Email vs. Mobile in Driving Promotion Participation
Last week we received a call from a client informing us that they had a last minute promotion and were planning to send out an email inviting subscribers to participate in a text-to-win. The offer was very compelling, but due to the last minute timing, it was clear that not everyone would be able to take advantage of the offer. The client planned to send the offer that evening, giving recipients about 16 hours to participate in the text-to-win.
By the following morning, the client had a very standard response rate, but due to the large number of subscribers, had a fairly sizeable number of participants. We then got the client to send out the offer to their two mobile alerts subscriber lists and the results were incredible, as the mobile alerts lists are relatively new and not nearly the size of the email list. Unlike the 16 hour lead time afforded the email recipients, the mobile subscribers had only 40 minutes to participate!
Here are the results.
• The response to the email was about the same as the industry average click-through rate for banner ads, but due to the huge size advantage, resulted in 41% of the entries.
• The first mobile alerts list was 96% smaller than the email list, yet resulted in 24% of the entries.
• The second mobile alerts list was 98% smaller than the email list yet resulted in 36% of the entries.
While email is certainly a valuable marketing tool, the power of mobile as a mechanism to communicate timely and relevant information cannot be overstated.