Online shopping has skyrocketed in popularity thanks to the global reach of companies like Amazon, but there is still a major disparity between e-commerce and brick and mortar shopping that not all brands can reconcile. Some brands excel at physical retail shopping, but fail utterly when it comes to bringing that success online. Part of this challenge is in optimizing their marketing strategy, and the biggest mistake that many firms make is not leveraging the same channels they see success in for their physical location marketing.

One channel that many firms see great success in for both brick and mortar and e-commerce marketing is mobile. Text message marketing offers high-efficiency communication with consumers and  the highest open and conversion rates of any channel, allowing businesses to share promotions, personalized messages and offer customer service through one of the most popular communication mediums around.

In the past, online retailers have heavily relied on email to spread their marketing messages, but now email has become so common that the effectiveness of this marketing strategy has decreased. Inboxes are flooded with mail every day, making consumers more likely to send them to the trash without even opening them. Text messages however, have a nearly 100 percent open rate, and close to 30 percent conversion rate.

Econsultancy reports that while other industries have yet to get into the SMS service market, many e-commerce vendors have found great success doing so. With nearly every consumer in America owning a smartphone, sharing marketing messages is much easier today.

Any brand struggling to make a move into e-commerce should consider deploying a mobile text marketing strategy today.