Case #066: Same list, two pipes

Case #066: Same list, two pipes

I owned a 40,000-person finance list and a single offer to push. The test: email versus SMS for the same broadcast, same week, list split evenly into two 20k halves.

Email half: cost ~$80 to send via my ESP, 22% open, 3.1% click, $940 in commissions. Effectively free to send, but the inbox is a crowded room — half my sends landed in Promotions and never got seen.

SMS half: cost $0.0075 a message, $150 to send, 94% open, 11% click, $2,180 in commissions. The phone is a room with one person in it. But it's expensive per send and one wrong move gets you a carrier filter and a dead shortcode.

Raw return: SMS more than doubled email's revenue. But factor cost and risk — email cost $80 to make $940 (11.75x on send cost), SMS cost $150 to make $2,180 (14.5x). SMS won there too, narrowly.

The real divider is reusability. I burned the SMS half's goodwill — opt-outs spiked to 4% on one send. Email I can mail twice a week for a year. SMS is a resource you spend; email is a resource you steward.

The lesson: SMS is a flare you fire once for maximum light, email is a lamp you keep refilling — monetize urgency by phone, monetize relationship by inbox.