INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Mobile Technology
Action-triggered , automated emails , SMS working better than scheduled messages in South Africa finds Omnisend
number of sent messages , the contents of emails , or the percentage of automated messages ,” says Zakowicz . “ One thing we know is that brands that combine email , SMS , and web push messages into their marketing campaigns , and use behaviourbased automation generate more sales .”
Evolving your strategy
Start exploring other channels of communication . If you only used email to communicate with your customers before , SMS and push notifications are a good place to start expanding your “ portfolio .” Finding the best channel to talk to your customers will help you generate more sales and increase your conversion rate .
Omnisend , an omnichannel marketing platform used by over 100,000 merchants , studied almost 600 million messages sent by South African ecommerce businesses in 2023 , including email , SMS , and push notifications . The messages resulted in more than a million sales in South Africa and helped to earn Omnisend ’ s South African customers more than 1.2 billion ZAR .
“ With the endless number and inconsistency of paid channels , it ’ s difficult to maintain them , especially for those with limited budgets ,” says Greg Zakowicz , ecommerce marketing expert at Omnisend . “ That is why it is important to stay focused on marketing tactics that work . Omnichannel marketing using email , SMS , and push messages increased the conversion rate by nearly 500 %. Add automation to the mix and the results are even better .”
Researchers at Omnisend found that actiontriggered , or automated emails , SMS , and push notifications performed much better than scheduled messages . Automated messages included those sent to customers when they abandoned their cart , registered for a newsletter , or when their favourite item came back in stock .
For automated emails , the click-toconversion rate improved from 3 % to 19 %, and for SMS , it increased from 0.4 % to 8 %. Automated push notifications saw their conversion rate jump from 3 % to 20 %. Clickto-conversion rates check the rate of sales from people who click on a message .
South African industries with the highest click-to-conversion rate in 2023 were Pets and Animals , 21 %, Smoking and Vaping , 16 %, and Science , 14 %. The lowest clickto-conversion rate was held by Jobs and Education , 0.07 %, Computers , 0.07 % and Internet , 0.5 %.
“ The varying results among industries can be impacted by many factors , including the
Use automations . Whether it is email , SMS , or push messages , automated messages significantly outperform scheduled campaigns . If you are unsure where to begin , we would recommend starting with the most effective automated messages : cart abandonment , browse abandonment , and welcome messages .
Focus on growing your lists through different channels . Growing your email , SMS , and push message lists helps brands maximise their ROI by keeping order data from all channels in one place and allows them to market to an unsubscriber of one channel , like email via another , like SMS .
Optimise email templates for conversion . If you have not yet done so , take this moment to analyse your email templates and add items that can help turn email openers into buyers . You could make your email campaigns more effective by promoting value-adds such as free shipping , return policies , satisfaction guarantees , and customer service availability . p
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