Email vs SMS Marketing: What Works Best in 2025?

Your brand has more ways than ever to reach your audience nowadays, but SMS marketing vs email marketing is still the biggest debate. Both of these promise direct access to your customers, but their impact and engagement styles are very different.

So deciding where your time and budget has the biggest payoff is the challenge here. Email gives you a lot more depth and design flexibility, but SMS has that immediacy factor and high open rates.

We’ve put together a guide that breaks down what each channel does best and when to lean on one or combine them for the best results.

A Quick Refresher: What Are Email and SMS Marketing?

Email marketing is the classic digital marketing channel, where you send promotional or informative messages to a list of subscribers via email. This could be:

• Newsletters
• Product announcements
• Event invites
• 10% off coupons for your abandoned cart

They can be long or short, have plenty of images or just plain text. And they can either be personal or automated. Solid option for any size business with great ROI.

SMS marketing sends text messages directly to your customers’ phones. These are usually short-and-sweet messages:

• Flash sale alerts
• Appointment reminders
• Two-factor authentication codes
• Order delivery updates

They go straight to your phone’s messaging app, usually with a buzz in the pocket. Virtually everyone reads texts.

Both channels require permission, but they have different formats and vibes. You’ve got more space for content with email (can design beautiful templates with images, links, even videos).

SMS is bare-bones 160 characters of text (maybe a link or a single image). Concise and personal, like a note from a friend.

Performance Metrics Face-Off: Email vs SMS

SMS and email have very different profiles when it comes to raw numbers:

Open Rates & Engagement

If you judge by open rates, SMS wins by a landslide. Text messages have an average open rate of around 98%. You usually read a text within minutes.

Email open rates, on the other hand, average around 20-30% for most industries. You might hit higher if you have a super-engaged list, but generally, email can’t compete with text on sheer likelihood of being seen.

So SMS is perfect for time-sensitive updates (flash sales, appointment reminders) because you know your audience will see it right away.

For raw visibility, SMS is better because nearly every text gets opened, but email can still drive engagement because the content is richer and usually better suited for non-urgent communication people might revisit later.

Click-Through & Conversion Rates

The next step is getting them to click a link or take action. SMS also tends to outperform email here:

• Click-through rates (CTR): Text messages often have CTRs in the 10-20% range, compared to email CTRs which average around 2-4% in many industries.

SMS has high CTR and conversion numbers, but it often comes from small, highly targeted sends. You might only send texts to your VIP customers or recent hot leads, whereas email you’ll blast to a broader list including lukewarm prospects.

So naturally the SMS stats look higher because of segmentation and intent. You’re comparing a hand-picked audience to a general newsletter audience.

Email still brings conversions (especially for more complex sales cycles) but if your goal is to prompt an instant action (like “Buy now!”), SMS has the edge.

ROI & Cost Efficiency

The answer here is not just about conversion rates because costs and scale also matter.

Let’s talk costs first:

Cost Per Message

Sending email is dirt cheap. Small businesses might only spend a flat monthly fee or a tiny fraction of a cent per email. The average cost per email for small businesses is estimated around $0.10-$0.30.

SMS, however, typically costs $0.01 to $0.05 per text in most markets, so sending 10,000 texts could run ~$100-$500, whereas 10,000 emails might be essentially free on many plans or maybe $10-$20 on others.

So email is generally more cost-effective for reaching large volumes of contacts. If your list is 100,000 strong, blasting an email newsletter is far more budget-friendly than texting 100k people (which could cost thousands of dollars per send).

ROI (Revenue Per $1 Spent)

Email marketing generally has the best ROI throughout all the digital channels. SMS ROI is harder to pin down, as some conservative analyses found it to be around $5-$10 per $1 spent, but others say around $71 per $1. It’s usually heavily dependent on the industry

On paper, email wins in ROI percentage because the costs are so low. Essentially an average of $36:1 for email vs an average of $5-$10:1 for SMS, with outliers of $71:1

Furthermore, email lists are usually larger and you use them to cultivate repeat purchases and customer lifetime value over months or years (e.g. through drip campaigns, newsletters).

