Email Einstein Ingenious eCommerce Email Marketing by Flowium
Email Einstein Ingenious eCommerce Email Marketing by Flowium
5 Best SMS Marketing Platforms Compared
87 - This episode breaks down the pros and cons of a few of the industry’s leading SMS marketing platforms. We focus mainly on the two most powerful tools, Attentive and Klaviyo.
Vira and Alissa share their experience using both platforms and give valuable insight for you when it comes time to pick a platform to build your SMS empire. SMS has massive potential if implemented correctly, so be sure to subscribe to Email Einstein for more SMS tips & tricks coming soon!
Hello. Hello everyone. Welcome Back to episode 87 of email Einstein. Vira and Alissa here. Yay. Hey. Whoop. Whoop. We are two email marketers at an email marketing agency called Flowium. We are super passionate about email marketing and because we love what we do, we want to share our insights with you. Flowium is one of the fastest growing email marketing agencies in the world. We specialize in providing a premium, full service e commerce email marketing experience for all of our clients. Our service is tailored specifically for your business and is designed to help increase. Your online retail revenue. We deliver the right message to the right person at the right moment. That's what we're all about here at Flowium. And today's episode we are going back to my favorite topic ever. SMS marketing.
Vira:Favorite. Yay. Yeah. No, seriously, we love sms. I mean, I don't know how Alissa feels about it but when you're seeing those like numbers, when you are seeing the revenue that SMS brings, especially when it's like a powerful combo of SMS plus email. Oh my goodness, I love it. I was skeptical at first too, don't get me wrong. But when you do it right, it's a powerful, powerful tool. A few days ago I actually received the message from the brand at 2am in the morning. I don't know how they did it. Like seriously, I thought that it's like a lot that you only send between 8 and 8. And guess what? I like unsubscribed. I was pissed because it woke me up at like 2am in the morning. Like seriously you guys don't be that brand. But no, no seriously, like oh gosh. There are like two types of groups of people I guess who are sending me messages in like 2am in the morning or like 3. My, my best friend. That's totally okay. Totally fine. The brands that are like it's not cool. And the scammers, those guys.
Alissa:The scammers love to get you. Huh? Like they're like ruthless. Geez Louise.
Vira:Yeah. Today we will be talking about like different SMS services and different SMS platforms. Basically spoiler alert. We will mostly be talking about two of the biggest, one Attentive and Klaviyo. But like let me just give you a quick sort of like an intro. So when you are looking for the platform to use SMS platforms there are like gazillion of them. Like seriously. But the functionality that you need, no matter what platform you're using. So these are like the following things that you want to have in your SMS platform. First of all you want to have free incoming messages. This is like a no brainer but believe me there are some platforms that are charging you for the incoming messages. One on one and group or like bulk messaging, that's another one important. You also want to have the functionality of SMS plus mms. So MMS is like the image message, right? Ideally, not ideally but I think everyone has it nowadays. But still you need to have the auto response functionality. That's the big one, right?
Alissa:That's a huge one. That's a huge overlooked one as well. So yes, definitely.
Vira:Yeah. Because there are some platforms that are unfortunately very like manual. So you'll need to basically have a person responding to your, to your messages. That's not cool. You want to have the autoresponder response function and also you want to have the function of SMS keywords. So if someone like texts you like unsubscribe or stop or I need help or something so it would trigger the next action, right? That's important functionality as well. Link inclusions and link shorteners. That's a big one. Especially if you think about it. If you think that SMS usually has like 120 characters limit or something. Link shortener is a big one, right? Because there are some links that can be like, I don't know, like 50 characters long. You don't want that, you don't want to waste your like precious characters on the link, right? But also you want to have the functionality to pre schedule messages and like campaigns, right. Ideally you want to have that text to subscribe. Functionality and templates would be nice. And also my favorite functionality, very important. And not all of the platforms have them as like built in analytics and reporting. So that's a big one. If your Platform doesn't offer a good analytic and reporting tool. Walk another way. You know, see that toxic person. Walk another way. It's like that. I love that. Yeah, that's amazing. So basically these are the top functions that you want to have in your SMS platform. We might be biased because we work with Klaviyo. We love Klaviyo. We love how powerful it is with like the combination of SMS plus email. But we'll talk about some other platforms. Obviously we worked with Attentive as well. Some of our clients use it and it's, it's great too. So yeah. Alissa, walk us through the pros and cons of Attentive.
