Both SMS marketing and push notifications allow businesses to send out messages to their customers. There are, however, some important differences between the two. Push notifications make it possible for people who have downloaded an app to receive notifications of any kind, such as promotions, news stories, sports scores, information about events or anything you want to tell them. SMS marketing, on the other hand, is a more interactive and flexible type of messaging service that does not require recipients to download any apps. If you’re searching for an effective marketing strategy, you may be wondering how push notifications compare to SMS marketing and what the differences are.
Differences Between Push Notifications and SMS
Push notifications and SMS (text messages) have a similar appearance when they are delivered. Both are short messages that you can send to your customers at any time. The technology behind them, however, is different. Push notifications require that your recipients install a special app. Text messages, on the other hand, are any messages send from one mobile phone to another. For marketing purposes, you can send them using a short or long code and customers can sign up for them using codes.
While you can send the same type of messages with either technology, there are several distinct benefits of using SMS marketing rather than push notifications.
Advantages of SMS Over Push Notifications
- SMS is Interactive -A push notification is simply a one-way message from one person or company to recipients. People who receive these notifications cannot reply or take any action in response. With SMS, however, you can set up interactive campaigns that allow people to respond to polls, answer questions or take other actions. SMS is an interactive form of communication, not just a one-way message that you send out.
- Reach More People -One of the biggest benefits of SMS is that your recipients don’t need to download an app to get your messages. Not everyone has a smartphone that allows them to download apps. Anyone with any type of mobile phone, however, can receive text messages. Even people with smartphones don’t always take the trouble to download every app. With SMS, you can reach a much wider audience -anyone with a mobile phone.
- More Personalized Messages -More personalized text messages can give you a much greater response rate. With push notifications, no matter what type of message you send, the sender’s name cannot be changed. With SMS messages, you have many more options for customization. You can, for example, vary the sender’s name based on the type of campaign you’re running.
SMS: More Versatile and Far-Reaching Than Push Notifications
While push notifications can be useful for sending out simple messages that don’t require any reply, SMS is significantly more flexible and can reach a wider audience. If you’re looking for an effective, long term strategy that can help you connect with your customers, SMS gives you many more options.
SMS is a marketing option that allows you to not simply send out messages, but to actually build relationships with your customers. You can get them engaged in your product or business by having them respond to your messages. This is not possible with push notifications. This makes SMS a superior tool for creating long term customer engagement.