SMS might drive a quick conversion, but you wouldn't send daily texts to nurture leads slowly - it’s just not suited for that frequency.

So email could have stronger long-term ROI by keeping your brand in front of customers consistently at little cost. SMS might have a higher immediate impact per message but you'll reserve it for key moments.

Personalization & Automation Capabilities

Both of these can be personalized and automated but with different degrees of flexibility.

Email

You can merge all kinds of data into an email:

• Customer names
• Purchase history
• Product recommendations

And they can be dynamically generated so that every recipient sees content tailored to them (“Hey John, still interested in those running shoes? Here’s 10% off!”). Most email platforms nowadays also use AI-driven segmentation and predictive analytics to send highly targeted content, which is important for lead nurturing and upselling.

You can also build complex sequences with branching logic: everything from welcome series and drip campaigns to re-engagement campaigns.

For instance, if a lead downloads an eBook, you might schedule a series of 5 emails over the next month to educate them (classic lead nurturing). If they click certain links, you can automatically move them to a different sequence.

SMS

SMS marketing is more limited in content length but can still be personalized. You usually have the person’s name and maybe one or two preferences to work with, like, “Hi Bob, we’ve got a special offer on the guitars you liked!”

You can certainly segment SMS audiences, too (e.g. send a different text to VIP customers vs new sign-ups). In fact, customers can often self-segment via SMS by texting back keywords to subscribe to certain lists (for example, texting “SALE” to get sale alerts only).

SMS can also be integrated into automated flows, though the logic tends to be simpler than email. You might set up a text to send after an email if no open or click happened, or a text trigger on certain events (like cart abandonment).

However, SMS has character limits and no rich media (apart from a single image or GIF in MMS), so personalization can’t be anywhere near as deep or visual. No carousel of products tailored to a user’s browsing history like with email. So for extensive personalization and storytelling, email wins.

That said, SMS feels inherently more personal to the user. It buzzes in the same space as messages from friends and family. A short text like “Hey, we miss you! Here’s a 20% off code, valid this weekend!” can feel very one-to-one. Even if it’s automated and sent to thousands, it lands in a personal context, which is important.

Compliance, Privacy, and User Preferences

You’ve got to stay on the right side of the law and respect people’s boundaries when reaching out to customers directly:

Email Compliance

If you’ve ever scrolled to the bottom of a marketing email, you’ll see the fine print, like the unsubscribe link and the physical address of the sender.

Laws like CAN-SPAM (US) and GDPR (EU) mandate certain practices:

• You must have permission to email someone (no random harvesting of emails)
• You must provide a clear opt-out mechanism in every email
• You must honor unsubscribes promptly
• (For GDPR) You need to be transparent about data usage

Practically, this means you should only email people who opted in via a signup or a customer relationship and always include that “Unsubscribe” link

SMS Compliance

Text messaging often has even stricter rules. In the US, there’s the TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act)

If you’ve ever texted a shortcode to subscribe (e.g., “Text JOIN to 12345 to get alerts”), that’s a compliance measure and it proves consent.

Additionally, mobile carriers and industry groups enforce guidelines like requiring that every marketing SMS include an opt-out option. So if someone replies “STOP”, you must cease messaging them. Non-compliance can result in heavy fines - not to mention getting your texting number or shortcode shut down by carriers.

From a privacy perspective, SMS is considered highly personal. This is reflected in consumer preferences: surveys show many consumers prefer to reserve SMS for certain types of communication (like order updates) and not for general promos

In fact, in one study only 35% of consumers said they like receiving marketing texts, whereas 76% said they like getting emails from brands. People expect promotional content in email, but promotional SMS can feel intrusive if it’s not done sparingly and relevantly.

Lastly, keep in mind that email providers will filter you out for certain spammy content or too many exclamation points, etc., but generally you can say what you want

SMS carriers, however, have rules - for instance, restrictions on promoting alcohol, certain financial offers, etc., through text without proper wording and opt-ins. So compliance gets a bit trickier if you’re in those industries.

