People are too inundated with their social media feeds to care about the advertising within them. Add the growing number of privacy concerns and restrictions and we can see the reason why marketers are focussing on channels where users have more control – such as Text message marketing and email marketing
Existing in Different Silos
Text and email marketing have existed in different silos until now. You have specific tools and formatting that you use for text messages such as EZtexting and Simpletexting. They do the job of helping you getting text message marketing done.
You also have software that you use for email marketing such as MailChimp or Klaviyo. They give you well-designed templates and the ability to do email marketing much more easily.
The reason they have not co-existed
The primary reason that they have not co-existed is that they have not shared the same timeline and the same paradigm as marketing channels that people should focus on.
Pre smartphone(before2007 and the iPhone) was the era of era sms marketing. Everyone read and cleared their inbox and companies inundated and over exploited the channel with marketing messaging
This was also the time when people were doing their email marketing primarily for the desktop.
The advent of iMessage and other messaging apps such as Facebook messenger meant that fewer people checked their phone inbox
The radical shift in email came with the coming of Web 2.0 in 2010-2013. People started using their phones much more during this period and email marketing started to focus on being optimized for mobile. Tools such as MailChimp managed this transition quite well and have done well with web 2.0
The next shift in email and sms marketing has been happening since 2017.
A new kind of permission marketing
As I wrote in an earlier article, customers are more responsive to marketing that fits either or both of the following conditions
- Marketing that is done with their permission – they have expressed an interest in your product and given you information to contact them
- Marketing that adds value: Your users or potential users would be interested in content that either entertains or gives them information – which is why every small business has an active presence on YouTube and produces interesting content on Instagram, Pinterest etc
Email marketing and SMS marketing can do that for you now.
With Email marketing, you can engage users with long-form newsletters, occasional seasonal offers etc
With SMS marketing you can engage users with shorter content that can be interactive, informative or both
And there has been no better time to utilize the power of these platforms
Customer Engagement Platform Brings You Email + Text marketing
It’s 2019 and you should not have to go through the trouble of managing different tools to manage your email and sms marketing. By having both of those in the same platform, you can seamlessly switch between marketing channels. After all, it is the ease of consumption of information that generates new ideas and messaging that you had not thought of before.
You also want a tool that integrates well with your current suite of software and marketing tools that you use. A customer engagement platform can integrate with your current POS systems such as Mindbody and Centeredge. It can also integrate with tools that you use for marketing such as MailChimp or a rewards management system such as Perkville.
So a customer engagement platform is an all in one tool that takes care of customer retention for you. 2019 seems like the moment for customer engagement platforms – Small businesses have access to software that is high tech but affordable and are also increasingly facing the tune from big players such as Amazon, Netflix where people spend a lot of their time and attention
At Gleantap we have been quite happy to work with smart business owners at PlanetFitness, F45, Anytime Fitness who have been capitalizing on the advantages of having a customer engagement platform
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