely. Track your total touch points per customer per week across all channels, aiming for no more than three to five total communications for most businesses.
Pay special attention to automated messages that might stack up. For instance, if a customer makes a purchase, they might receive an order confirmation email, shipping notification email, SMS delivery alert and review request email. Map out all automated communications to identify potential overload points and reduce communications where they may be excessive.
Failing to respect channel preferences
Not every customer wants to hear from you on every channel. According to 2023 consumer preference data from the CMO Council, 66% of consumers want fewer marketing messages, so the name of the game is quality over quantity. Always provide clear opt-in and opt-out mechanisms for each channel, and respect these preferences in your segmentation.
Lack of mobile optimization
While SMS is inherently mobile-friendly, many businesses forget that over 60% of all emails are now opened on mobile devices. Ensure your email templates are responsive and test them across different devices and email clients. A beautifully designed email that breaks on mobile screens undermines your professional image and reduces conversion rates.
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