When to Use Email, When to Use SMS (Use Case-Based Breakdown)

Choosing between email and SMS isn’t just about preference, it’s about matching the channel to the purpose (and of course the segmented customer lists), urgency, and depth of your message. In many cases, a combined approach ensures you cover both reach and impact. Here’s a breakdown of when each channel works best, and when to use both together.

Hybrid Strategy: Using Both Channels Together

The best marketing strategies use both of these together:

Omnichannel Marketing Best Practices

Omnichannel just means having a seamless experience across channels (email, SMS, social media marketing, etc.):

• Consistent Branding & Tone: Your emails and texts should feel like they’re from the same company. Use a consistent voice. Visual branding (logos, etc.) can’t really carry into plain texts, but your tone of voice does.
• Distinct Roles for Each Channel: Don’t just duplicate content. You might decide: all announcements and newsletters go to email; all critical alerts and short promos go to SMS. 70% of consumers believe email and SMS should serve distinct roles, so aligning with that is ideal.
• Coordinate Timing: If using both for a campaign, sync them thoughtfully. Don’t ping people on both channels at the exact same time with the same message. Instead, stagger them. Maybe email in the morning, SMS later in the day as a reminder.

Cross-Channel Timing & Triggers

Automation can be key here:

Time of Day

Send your emails when people are most likely to check their inbox (morning and early afternoon), send texts during waking hours, maybe slightly later in the day for promos (e.g., late morning or early evening when people are not in deep work).

And think about time zones, because what’s 9am for one subscriber might be 6am for another. Fortunately, most systems allow sending texts at the recipient’s local time window.

Cadence

You could reserve SMS for once a week or specific events, whereas emails might be more frequent. And try to align them with customer lifecycle stages. This could be right after a purchase, you might send an email with the receipt and a text thanking them.

But then you might not text again until maybe a delivery confirmation or a reorder reminder a month later, whereas email might continue weekly with content.

Triggers and Automation

Automation lets you respond to customer behaviour in real time, ensuring important messages aren’t missed. By combining email and SMS triggers, you can re-engage non-responsive customers, maximize urgency and campaign impact.

• No Open / No Click triggers: If you send an important email (say a limited sale), set a trigger: if the user doesn’t open the email in 24 hours and they are subscribed to SMS, send a text reminder.

  The text might say “Hey, we sent you an email yesterday about our big sale - it ends tonight! Don’t miss out: [short link].” Your texts act as a safety net to catch people who missed the email. Since on average 98% will see the text, you’ll reach a lot of those non-openers.

• Post-Email SMS follow-up: Similar to above, but even if they opened the email, an SMS on the last day of a sale can boost urgency (e.g., “Final hours to save 20%. Shop now!”). Just be sure you don’t also email at the final hour.

Avoiding Collisions

Don’t bombard them if you’re going to be sending from multiple mediums. For example, if a user has a birthday and also abandoned a cart and also didn’t open an email yesterday, you might inadvertently queue up three messages.

It’s best to use a contact policy logic: many platforms allow you to set “max X messages per day across channels.” Prioritize the most important message and suppress others. Or at least space them out so the user doesn’t feel spammed.

Tools & Platforms Supporting Both

Managing email and SMS together sounds hard, but there are many platforms that simplify it.

Email Service Providers (ESPs) with SMS Capability

A lot of traditional email platforms have added SMS as an integrated feature. For example:

• Klaviyo: Really popular with ecommerce brands because you can send email and SMS from one dashboard and also segment users with properties that span both channels. You can see a user profile and it shows email opens and SMS clicks, etc., which is very handy.
• HubSpot: This company is mainly known for email and CRM, but it can integrate SMS (through add-ons or built-in, depending on plan). And you can automate tasks like “if contact does X, send SMS” fairly seamlessly with HubSpot. Especially with integrated tools or custom-coded actions.

Dedicated SMS Tools That Work with Email Systems

Some businesses might use a specialized SMS too (because those can offer more advanced text-specific features or better pricing at scale).

Some examples of this include:

• Twilio (Twilio’s API is super powerful for SMS but you need dev resources)
• Attentive
• EZ Texting
• SimpleTexting
• SlickText

Most of these can integrate with your email platform or CRM easily. For instance, Attentive can integrate with Klaviyo or Shopify, so your email list and SMS list work together.