Alissa:So Attentive is like a huge, huge one.
Vira:The biggest probably, right?
Alissa:It is, it is probably the biggest. And let's cover the pros first. We like to be positive here. So they have excellent onboarding, like excellent. Honestly one of the best experiences that you could have on any tech platform in terms of like how detailed and complete and just Attentive the Attentive team is. Now I'm understanding the, the, the reason for the name. They make sure that every single aspect is covered when you join their platform. Honestly, like it's hands down the best. So that, and that's a huge pro, right? Because when you're joining a new tech platform you want to make sure that you're like guided through everything every step of the way. And they do that fully. They also provide you with an onboarding specialist that literally walks you through the entire process.
Vira:They do everything for you every beginning.
Alissa:I think the term that they use is like White Globe and it really is, they do an excellent, excellent job of that. The other really great thing about using them for SMS is they are an SMS first company so their focus is solely on sms, which means that they're a lot more advanced in terms of SMS features like a B testing, signup forms, multiple product features. There's a lot that they specialize in because that is what they focus on, that is their specialty. So if you're looking for someone who's going to be a real, real expert in sms, Attentive is probably going to be right at the top of your list. They will help you custom design your pop ups for your website and all of your forms for you, which is excellent. And honestly like we have a few clients internally who use Attentive for pop ups specifically and the submission rate is so high, like almost abnormally high. So whatever it is that they're doing for their opt in forms, it's working and it works really, really well. The other thing is they offer a free 30 day trial when you sign up with them or if you're interested in signing up with them. I actually have a client who just signed up that got a free 60 day trial. So I think they're the, the terms here, which is exciting. And they also have a text to subscribe functionality, which is a huge bonus as well, because you want to make it as easy as possible for your potential SMS subscribers to opt in, which is great. So those are the pros. They are the pros in the SMS industry. That's what they focus on. So when you're working with them, you're going to get excellent customer service and you're going to get people who know exactly what they're talking about, which is really important on the not so positive side. Right. The cons, they do have a pretty weak integration with other platform, such as Klaviyo, for example. They do integrate with Klaviyo, but it's not as seamless of an integration as what we would prefer to see. Mainly because they're two different platforms, each has their own reporting methods and this usually leads to duplicate attribution, which is not the most ideal situation, especially because you're trying to figure out what marketing channels are the most successful or the most highly converting for your brands and your customers. Attentive actually uses a 30 day attribution window for anyone who receives a text, which in my opinion, this is my personal opinion, that is extremely, extremely liberal. Very liberal.
Vira:It's very misleading.
Alissa:Yeah. Just because someone opens a text from you 30 days ago doesn't mean that that text message is what converts them to buy two weeks later or three weeks later. Like I think that's a bit of a stretch. Klaviyo for email uses a standard five day attribution window. But we'll talk about Klaviyo more. But for the 5 day attribution window for anyone who opened email, this can also lead to both Attentive and Klaviyo attributing same purchase to their own respective platforms. So if you're using Klaviyo for email marketing, or really any other email platform for email marketing, and then you're looping in Attentive, there is a lot of room for error when it comes to the attribution. Unless you're using like a totally separate, gosh, what is this even called? Like analytics tool, I guess that determines certain purchases and where they're attributed to. It's going to be hard for you to keep track. And usually those separate analytics tools are very costly. It requires an entire analytics team to really review everything. If you're more of a small business owner, you want to probably focus your energy into something that's going to do a lot all at once for you. The other con that we will just mention is pop up forms on the website to capture a phone number and email. They'll be in attentive format which then sends email addresses to Klaviyo. Which is great. Right? That's what you want it to do. However, the usual result from that is that email addresses are not necessarily assigned to a list as it would be the case in Klaviyo. And we're focusing on Klaviyo here because that's usually, I mean, mean we're talking to E commerce brands and that's usually the platform that we would highly recommend. But I would imagine it's probably a similar case with other email marketing platforms. There are manual workarounds for assigning a specific email to a specific list within Klaviyo, but it's not automated. So it just adds more of a complication to everything that you're doing. And it would be automated if you're shifting into another platform that's going to do SMS and email for you, which Vira, I'll let you get into that because obviously we're going to talk about Klaviyo. What a surprise. But it's a great platform. Great platform.
