Problem: emails drowned in the mass, inert prospects
Every day, your prospects receive dozens of emails: newsletters, promotions, commercial solicitations… Their inboxes are overflowing, and your own messages are going unnoticed. B2B open rates average around 20% – a large proportion of your target audience no longer even reads your mailings. As a result, prospects go numb: they no longer interact with your campaigns, and your emails remain dead letters. Attempting to remedy this situation by sending ever more emails risksexacerbating the saturation. Your recipients end up losing interest, even labeling you as “just another spammer”. It becomes urgent to find a different approach to wake up these inactive contacts and rekindle their interest.
False solutions: what we’ve all tried before (in vain)
Faced with prospects’ inertia, the temptation is strong to increase the pace or change details, hoping for a miracle. Among the false good ideas often tested:
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Multiplying email blasts: bombarding the inbox in the hope of “forcing” attention. In reality, this worsens saturation and accelerates disengagement.
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Constantly changing the subject or design of your messages: looking for the magic formula that’s guaranteed to get people to open. These adjustments have a limited impact as long as the over-solicitation is not resolved.
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Relaunching via the same channel, without personalization: repeating the same message to non-respondents. This blind repetition tires more than it convinces.
These attempts rarely result in significant gains. Why? Because they remain confined to a single channel and don’t fundamentally change the approach. By continuing in this way, you hope for a different result without changing your strategy – in vain. Admittedly, the problem lies not in the form of your e-mails, but in the single-channel approach itself.
The real way forward: synchronizing email and SMS channels
To breathe new life into your campaigns and re-engage your prospects, the solution lies in multi-channel. More precisely, coupling SMS and email in a coherent sequence. Rather than relying entirely on email, or carrying out isolated actions, we orchestrate coordinated mailings between these two channels.
Why this SMS/Email duo? Because it combines the best of each channel. Email lets you share rich, detailed content – it’s the ideal medium for in-depth information. SMS offers instant reach: it’s read within minutes on the mobile. Synchronizing the two ensures that your key message is both seen and understood by the prospect.
In concrete terms, you need to define a contact scenario in which each message has a precise role and optimized timing. For example, after an informative email, schedule a targeted SMS reminder a few days later for those who haven’t opened it. Intelligently alternating channels in this way helps to wake prospects up from their torpor and guide them step by step through your conversion tunnel. Used sparingly, this duo will pleasantly surprise prospects and set you apart from the competition – without inundating them with messages.
Two channels with complementary strengths
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Email excels at informing and convincing on substance. It can detail a value proposition, integrate visuals and links, and personalize content to suit the target audience. Its downside: it can easily be ignored or relegated to the background in a cluttered inbox.
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SMS shines for its immediate impact. 90% of text messages are read within minutes of receipt. An SMS is short, to the point and captures attention in the moment – ideal for alerting, reminding of a deadline or creating a sense of urgency. On the other hand, the message needs to be brief and not go into too much detail.
By combining the two, you combine impact and precision. SMS delivers the key information instantly, while email provides the context and details to convince. One gives the alert, the other deploys the argument. Together, they create a more effective harmony than each channel on its own.
5 practical strategies for combining SMS and email
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Remind non-openers by SMS (D+3) – A few days after an unopened emailing, send a reminder SMS (rather than resending the same email). For example: “Just a reminder: you might be interested in our special offer. Check your emails or contact us to find out more”. This express reminder will encourage the prospect to finally take a look at your message.
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Accompany an important email with an SMS alert – For an important email (sales proposal, VIP invitation…), add an SMS alert so it doesn’t go unnoticed. Keep the message brief: “[Company]: you have received an important email concerning [subject]. Please check it as soon as possible”. This text message signals that a valuable message is waiting in the prospect’s mailbox.
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Use SMS as an event reminder – The day before or the morning of an event (webinar, online demo…), an SMS reminder ensures that your registrants don’t forget the appointment. For example: “Reminder: the webinar “[Title]” starts at 10am. The login link is in your email”. This reminder increases participation rates by reminding you of key information at the right time.
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SMS confirmation of an action carried out via email – After an email registration or download, a confirmation SMS can be used to thank the prospect and immediately validate their action. For example: “Thank you for registering! All the details are waiting for you in your mailbox”. The contact is reassured immediately, even if he hasn’t yet seen the confirmation email.
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Manage urgent communication: Simultaneous SMS + email – In an emergency, combine an immediate SMS alert with a detailed email sent almost simultaneously. For example: “[Urgent] [Company]: please read the important email we have just sent you concerning [subject]”. The SMS ensures that the critical information is seen right away, the email provides the full context.
These five strategies show how SMS and email work in tandem to dramatically improve the effectiveness of your campaigns. Each one corresponds to a frequent use case in B2B prospecting, from reviving dormant contacts to increasing event attendance. The key is to add value to each message, avoid redundancy, and choose the right timing for each channel.
Going further: integrating other channels
The SMS/Email duo is an excellent start to energize your sequences. But you can go even further by integrating other channels. For example, a phone call to a highly committed prospect (identified using Ediware scoring ) will provide the decisive human touch to close the deal. Similarly, a personalized postal letter sent to a VIP target will leave a lasting impression – precisely because this gesture has become rare today. These more expensive channels should remain the exception, but used at the right time, they further strengthen the relationship forged by email and SMS. The important thing is to maintain overall coherence: each point of contact forms part of the same narrative and reinforces each other, without ever overwhelming the prospect.
By orchestrating all these levers on a single platform like Ediware, you can ensure consistency and seamless coordination. Email, SMS, call, mail – each channel has its place in guiding the prospect from first contact through to appointment or purchase.
To conclude, test SMS/Email coupling with Ediware
In B2B, getting your prospects out of their inertia requires aninnovative approach. The SMS/email coupling strategies we’ve just seen show how a well thought-out multi-channel approach can make all the difference. By combining theimmediacy of SMS with the richness of email, then adding other channels if necessary, you multiply your points of contact and maximize your chances of conversion.
Of course, orchestrating such scenarios manually would be complex. That’s where a specialized platform like Ediware comes into its own. Ediware centralizes your communications and automates these multi-channel scenarios, with functions for automatic reminders, multi-channel campaigns and scoring to prioritize your actions. In just a few clicks, you can define your personalized paths – for example, “if email not opened after 3 days, then SMS reminder”. You stay in control of your strategy, and the platform executes the right actions at the right time.
Don’t let your emails go to waste. Innovate by combining SMS and email, test these concrete strategies and adapt them to your context. Your prospects will notice this multi-channel attention, and your results will be all the better for it. It’s time to take action: why not try orchestrating these sequences with Ediware right now? You’ll gain in responsiveness and sales performance.