How to Connect Email and Mobile for Better Omnichannel Marketing
Email and mobile integration can significantly enhance customer experiences and marketing effectiveness. In this article, we’ll explore practical steps to effectively connect these channels to deliver more impactful omnichannel campaigns.
Start Small by Connecting Email and Mobile Channels
Brands often find it challenging to orchestrate fully interconnected omnichannel customer experiences. The complexity of mapping identifiers and user events across multiple martech and adtech platforms can delay achieving desired outcomes and stall value realization.
This is why it’s crucial to break down your omnichannel vision into manageable phases, starting with channels that offer the highest return.
Given the growing customer preference for mobile interactions, connecting email with SMS or push notifications is a practical first step in developing a successful multi-channel strategy.
Assess Your Data Before Expanding Channels
This phased approach not only simplifies things for Marketing, Operations, and IT teams—it’s also proven to deliver significant results. Many studies indicate that users engaging with both email and SMS are significantly more likely to make a purchase compared to users interacting through a single channel. Additionally, cross-channel campaigns can triple customer engagement.
Before investing in multi-channel initiatives, however, marketers need to carefully evaluate whether the effort aligns with their specific business goals and customer profiles. You have to decide if the juice is worth the squeeze for your brand.
Marketers should first analyze their customer database to confirm it contains the necessary contact details, permissions, and identifiers for multi-channel campaigns. For instance, if current customer acquisition tactics—like website forms, Wi-Fi sign-ins, or POS data captures—only collect email addresses, initial opportunities for SMS outreach may be limited.
Zeta conducted this analysis for one of our fashion retail clients, assessing whether capturing both email addresses and phone numbers led to increased average customer value (ACV). The study found that customers providing both forms of contact had an 18% higher ACV compared to those who only shared email addresses.
Going further, we evaluated opt-in rates and current engagement levels within each channel to better understand customer preferences. The findings clearly indicated that adding SMS to their strategy would likely boost cross-sell and up-sell rates.
Establishing a clear picture of customer contacts and their engagement across currently isolated channels provides a solid foundation for future multi-channel testing.
Why Context Matters for Channel Integration
When marketers experience declining email engagement or increasing opt-outs, they often look to add another channel into the mix. A common tactic is creating a reactivation journey where users that lapsed in email engagement are sent down an SMS path to test if the lack of response is due to messaging not resonating or channel preference.
While this approach provides another valuable data point for program optimization, it’s critical to understand where and under what context customer emails and phone numbers were originally collected.
- Was the contact information gathered through a preference center where users indicated their preferred channel, message frequency, or content type?
- Was it collected during a sweepstakes entry where interest might fade after the promotion ends?
- Was it provided in exchange for Wi-Fi access at locations like airports, where users might have limited brand interest?
Customers expect brands to honor their stated preferences and context when personalizing future communications.
Let’s use an airline pre-boarding experience to demonstrate how mapping touchpoints to specific channels in the appropriate context can create exceptional customer experiences. Frequent flyers often feel frustrated waiting at gates for boarding announcements. Airlines recognize this and have begun using multi-channel communications to improve the experience:
- Initial activity: Traveler books a flight on the airline’s website.
- Touch 1 (email): A confirmation email allows customers to add flight details to their calendar.
- Touch 2 (SMS): A text message reminds customers to check-in 24 hours before take-off, directing them to the airline’s app.
- Touch 3 (Push): A push notification alerts customers to a gate change, saving them from waiting unnecessarily.
- Touch 4 (Push): Customers receive notifications when their boarding zone is called.
- Touch 5 (SMS): Upon landing, customers receive a welcome message with local recommendations.
This experience seamlessly integrates three channels, each serving a distinct purpose, though it requires precise real-time event tracking across multiple platforms.
Customers Expect Consistent Experiences Across Channels
Consistency in communication across channels significantly impacts customer trust, whether interactions happen online, in-store, or via mobile. This consistency is especially crucial when introducing channels like SMS, as spam texts continue rising—19.2 billion in November 2024 alone.
Carefully deciding when and how to use each channel is important, as each has unique strengths and limitations.
- Email is ideal for visually engaging, detailed content.
- SMS and push notifications excel in time-sensitive situations, such as appointment reminders or geo-targeted offers.
National hair salons provide an excellent example by combining online booking with SMS reminders. After customers book online, salons send timely text notifications about their appointment, preventing overcrowded waiting rooms and enhancing customer satisfaction. Ensuring content isn’t duplicated across channels and maintaining each channel’s specific value creates better experiences for both customers and brands.
How to Get Started with SMS and Email Marketing Integration
Expanding communication beyond email into SMS or push can produce higher and faster open and click-through rates, as well as lead to boosted conversions. Given that 47% of millennials prefer brand communications via text, synchronizing email with mobile channels is a logical first step in launching effective multi-channel campaigns.
Evaluate your current customer database, consider context carefully when integrating new channels, and deliver messages through appropriate channels based on their purpose. Clearly communicating what customers can expect from each channel ensures a consistent and trusted brand experience.
Learn more about how Zeta’s Intelligent Mobile solutions can help your brand enhance omnichannel marketing.
