Outbound digital marketing has been split between email and text messaging for some time. These have been the two most popular channels for some time because they help businesses reach the largest amount of consumers as quickly as possible. However, SMS marketing has been steadily growing in popularity, driving higher open rates and increased conversions well past what email has delivered in the past.

Below are three reasons SMS is beating out email as the top channel in digital marketing:

Brevity – Email has a reputation for being a long-form way of communicating, resulting in longer, more in-depth marketing messages. This is not a problem with text message marketing because they are constructed to be short and sweet, delivering a promotion and call to action in just 160 characters.

Frequency of use – Consumers have been able to check their email on their mobile device for several years, but not everyone has readily adopted this trend, and many still haven't upgraded to smartphones. Even among those that have, nearly 50 percent don't check their email on the device. However, almost every mobile device user in North America texts.

Standardize formats – Furthermore, not all mobile devices can process emails in the way they were meant to be seen. Email marketing messages typically include graphics to break up the text and improve engagement. However, some devices are unable to process the HTML code used in these emails properly, so they can't be read the way they were supposed to.

For businesses wishing to leverage the best marketing channel available, Swift SMS Gateway offers the tools needed to construct simple yet effective text message marketing campaigns.