Are Email and SMS Interchangeable?

A colleague of mine forwarded on to me the recent press release from Message Systems announcing their new product Mobile Momemtum™. In case you've not heard of it yet, it is "a single-platform solution that enables multichannel communication by making it possible to send and receive SMS messages, and then dynamically transform these messages to or from email."

Sez Message Systems in their press release:

"Mobile Momentum affords a critical point of difference over competitors in a multichannel era where customers expect to get messages how, where and when they want them. Now with Mobile Momentum, these companies can seamlessly initiate communication across the customers' channel of choice, immediately transform that message into another channel in the e3vent of non-delivery, and keep the dialog alive with follow-on messages in the channel the customer responds through. And they can do all this on a single-highly scalable and flexible platform that saves them money. The net benefits are: higher short-term revenue, greater lifetime value resulting from improved customer satisfaction, and a lower total cost of ownership (TCO)."

For those of you new to email marketing, Message Systems has become the de-facto standard for mail transfer agents (MTAs) that send emails through the Internet to your ISP - or to your company. It would seem that they are taking their expertise in SMTP - the protocol used for email delivery - and extending it to SMPP - the protocol used for SMS (or text message) delivery.

Let's first consider the pros of their new offering:

1. Makes good technical sense to take a simple message and translate it back and forth between the two protocols. As they mention in their value proposition, it totally makes sense to have a single platform for both email and SMS since cross-channel marketing is emerging as a highly effective marketing strategy.


2. A good application for simple alerts where the message is simple and transportable between plain text email and SMS (plain text message with 160-character limit). To this point, Mobile Momentum would be good for simple transportable alert messages like flight status updates, broadcast notifications (like "Come pick up your kids," or "Your dry cleaning is ready"), or appointment reminders.


3. It may be a good way to jumpstart SMS messaging if you are an Email Service Provider (ESP) already using Message Systems to deliver emails on behalf of your clients.
   

That having been said, I remain dubious regarding their product positioning for the following reasons:

1. It doesn't make good practical sense because text messages are limited to 160 characters while emails are not. As I mentioned above, the only types of messages that are interchangeable between email and SMS are those types of messages that should be text messages in the first place: short, simple alerts.


2. Effective promotional emails tend to be graphical whereas SMS is plain text. Once again, this means that the only messages that are good for this type of interchangeabilty are messages that should actually be SMS messages in the first place.


3. They are missing the point regarding the distinct advantages of email and SMS. The difference between email and SMS is not just the protocol of transmission, as Message Systems seems to imply. Email and SMS are different; each has their own strengths and weaknesses and they are highly complementary - not necessarily interchangeable. I discussed this unique complementary role in a recent blog post.


4. Rules for promotional SMS messages are very different than those for email. Wireless carriers mandate that certain verbiage be included in all promotional SMS messages. While CAN-SPAM and ISPs do have guidelines as to what can and cannot be said, there is no such thing as mandatory verbiage in a promotional email. Once again, Mobile Momentum's value proposition of interchangeability between email and SMS is relegated to simple text alerts that really should be text messages anyway.
   

So from my perspective as an online marketer, Mobile Momentum is a non-starter. Email and SMS are not interchangeable. They are, however, highly complementary. Email is a rich platform that marketers use to tell their story. SMS is the perfect platform to remind people of that story.

So how 'bout it? Are email and SMS interchangeable for situations other than the ones I've already mentioned? Leave me a comment. I'd love to hear from you.