Email vs SMS for ecommerce
Email is the default channel and SMS is the exception. Email costs little per send, carries images, product blocks and long explanations, and nobody minds several a month. SMS interrupts a person on a device they keep in their pocket, costs money per message, and gets a fast opt out when it is used for anything that could have waited.
So the split is by urgency, not by preference. If the message stops being useful in a few hours, cart recovery, a delivery problem, a restock on something they asked about, SMS earns the interruption. If the message is browsing, education, a new range or a story, it belongs in email where the reader chooses the moment. Getting this backwards is why so many stores build an SMS list and then watch it shrink.
Choose
when
- The message has more than one product, an image or an explanation in it
- You are sending regularly, such as a weekly or fortnightly campaign
- The content is educational: care guides, fit advice, how to choose
- You want to segment finely by past purchase, category or spend level
- The offer stays valid for days rather than hours
Choose
SMS
when
- The message loses its value within hours, such as a cart about to expire
- You have explicit consent collected for text messages, not just an email opt in
- Stock is limited and the customer asked to be told when it returned
- There is a delivery or order problem the customer needs to act on now
- A short window sale needs a reminder in the final hours
| Criterion | SMS | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Cost per send is small, so frequency is cheap to increase | You pay per message, so every send needs to justify itself |
| Setup effort | Templates, segments and flows, plus deliverability set up on your domain | Consent capture, country rules, quiet hours and a working opt out |
| Time to signal | A day or two per send, longer for a flow to accumulate data | Hours, since response to a text is immediate |
| Control | Full control of layout, length and how many products you show | A short line of text, a link, and one idea |
| Best for | Welcome, education, post purchase, winback, weekly campaigns | Cart recovery, back in stock, delivery updates, final hours of an offer |
| What can go wrong | Poor domain setup or heavy sending pushes messages into spam folders | One message too many, or one sent late at night, and the list opts out |
| How we measure it | Revenue per recipient by flow, and list growth against unsubscribes | Orders per message against the cost of the send, plus opt out rate |
When both apply
The best programmes run both with a rule about who speaks first. Email carries the sequence, SMS covers one or two moments inside it, and the two never say the same thing on the same day.
A practical setup is email for the whole welcome and post purchase sequence, with a single text at the sharp end of cart recovery and another for back in stock. Suppress anyone who has just received a text from the equivalent email, and keep total contact frequency visible in one place, because customers do not experience your channels separately.
Questions
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