How to use email, SMS, and push together

You will learn

Learn how to use SMS, email, and push notifications together, including what makes each channel unique, what to send first, and more. 

Differences in each channel

Email 

Email has been around the longest, and interested website visitors are often willing to give out an email to a company. It also doesn’t have any channel-specific technical requirements, so it’s simple to start collecting subscribers and sending.

Positives	Negatives
Has the largest reach.	Not all recipients will read an email.
Can send the most often.	It has the lowest engagement rates.
Is the easiest, and often most affordable, for all businesses to get started with.	It also takes longer for people to open the message, so email is not suited for delivering critical or time-sensitive information.
Allows for a wide diversity of messages (sales, informational, etc.).

SMS

SMS is a relatively new messaging channel, but it is growing rapidly. Its popularity varies country by country, but SMS is becoming more common and accepted, with more people being willing to give out their phone number to businesses year over year. 

Positives	Negatives
It reaches subscribers immediately, pinging the recipient directly as soon as the message is delivered.	SMS has specific and strict compliance requirements that can make getting started intimidating.
It is conversational and casual, and it allows you to send messages more personally.	SMS is typically a more expensive messaging channel versus email.
SMS tends to have higher engagement and conversion rates than email.	List growth and reach are the slowest and smallest compared to other channels.
Certain industries (SHAFT) cannot use SMS marketing to reach their customers. Learn about prohibited industries for SMS.

Push notifications

One unique thing about push notifications is that subscribers tend to see them as helpful and not purely sales-focused. They are often reminders for how the subscriber can get the most of your app, whether that’s to achieve a personal goal or find the best deals. However, this perception can change if the subscriber gets overloaded, or if the notifications are not relevant.

Positives	Negatives
Push is immediate and direct, letting you reach customers directly on their lock screen.	You need an app to use push, making it more geared toward mid- to large-sized businesses than a company just starting out.
Push is considered less intrusive than SMS, since messages can be delivered without interrupting the user in their current activity.	Push typically does not have as large of a reach as SMS or email, since users need to both download the mobile app and opt in to receive notifications.
Unlike SMS, push is not highly regulated, so more companies (including those in SHAFT industries) are eligible to use this channel.	Push messages disappear once opened or dismissed, so they can’t be re-visited like email and SMS messages can.
The main purpose of push is to get people into your app, and is usually seen as more helpful than either email or SMS.

Summary

The table and image below summarize the key benefits of each channel. 

Email	SMS	Push
Large reach/list growth High sending frequency Low technical requirements Low compliance regulations Good message longevity	Immediate Medium reach/list growth High engagement Low technical requirements	Immediate High engagement Low compliance requirements

When to use email vs. SMS vs. push 

The table below compares the best types of messages to send via email, SMS, and mobile push. 

You can use any channel to deliver your message, but a checkmark indicates which channel typically performs best for each type of message. 

		Email	SMS	Push notification
Newsletters		✔️
App-related messages				✔️
Important news (e.g., milestones or updates)		✔️		✔️
Product launch	Early access		✔️	✔️
	General announcement	✔️	✔️	✔️
Sales/discounts	Multi-day sales	✔️	✔️	✔️
	Flash sales		✔️	✔️
	Personal discounts (via coupons)	✔️	✔️
Blog posts or other long-form content		✔️
Location-specific events	Popup or limited-time events		✔️	✔️
	All-day or longer events	✔️	✔️
Back-in-stock alerts			✔️	✔️
Delivery updates		✔️	✔️
Reminders (e.g., hit your learning goal, add info to a profile, etc.)				✔️
Surveys or product feedback		✔️	✔️

Collecting subscribers

When it comes to growing your list, it’s important to consider how to use all of your channels together. This not only includes your owned channels like email, SMS, and push, but also social media. 

For email and SMS, you can use forms or subscribe pages in a variety of ways. For instance, they can be directly on your site, but you can also link to them via QR codes, social media posts, email banners, and more.

As for push, the only way to get consent is in your app. However, you can encourage people to download your app using the same approaches as email and SMS. For instance, rather than a QR code linking to a sign-up form, it could take users to your app listing.

Who to target

The key is targeting people who might be interested in signing up for multiple channels, such as:

• VIPs
• New subscribers
• Recent purchasers
• Back-in-stock subscribers
• Subscribers or customers you’re trying to win back (to see if they want to hear from you via a different channel) 
• People who shop sales (to tell them about your deals via other channels)
• Mobile users (for SMS or push)

Tips for getting consent

Whenever you’re reaching out to get consent, make it clear how each channel is different and what benefits it offers. You can:

• Offer special incentives for signing up.
• Gamify sign ups.
• Create keywords for SMS as part of a hidden search for special discounts.
• Reward people based on how many channels they’re subscribed to.
• Include a way to opt in at moments where the visitor can benefit from subscribing (at checkout, when subscribing to back-in-stock alerts, when a sale or event launches, etc.).
• Encourage existing email or SMS subscribers to download your mobile app and sign up for updates. Bonus: target VIPs and treat push as an exclusive channel. 

Targeting your subscribers

Regardless of the channel, you want your messages to feel personalized. You can make the same segments for each channel and then adjust the criteria:

• All subscribers
• Subscribed to 1 channel (email, SMS, or push notifications)
• VIPs
• Gender
• Age
• Location 
• Preference, interest, or hobby
• Engaged/unengaged from 1 channel

When re-creating the segments, note that they shouldn’t be identical between the channels. 

• The timeframes for SMS and push notification segments should be shorter than for email. 
• Push can include custom metrics (e.g., active on app), depending on your setup. 
• The main engagement metric varies based on the channel:
  • Email uses open or click rate.
  • SMS uses click rate.
  • Push notification uses open rate.

Messaging all 3 channels together

If you’re using all 3 channels, you don’t want multiple messages going out at once. Imagine how strange it would be to get an email, text, and push notification at the same time from the same company. 

Choose a channel to prioritize sending to. Follow up via other channels a few hours later, making sure to exclude anyone who received the earlier message.

Say you’re having a winter sale on your app and website that starts at 12 p.m. The table below shows an example of how you can target different groups via your owned channels. 

Channel	Time	Audience	Message details
Push	12 p.m.	All push subscribers	“Stock up for winter before everyone else. Up to 30% off!”
SMS	1 p.m.	SMS subscribers, excluding push subscribers	“Feel warm and cozy this winter. Get 30% off now through Sunday.”
Email	4 p.m.	Engaged subscribers, excluding anyone who purchased in the last 4 hours.	“These winter deals are heating up” - Includes product photos, more information about the items, and reviews.

Additional resources

• Learn about mobile push marketing
  • Academy: adding push to your omnichannel strategy.
  • Help Center:  push notification best practices
• Get advice for building your SMS program:
  • Blog post: SMS marketing strategies for all levels [+12 Pro tips]
  • Help Center: your strategic guide to Klaviyo SMS success