But if you go this route, make sure that integration is set up to share data (e.g., when someone signs up on your site and gives both email and phone, both systems get that info).

Customer Data Platforms (CDPs)

In more advanced setups, companies use a CDP to centralize all customer data and then push segments to each channel's tool.

For example, a CDP like Segment or Tealium could gather events (site visits, purchases, email opens, etc.) and then you can create a segment like “High-value inactive customers” and push that list to your ESP to email them and to your SMS platform to text them, with coordinated content. This is a bit more complex but gives a unified logic layer.

Choosing the Best Platform

The “best” platform depends on your business size and technical capabilities. You’ll get away with something like Omnisend or Sendinblue (Brevo) if you’re a small business because they’re designed to be user-friendly and do both changes (Sendinblue, for instance, offers email & SMS in one platform and is quite affordable for smaller lists).

But you should choose Salesforce Marketing Cloud or Oracle’s Responsys if you’re running an enterprise because these can handle massive volumes and complex personalization across channels (but require a team to manage).

Analytics and Reporting

Make sure whatever you use can report on the combined results. Some tools will attribute conversions per channel, but also give an omnichannel view like, did someone receive an email and a text and then purchase (it might credit both in different ways).

It helps you refine your strategy if you can see revenue or goal completions from email vs SMS vs those who use both.

Deliverability and Reliability

For email, you want a platform with good deliverability (proper infrastructure to get emails to inbox). For SMS, you want one with reliable carrier routing and compliance tools (like automatic handling of opt-outs, message throttling to avoid carrier spam flags, etc.).

The platforms we’ve touched on usually have these covered, but it’s worth asking because  some SMS providers auto-manage things like limit of messages per second to carriers, scrubbing landline numbers (so you don’t text a number that can’t receive texts), etc.

Integration with Other Channels

If you anticipate adding more channels (like push notifications, WhatsApp, etc.) it has to be a platform that either has those or integrates well.

Expert Insights: What Marketers Are Saying in 2025

See what industry experts and the data say about email and SMS in 2025. As consumer habits shift toward mobile-first experiences and instant communication, brands are rethinking how these channels work together.

Email is Still King (But SMS Is Rising)

Litmus reports that 87% of marketing leaders say email marketing is critical to their success, and 44% of marketing pros ranked email as their most effective channel.

Paid search and social media were joint second place at 16%, with SMS nowhere in sight. That tells us that marketers haven’t abandoned email at all.

Furthermore, Julia Amodt, an email/SMS marketing expert who was interviewed on the 7-Figures & Beyond ecommerce podcast, talks about how inbox competition and fatigue are growing, but email is still necessary for detailed content and building customer loyalty.

Her advice was to double down on segmentation and personalization in email so that you’re not contributing to the spam noise but actually standing out with relevant content.

She also noted that brands investing in mobile-friendly email design and accessibility (dark mode compatible emails, etc.) are seeing better engagement (basically meeting consumers where they are, which is often on their phones reading email).

The Rise of SMS for Engagement

You shouldn’t write SMS off, though, because the engagement stats are promising. An SMS platform’s 2024 report mentioned 66% of people get fewer than 20 texts a day and 74% read every single text. So SMS inboxes are relatively uncluttered territory.

Omnichannel and Integration is the Future

Experts across B2C and B2B say the key is not email vs SMS but email + SMS + other channels in harmony.

In fact, companies that have good omnichannel strategies retain nearly 90% of their customers. That’s in comparison to 33% customer retention for companies without such strategies.

AI and Automation

Many experts are talking about AI - not just for writing subject lines or copy, but for optimizing send times and channel choices. For example, AI models can predict if a user is more likely to convert via email vs SMS and adjust the campaign accordingly.

In fact typically see 2 out 3 marketing teams using AI to determine when individual contacts are most likely to engage, so messages arrive at their personal peak times. This is a trend that is only expected to rise in the future, so it’s worth thinking about how you might incorporate these tools into your workflow as the technology continues to develop.

Common Mistakes to Avoid in Email and SMS Marketing

Even seasoned marketers slip up—often by over-messaging, ignoring data, or failing to tailor content to the channel. Let's take a look at common mistakes you may encounter.

