With mobile phones having become such an integral part of our daily lives, companies have learned to leverage it as one of the most cost-effective methods of engaging their clients, either through bulk SMS campaigns or push notification.

Sending personalized text messages is an excellent marketing tool if not the best medium for communication. Even today, companies continue to adjust how they send bulk text messages and push notifications to their users.

Each of the two simple, yet powerful marketing tools has its own set of advantages and disadvantages. It’s imperative that you understand what they are to create an effective mobile marketing campaign.

The Advantage of Push Notifications

There are two ways companies use push notifications to reach out to their market: by popping up on the main mobile phone screen or via a message sent to the inbox. Companies can use push notifications to send messages that contain anything from reminders to notifications of new offers and so on or pretty much anything they feel will focus their user’s attention their app.

Compared to text messages, push notifications are rather new. They are not yet what you would consider as an established method. However, many companies use it because of how effectively they can use it to engage clients.

Here are a couple of advantages of push notifications:

• It is less intrusive. Companies can send push notifications without disturbing users.
• It is no longer necessary to ask permission from a user before sending push notifications. This is because users already opted in as soon as they downloaded the application.
• Push notifications are not subject to the regulations enforced by telecommunication firms, or the Federal Communications Commission.
• Push notifications have a much longer character limit compared to SMS.

On the other hand, here are a couple of advantages of using bulk SMS:

• Push notifications work only for smartphone users and many of such notifications go unread. Meanwhile, texting is just second to talking as the most popular activity across all types of mobile phones and studies show that users read as much as 90% of all text messages after no longer than 3 minutes of receiving.
• Anyone can send a text message, even businesses without an app. It’s also very easy to run multiple campaigns using text messages as a medium.
• In conjunction with campaigns for already registered users, businesses can use SMS to promote themselves and have new users sign up for their marketing list.
• Unless users opt-out of the list, they cannot just turn SMS off. They can choose to ignore it, but most will likely read through it first. Also, with text messages your communication is not just limited to those who have your app; you can communicate with everyone on your list.
• It is possible to put links inside text messages to boost traffic on a specific website page, while you can only use push notifications to boost your app.

Generally, these two marketing platforms are used to cater to different audiences. For businesses who want to use their app to improve communication with their customers, app notifications are the best way to go. However, using bulk SMS is still the better choice because of its wider scope and ease-of-use.