Ready to launch your SMS marketing campaign, but wondering about the best way to promote it and boost its visibility? Advertising your new SMS marketing campaign is a great place to start. Why? Simply because it is the easiest channel for promoting your campaign to your entire customer base. And for the vast majority of businesses, it only takes a few clicks on their messaging platform.

The benefits of email for promoting your SMS campaign

Email and SMS are highly complementary marketing tools. Email can truly serve as a reliable foundation for launching your SMS campaign.

There are 4 main advantages that make email a relevant foundation for your marketing campaign:

• Email is one of the most widely used communication channels.
• Email offers significant editorial space, allowing you to share information-rich messages.
• Email makes it easy to add visuals and links to the web, whether to a website, a landing page, a Facebook page, or elsewhere.
• Email can be personalized by adding the recipient's name, preferences, and targeted suggestions.

Email is therefore a way to announce and present your offer to a very broad audience. It represents a primary lever for reaching your target, without distinction or segmentation.

SMS is then ideal for providing a reminder of key information through short, direct text, or for letting your newest subscribers enjoy the perks of your SMS campaign.

SMS reaches your target wherever they are, in real time. Its strengths make it a means of immediate interaction, highly conducive to target responsiveness and increasing your campaign's conversion rate.

How a cosmetics brand used email to gain 5,000 subscribers for its SMS marketing campaign in 24 hours

A well-known online cosmetics boutique chose email to launch its SMS marketing campaign, with excellent results.

The goal of this campaign: to increase website sales by sending relevant, high-value messages at the right time.

Initially, the brand had no mobile number database and was truly starting from scratch.

How was email used to make the SMS campaign a success?

The brand chose to launch a VIP Club, allowing subscribers to receive special offers, discount coupons, news, and other bonuses on products and the brand via SMS.

The strategy began by sending an initial email offering a 50% discount on the next purchase to users who signed up for the club by providing their mobile phone number. The offer was received via SMS as soon as the user joined the VIP Club.

Thanks to an email with a punchy message and an immediate sign-up option via SMS using an easy-to-remember short code and keyword, the tone was set, and the call to action received an impressive response rate.

In fact, in just 24 hours, the cosmetics brand successfully engaged 5,000 subscribers in its SMS campaign.

The initial message achieved a 10.7% redemption rate, meaning that for every 1,000 emails sent, 107 people responded to the call to action and signed up for the SMS campaign.

Another very telling figure is the 99% retention rate. This means 99 out of 100 people remained loyal to the program, even after receiving the 50% discount.

Large retailers are using a combined email and SMS strategy to boost sales during wine fairs.

The start of the 2015 school year is also focused on cross-channel marketing, with major retailers relying on email and SMS to drive sales.

Take the Super U chain, for example, which initially chose to use email to announce its wine fair to all customers holding a store loyalty card.

This announcement included a contest designed to draw customer attention to the event, while also offering them the chance to sign up for an SMS campaign to receive special offers and tips, such as invitations to exclusive in-store tastings.

What did these two brands do to boost their subscriber rates? They engaged their prospects and encouraged them to simply sign up for their SMS campaign. A recent study published by Vibes, a US mobile marketing company, shows that including an incentive for users can increase SMS campaign sign-up rates by up to 520%!

So don't choose between email and SMS! Opt for cross-channel marketing and use email to boost your SMS marketing campaign!