Adapting Your Email Marketing Strategy after iOS 15: Why Texting is More Important Than Ever

Email marketing has been a powerful tool for charities and non-profits to connect with their supporters and donors to drive engagement and donations for years. Following the release of iOS 15, the game has changed. The new update brought significant changes to email tracking and privacy, making it more challenging for marketers to gauge their email campaign’s success. However, there’s one channel that’s become more critical than ever: text (SMS). With an open rate of 98%, text messages are a reliable way to reach customers instantly, but with Apple’s iOS 15 update, they have become even more critical. In this article, we’ll explore why text is the future of marketing communication, how to create an effective text marketing campaign, and what you need to know to ensure your message is heard loud and clear amidst the noise of other marketing efforts. Let’s dive in and discover how to adapt your email marketing strategy following the iOS 15 release and leverage the power of text.

Overview of iOS 15 and its impact on email marketing

iOS 15 was the September 2021 operating system update for Apple’s mobile devices, and it brought several changes that impacted email marketing. One of the most significant changes was the introduction of Mail Privacy Protection, which hides the user’s IP address and location information from email senders. This feature prevents email marketers from tracking users’ open rates, device usage, and location, making it more challenging to gauge campaign success. Additionally, iOS 15 introduced a new feature that allows users to hide their email addresses, making it harder for businesses to collect customer data.
The impact of these changes on email marketing is significant. Marketers have needed to find new ways to measure the success of their campaigns and ensure they are targeting the right audience. Fortunately, SMS marketing provides an effective alternative to email marketing that can help charities connect with their supporters.

The importance of text marketing

Text marketing has always been an essential component of any marketing strategy, but with the changes brought by iOS 15, it’s become even more important. SMS messages have a 98% open rate, with 90% of messages being read within the first three minutes of delivery. This level of engagement is unrivaled by any other marketing channel, making it a powerful tool for organizations to connect with their customers.

Benefits of incorporating text into your email marketing strategy

Incorporating text into your email marketing strategy can provide several benefits. First, text messages provide an immediate connection with your audience, ensuring that they receive timely updates and information. Second, text messages have a higher open rate than emails, ensuring that your message is seen. Third, text messages act as reminders or notifications that prompt your supporters into action. Stratcom clients regularly report a spike of activity on their other channels such as websites and social media whenever they send out a text broadcast.

By combining text and email marketing efforts, you can create a comprehensive marketing strategy that reaches your audience on multiple channels and ensures that your message is heard loud and clear.

How to effectively use text in email marketing

To effectively use text in email marketing, it’s important to follow a few best practices. First, you should ensure that your text messages are relevant and timely. Text messages should provide recipients with useful information or updates that they need to know. Second, you should ensure that your text messages are personalized. Personalization can increase engagement rates and make recipients feel valued. Stratcom’s text platform, Prompt.io can add the name of each supporter to a text using a variable field. Third, you should ensure that your text messages are concise and easy to read. Text messages have a limited character count, so it’s important to ensure that your message is clear and concise. However, Prompt.io can create links to micro-landing pages where you can mirror the content from your email message.

Best practices for text and email marketing integration

Integrating text and email marketing efforts requires a strategic approach. First, you should ensure that your messaging is consistent across channels. Consistency ensures that your audience have a clear understanding of your message and are more likely to take action. Second, you should ensure that you are targeting the right audience. Segmenting your audience based on their interests or behaviors can help you create targeted campaigns that resonate with them. Third, you should ensure that you are providing value to recipients. Providing value can increase engagement rates and ensure that recipients remain loyal.

How to measure the success of your text and email marketing efforts

Measuring the success of text and email marketing efforts requires businesses to track specific metrics. For email marketing, businesses can track open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates. For text marketing, businesses can track delivery rates and reply rates. By tracking these metrics, you can gain insights into the effectiveness of your campaigns and make data-driven decisions to improve your marketing efforts.

Prompt.io: Stratcom’s SMS platform

Stratcom has partnered with Prompt.io, a next generation text messaging platform, that allows you to create, automate, and personalize conversations that deepen relationships, collect data, and lead to action.

Prompt.io is a highly customizable, feature-rich platform that allows users to launch text campaigns that are automated (A2P), peer-to-peer (P2P), or a hybrid of the two. You can also easily set up autoreplies based on keywords to streamline the supporter journey. Prompt.io’s other unique offerings include “Instant Apps”, microsites easily built within the Prompt.io platform to push respondents from text to online, and integrations with a wide range of CRMs and applications, such as NationBuilder, Blackbaud, Salesforce, and Google Maps, for seamless data management and other cutting-edge functionalities.

Conclusion: The future of email marketing with iOS 15 and SMS integration

In conclusion, the changes brought by iOS 15 make it more challenging for charities and non-profits to measure the success of their email marketing campaigns. However, text marketing provides an effective alternative and supplement that can help organizations connect with their audience and drive conversions The future of email marketing is in text integration, and organizations that incorporate text into their marketing strategy will have a competitive advantage in the years to come.