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SMS Marketing vs Email Marketing in the context of Nepal
SMS Marketing vs Email Marketing in context of Nepal
For many businesses digital marketing has been the essential strategy to sell their product and services. Businesses without digital marketing strategies lag behind in the modern world of mobile computing. There are various aspects of digital marketing like Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Marketing (SMM), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), International Marketing, Email & SMS marketing and so on. While using any of the strategies, businesses need to be aware of the local rules and regulation and policies of the platforms they wish to use.
Some of the strategies are suited for some regions while the same strategy performs poorly in some regions. The reason for this lies behind the socio-culture of people residing in the region, their daily behavior and their lifestyle. Here, we discuss the most widely used strategy of digital marketing; Email and SMS marketing and try to understand which of the two is more efficient, specifically in the Nepali market.
Email and SMS marketing
Email and SMS marketing are two of the oldest and widely used direct strategies of digital marketing globally. In both of the strategies text message is sent to the targeted customer but the only difference lies in the communication channel; first used internet communication while the later uses cellular communication.
Email marketing
Email marketing is one of the most effective forms of marketing worldwide. There are many tools that allow business for email marketing such as Mailchimp, Sendgrid, Sender, Zoho, Hubspot, Sendinblue and so on which allows users to send bulk email to multiple users and track the status of email recipient behavior, read status and bounce status. Mailchimp provides upto 2000 emails for free. Same email can be sent to 2000 recipients in a single campaign or can be separated for multiple campaigns.
Email format and content plays a vital role to prevent high bounce rate and improve email read according to email marketing theory, but these factors will come to action only if the targeted users open their inbox.
Now let's talk about the effectiveness of email marketing in the context of Nepal. Even though the Covid-19 pandemic has made school, college goers along with their parents and teachers habitual on email also work from home has made employees more alert on email notifications. Despite all this, most of the small business owners and typical Nepali create email addresses just to create accounts in different platforms rather than means of communication so they rarely check the email inbox unless it's important or are pre-informed to check. So, it is preferred to use alternatives for marketing rather than email marketing in the context of Nepal where SMS marketing fits in.
SMS marketing
As most of the targeted audience rely on mobile phones for communication, it is the best alternative to send text messages in the form of SMS for marketing. There are many established companies that provide reliable Bulk SMS services that can reach out to possible customers. Sparrow SMS has been leading the industry as it is the oldest bulk SMS provider. It got popular because of providing SLC and HSEB results to students on their query. As the SLC changed to SEE and HSEB to NEB, many other competitors also emerged in the market.
To those who are thinking about SMS marketing they need to note that the charge is deducted even if the cell phone number is no longer in use. The price varies from Rs. 0.9 to Rs. 1.5 per credit, this cost excludes the VAT. Service providers also provide APIs to integrate in the website and also a dashboard to check the status.
As per today’s date Samaya SMS provides the service at least price i.e Rs. 0.9 to Re. 1 ( varies according to subscription) with the similar service and efficiency as other old and reputed service providers. You can visit their website and directly subscribe to their service, after which you will be followed by their customer service.
Summary of things to consider while doing SMS marketing
- Keep text short and easy to understand by everyone.
- Bulk SMS credit price ranges from Rs. 0.9 to Rs. 1.5 per credit.
- 150 letters costs one credit if the script is English while 2 credits if the script is Nepali.
- Currently Saymaya SMS provides credits at the cheapest price i.e Rs. 0.9 to Rs. 1 according to the subscription.