Vira:It is. We love Attentive too. I mean these guys, they are pros when it comes to like a B testing and like pop ups like you mentioned Alissa. It's just like for me it's more convenient to have everything in one platform. You know when like email and SMS are all housed in one platform to allow more like seamless reporting like that like attribution issue mentioned about and like messaging plan. Right. And I think I might be wrong but I think Attentive is slightly more expensive per message.
Alissa:Yes, it is. Yeah.
Vira:I need to double check that, but I'm pretty sure it is. Yeah. Okay, so let's briefly talk about Klaviyo again. Both are excellent platforms. It's just we prefer to have all of the analytics in like one place. So yeah, email and SMS are all housed in one platform. How cool it is. You can actually create a one singular flow that combines both SMS and email. First of all, it's like a more seamless experience for your customers. You don't overwhelm your customers with like different messages from like different platforms. Right. You can do the conditional flows. Say like if the person haven't open email a then send them sms. When you have like two platforms it would be like harder to build that sort of like environment. But also think about it this way you can also do the conditional thing for sms. So you are not sending SMS to everyone. You can say like if person open this emails then skip SMS or like if person converted from that email don't send them the sms. So basically you're. You're like saving money on each SMS you are sending. And when like using Attentive we wouldn't be able to like segment those messages so precisely. Right? Yeah. And the segmentation is a big one. Honestly everything that you can do like segmentation wise with emails pretty much. You can do the same with SMS in Klaviyo which is super, super convenient. Because as we already talked, as we already mentioned in our previous episodes, the more targeted message is the higher as your dollar generated per customer. So it's not always about the amount of SMS or emails you're sending but it also comes down to relevancy like how timely your message is, how relevant your message is and how basically interesting your message is. So yeah, correct attribution is another one. That 30 days versus 5 days. I totally agree with you Alissa. I don't think that 30 day attribution window is the fair, fair metric. Right. That in Klaviyo I think you have for. For everything you have five days for for SMS and for email. It's really easy to keep track of where your revenue is coming from. And it is all hosted on one platform. And I love those Klaviyo reports. They are so neat. They are so like visually pleasing but they are also very, very informative. Right. And yeah, segmentation is another one. Just as I mentioned, the more targeted messages you can deliver, the higher your revenue per recipient. So to sum up for me the biggest like perks of using versus other platforms is first of all email and SMS all housed in one platform. Then correct distribution which is a big one and the segmentation which is also the huge one. Cons. Well you are getting less support during the onboarding process. Right? I agree with you Alissa. Attentives onboarding process is probably like the best in the industry. I've never seen anything like it. They literally set everything for you. In Klaviyo it's different. You're getting less support. Yes. You can still like chat to them or you can like even call them probably. But you're not getting that like white Glove service. Although I must mention that SMS setup is a very straightforward process. It's not a rocket science. It's even like easier to set up SMS than emails. It's my personal opinion. But yeah, you're not getting that like White Glove service as you would in Attentive then design templates. Compared to Attentive you have less tools. Probably SMS designs are not like as advanced. You can still like customize things with like images and colors but you are not getting any like support from Klaviyo team. Right. And generally speaking Klaviyo is like historically an email first platform and they do have very advanced email tools but when it comes to SMS it has like less features than Attentive say. And yeah. And to get started on Klaviyo you first need to get a toll free number and it might take a few days usually it's pretty fast process but it can sometimes take like up to seven, 10 days. Right. So that's like another thing to think about. And yeah. And every SMS basically requires to have an opt out language as well. This is like a requirement of Klaviyo and you are using like characters for the opt out language. So these are just like a cons. You decide guys what is better for you. Like a separate platform or like everything, everything in one platform. We do like both of them but for the sake of having the correct attribution and having that seamless Omni platform experience, I personally pre Klaviyo. That's like my choice would be Klaviyo probably.
