Every day, growth teams make choices about whether to send a message to a segment of contacts. Do we have enough information on their interests and product usage to warrant an outreach? Or is the message brief enough for an SMS or push notification? Perhaps there's too much to convey, requiring more detail and supporting information, so we opt for an email instead.

Lifecycle marketers are constantly testing these social norms and standards, using a scientific approach to discover which communication strategies elicit positive responses from customers. While numerous variables affect the success of a message—content, timing, industry, customer preferences, etc.—today, we're going to focus on the messaging channel. We'll look at some recent data and then explore the strengths, weaknesses, and ideal scenarios for emails, SMS, push, and in-app messaging.

Email

While email has been around for over half a century, it remains the top channel of lifecycle marketing with the total number of emailable people projected to increase to 4.73 billion in 2026 (up from 4.26 in 2022). Market share for email marketing is also projected to continue increasing from $8.3 billion to $18.9 billion by 2028, as marketers continue to see it as a positive ROI channel. In a 2023 poll, 52% of marketers reported doubling their investment on email marketing campaigns, and we suspect that a majority of the other 48% weren’t fully optimized. The ease of customizing, testing, and tracking email campaigns means there is always more juice to squeeze from the preeminent lifecycle marketing channel.

Strengths

📬 Personalized: Easily create dynamic messages based individual customer attributes, behaviors, or segment membership

🖼️ Complexity: Allows for detailed information and multimedia

🌐 Broad Reach: Can be sent to a wide audience

💸 Cost-Effective: Low cost per message delivered

Weaknesses

🚫 Deliverability: Risk of being marked as spam or filtered into rarely checked folders

📉 Engagement: Lower interaction compared to other channels

📥 Overload: Higher frequency can lead to negative perceptions

Use Cases

📰 Newsletters: Regular updates and curated content

📜 Dynamic: Supports short & long-form content, guides, and reports

💼 Promotions: Send personalized offers, discounts, and time-sensitive announcements

👋 Onboarding: Build trust with new leads, and help new customers navigate your full product offering

SMS

Compared to email, SMS is still a developing channel for growth teams, with global ad spend projected to reach $0.79 billion in 2024, roughly 40% of which comes from the US market. SMS is becoming adopted more by lifecycle marketers as 80% of businesses are using SMS to communicate with customers, up from 55% in 2022, and total SMS marketing spend is projected to continue growing by 1.95% annually. However, not all SMS messages are well received, as a 2023 poll by Validity found that 96% of respondents were occasionally annoyed by SMS messages, leading 56% of respondents to report having purchased less or stopped buying from a brand altogether because of annoying messages. Tech startups and internet technology companies must take a careful and conscientious approach when communicating with their customers via SMS and save it for business-critical, or highly relevant use cases for it to be effective.

Strengths

⚡ Immediate: Perceived as urgent, and drives immediate engagement

✉️ Simplicity: Short, clear messages with a strong call to action

👀 Visibility: High likelihood of being seen (90%+ read rates!)

Weaknesses

🚨 Intrusive: Can be perceived as invasive if sent frequently or timed poorly

✂️ Limited Content: Restrictive character limit to stay within the baseline cost per message

💰 Cost: Higher cost per message compared to email or push notifications (free)

Use Cases

⏰ Urgent Notifications: Important updates and time-sensitive call-to-actions

🗓️ Reminders: Shipment trackers, cart reminders, payment due alerts, etc.

🌐 Increase Reach: Use as an additional channel to engage customers that don’t open or unsubscribe from email

🔒 Verification: Identity authentication and registration confirmations

Push Notifications

Push notifications are a great channel for communicating with people who have downloaded an app and have opted-in to receive notifications (global opt-in rate is 60%). The ability to scalably send instant, personalized, and contextual messages at no cost is a utility that tech companies have been increasingly leveraging to drive app adoption and engagement. However, like SMS, the directness of push notifications can be seen as intrusive, as customer support company Helplama found that 43% of users will opt out if they receive 2-5 weekly push notifications, while 64% of users will stop using or delete the app if they receive more than 5 weekly. Therefore, optimizing your push notifications for relevancy and utility is essential, as Business of Apps found that advanced targeting saw a 300% boost in customer reaction rates, while personalization saw a 400% increase.

Strengths

⚡️ Immediate: Instant delivery to the user’s device

🔔 Engagement: Helps build habits, and supports re-engagement tactics

🎯 Personalization: Made to be highly personalized based on user’s app behavior

💰 Cost: It’s free to send push notifications!

Weaknesses

🚨 Intrusive: Like SMS, it can be perceived as annoying if overused or timed poorly

✅ Opt-In Required: Only reaches users who have the app and have enabled notifications

✂️ Limited Content: Short, concise messages

Use Cases

🔎 Discovery: Help users find utility through feature education

📈 Engagement: Get inactive users back into the app with a quick tap

🆕 Updates: New features, or relevant app updates based on user behavior

⏰ Reminders: Event reminders, activity alerts

In-App/On-site Messaging

In-app/On-site messaging is one of the most effective channels for communicating with customers, as it occurs within a brand’s native digital environment. In-app messages can be further adjusted for intrusiveness by choosing whether a message appears in a special notifications inbox section of the app (less intrusive), a pop-up message, or overlay the entire product experience (more intrusive). The ability to send highly personalized messages based on user actions within an app, and grab attention while the user is in the context of using the app, results in higher engagement rates than other channels. A study by marketing agency Reckless found that in-app messages have a 75% open rate, which is over 45 times higher than email and nearly three times higher than push notifications. Additionally, a 2019 study by Braze reported interaction rates of 13.58% for email, 4.49% for push notifications, and 39.88% for in-app messages, making in-app messaging by far the most engaged channel. Businesses that have the opportunity to engage with their customers via in-app messages should therefore take full advantage.

Strengths

🔔 Awareness: Drive awareness to important messages, like price updates or new terms and conditions

📍Contextual: Messages are delivered while the user is in the app, or customer is browsing the website

🎯 Targeted: Messages can be triggered based on user interactions, and can be presented on specific pages of the site/app

🎨 Interactive: Can include rich media, forms, and interactive experiences

Weaknesses

📉 Limited Reach: Only reaches active app users or website visitors

📵 Dependence on App Use: Effectiveness depends on app engagement

😡Disruptive: Can be disruptive to the user experience if it’s placed and timed poorly

Use Cases

👋 Onboarding: Deliver guided product onboarding tours, tips, and tutorials

📝 Feedback: Get high survey response rates to collect more user data

✍️ Lead Capture: Encourage leads to sign up for special deals, or collect interest in upcoming product releases

💎 Promotions: Serve special deals to get returning customers to purchase again

Streamline Your Channels into Unified Customer Journeys

While each communication channel has its own best practices, there are always exceptions. For instance, WhatsApp messaging might be ideal for travel companies, or SMS could be perfect for notifying a customer when a product they tried to purchase is back in stock. However, for most businesses, the key to success lies in integrating these channels into a seamless customer journey that leverages the unique strengths of each—Braze found that multi-channel messaging can increase customer retention by up to 130%.

To optimize your communication strategy and tailor channels to your customer base, Contact Us to schedule a free consultation. Let’s build a cohesive strategy that drives engagement and enhances your customer experience.