Can SMS Replace Email Marketing?

The answer in most cases is no. SMS is more of a complement than a replacement for email. Here’s why:

Different Strengths and Content Capacities

Email and SMS do different things well. Email is better for conveying:

• Detailed information
• Long-form content
• Multiple links
• Rich media

If you tried to replace a newsletter or a product catalog email with SMS, you’d be sending 20 texts in a row which isn’t feasible or user-friendly.

Conversely, SMS is better for immediacy because you’re reaching someone in real time with a short message. If you tried to replace a timely alert email (“Your flight is delayed”) with an email only, the person might not see it in time.

So, most businesses find they need both to cover all their communication needs. Email for depth, SMS for spee

Consumer Preference and Reach

Not everyone wants marketing texts, but almost everyone uses email in some form. There are about 4.5+ billion email users worldwide, and people are accustomed to interacting with brands via email.

SMS also has a large user-base, but while some demographics (younger mobile-first users) might be fine with mostly texts, it could be too invasive if everything moved to SMS.

Also, consider archiving: people often save emails (or search for them later in inbox) for records. Texts tend to be a lot more disposable. If a brand texted you a 10-step tutorial, that would be annoying to scroll through or find later; email is better for that.

Cost and Scalability

SMS is significantly more expensive per contact than email. If you attempted to replace all your email sends with SMS, your messaging budget would likely skyrocket.

For example, sending 100k emails might cost in the tens of dollars or a monthly flat fee; sending 100k SMS could cost thousands of dollars. Unless the ROI per message is proportionally higher (and across a broad base, it might not be), that’s a big consideration.

Companies that have millions on their email list generally couldn’t afford to text them all with the same frequency they email

Legal/Compliance Constraints

People can freely give out emails and there isn’t a legal cap on emailing frequency (aside from spam laws requiring opt-out). But SMS is tightly regulated and you can’t just start texting customers without explicit opt-in. If you overdo it, you face complaints or even carrier blocking

Also, some countries have restrictions. For instance, in parts of Europe, telemarketing texts are heavily restricted. Email has its own compliance but is generally more flexible for marketing content because of opting-in

Edge Cases

There are barely any cases where SMS could replace email; only for some very SMS-centric audiences or campaigns. For instance, a hyper-local campaign for a small business might say “we won’t do email, we’ll just text our 200 customers about daily specials or hand out flyers”

That could work if the customers prefer it. But in marketing, these are exceptions rather than the rule. Even SMS-first brands usually still collect email and use it for certain things (even if just transactional receipts or longer announcements).

Resilience and Backup

Sometimes email fails (spam folder, delivery issues) or SMS fails (carrier outage, or user changes number, etc.). Having both hopefully means your message can still get through on one if not the other.

For example, during an infrastructure outage, a brand might tweet “we’re having an email issue, stay tuned for updates via SMS or our website.” Or if the SMS shortcode is down, they might email “we’re experiencing delays with text alerts, here’s the info you need.”

What’s the Best Platform for Managing Both?

Choosing the right platform is key to running email and SMS campaigns seamlessly. The best tools centralize your data, automate workflows, and keep messaging consistent across both channels.

Let's review the best options:

Final Words

Keep these in mind as you think about your strategy approach. Firstly, always think of the customer first: would they appreciate this via email or text? Do they need a lot of detail (email) or just a quick nudge (SMS)?

And quality is always better than quantity. It’s better to send one less email or text than one too many. Make each touch count by offering value, from useful info to good deals. This is a process you’ll constantly be testing and refining, so use your data (opens, clicks, replies, conversions) to gauge what’s working and what needs adjusting.

In addition, don’t forget to stay compliant and ethical. This means getting proper consent and honoring opt-outs from customers. You don’t want a spam complaint or a TCPA lawsuit. Once you’ve got the hang of things, you can start automating. Set up things like cart abandonment flows and re-engagement campaigns. You can still automate and personalize at scale.

So rather than choosing one, choose the right mix for your audience and goals. If you find that balance, you’ll see the rewards in engagement and ROI.