Alissa:Yeah, agreed, agreed, agreed, agreed. And there are obviously other popular platforms. So for example like there's a motive, there's postscript there, there are a lot of others, there's SMS bump. I think there are other platforms that you can be using without going into too much detail about every single one for the most part it's really Attentive versus Klaviyo within. Within the industry. Yeah, I mean I don't know how to say that in a not harsh way but it's just really omnichannel marketing. Marketing is becoming more and more and more popular just because it facilitates everybody's life whether you're a large business or a smaller business. And Attentive is just really leading the way in terms of like SMS platform popularity. And again it just goes back to their amazing White Glove service and the fact that they really are, that's their focus. You know, in the same way that we flow am we only focus on email marketing and now SMS marketing for our clients. That's what we specialize in. Attentive does the same thing in terms of sms.
Vira:So it's just right.
Alissa:It depends on what you're looking for. If you're looking for a kind of go to all in encompassing platform, Klaviyo is going to be your guy. And for Attentive, if you're looking for someone who really, really specializes in SMS because that's going to be a driving force for you, you want to go to Attentive for sure. So definitely something to consider as you're kind of reviewing all of them. But make sure that you do your research. As we always say, you know, like what we share on our podcast, it's really just based on our experience with clients. It's based on what we know about the industry, it's based on our level of expertise within the email and SMS marketing world. But make sure that you do the due diligence on your end and do the research and figure out what's going to work really well for brand and your brand's goals. So. Right. Yeah. Thank you guys for listening. As always, we appreciate you having.
Vira:Thank you for listening. It was, it was a quick one. It was a quick one. Not because we have nothing to say, but because we have other calls that starts in like two minutes. But also we try to deliver the information in the most, like, condensed way possible. We know that you guys are busy marketing people and busy business owners. So thank you for listening to our podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and share this podcast with your friends. And if you want to get a pair of our branded Flowium socks, go to flowium.com/socks. Leave us a podcast review, send us a screenshot and we will send you a pair of amazing, comfortable, soft.
Alissa:They`re amazing.
Vira:And beautiful.
Alissa:I haven't worn mine in a while.
Vira:I haven't worn mine in a really long time. Yeah, it's kind of sad about Summer. I'm kind of sad about summer because I love wearing those, like, funky socks so much. Yeah. So Summer, I'm not looking forward to you. Cool. So, yeah, come back next Tuesday. And Alissa, what's going to be our next episode?
Alissa:Next Tuesday we're going to be talking to Megan, who's a very special guest of ours. Oh. You'll find out more about who Megan is, but we're going to be talking to her about accessibility within the email world, which we're really excited about. This isn't a topic that we've actually covered before, but it's becoming more and more important, even like for legality reasons too. It's really important for you to make sure that your emails are accessible and some of you might be thinking, thinking like, what in the heck does that mean? Like if you have a phone or a laptop, obviously I can access my emails. That's not what we're talking about. So make sure that you come back next week so you understand what we mean by accessibility. So yeah, excited for that one. Really excited. And Megan is like fire. Like she's amazing, amazing, amazing. So make sure that you come back next week. Thank you guys as always for listening.
Vira:Thank you for listening. Bye.
