5 Ways to Combine Email and SMS This Holiday Season

It’s never too early to devise a strategy to maximize your email marketing outreach — especially during the holidays. And with email marketing and SMS, you don’t need to take an either-or approach. Instead, learn how to use them in harmony to expand your outreach and message visibility. 

What’s more, integrating these campaigns allows you to go deep into personalization — something your customers and readers want to see. It will enable you to meet them where they are and gives them options for engaging. In addition, email and SMS can help you scale your outreach to those most interested in your products or services.

Here’s how to combine your email and SMS campaigns to make the most of your marketing approach this holiday season.  

Use email to get people on your SMS list

Email and SMS stand out over other marketing channels because they require permission. Of course, you need your readers to actively opt in; however, once people are on your list, that’s where the magic happens. 

Don’t let this opportunity to move readers to your SMS list go to waste. Otherwise, you may miss out on another channel to engage your readers and customers — plus, some of them might prefer and respond more frequently to SMS.

Use Smart Banners™ as part of your welcome campaign to remind your readers that you have an SMS program. And even better? Give them a bonus like Bully Bunches did in one of its recent campaigns. 

Give a little nudge about an abandoned purchase

Every marketer loves running an abandoned cart campaign. It’s an easy way to re-engage customers and get them to convert on products they were considering buying. 

There’s no reason you can’t do the same with your SMS campaigns. But rather than send them as separate entities, use one to follow up the other.

If your customer isn’t taking action after your campaign has finished, it’s time to deploy your SMS reminders. Since customers tend to read their SMS messages within a few minutes of receiving them, it may help them take action sooner. 

Double up on personalization

Consumers loved personalized messaging through email and SMS. So why not give the people what they want? It’s easy to personalize your holiday emails at scale with Smart Banners™. But take it a step further and do the same with SMS. 

And, with personalized carousels, you can ensure every text you send is chock full of personalization — from images to loyalty data to links. 

The above image is a carousel breakdown. This reader left a chair behind; the SMS alerts them with a personalized name and product image. But then they also get a user-generated review of the product and, finally, a customized deal based on their loyalty points.

Remind them about package updates

We all know shipping and package tracking is a big deal around the holidays. Your customers want to know where their orders are so they don’t miss any big days. 

Here’s another place where email and SMS can be the perfect way to communicate with your customers during the holiday season. Once your customer buys, use Smart Banners™ in your emails and personalized SMS messages to keep them fully up-to-date on where their packages are.

And if you aren’t shipping anything, you can still use both Smart Banners™ and SMS to let them know when items are ready for curbside pickup.

Ask for product reviews

You can’t forget about your customers once the transaction is over. So you want to do whatever you can to make it easy for these people to come back and buy from you again. 

Adding Smart Banners™ asking for ratings and reviews to your triggered campaigns is a great place to start. But you can extend that messaging to SMS too. 

And, once again, it’s easy to add personalization to something as simple as a review request with the powers of data. Transform something basic into an SMS that gives customers a bonus to encourage action. 

We can help you make this holiday season better than ever

If you want to make a difference and stand out this holiday season, there’s no better way to start than by combining email and SMS. You’ll be able to send more customers personalized content that’s engaging and makes them excited to buy. 

If you want to learn more about how the Zembula platform makes this easy, click here. One of our experts will set you up with a demo.