The open-rate illusion
Email marketers have long celebrated 20-30% open rates as a win. But an open is not a reply, and a reply is not a booking. In 2026, the gap between email opens and actual responses has widened as inboxes fill with automated noise. SMS, by contrast, still sees open rates above 90% and — more importantly — reply rates that email cannot touch for time-sensitive conversations.
Where SMS wins
SMS wins for anything time-sensitive or action-oriented: appointment confirmations, same-day reminders, quick qualification questions, no-show recovery. A text asking 'still OK for 2pm Thursday?' gets a yes or no in minutes. The same question by email sits unread until the decision window has closed. For service businesses whose entire model depends on getting people into slots, SMS is not optional — it is the channel.
Where email still earns its place
Email is not dead; it has a different job. Email is for the longer-form, less urgent communication: quotes, proposals, newsletters, onboarding sequences, review requests that need a link. Email gives you space and a permanent record. The mistake is using email for the urgent, short exchanges where SMS is dramatically more effective — and using SMS for the long, considered communication where email is better.
The AI orchestration layer
The answer is not choosing one channel — it is letting AI route each message to the right channel based on its purpose. A confirmation goes by SMS. A quote goes by email. A follow-up after no reply goes by the other channel to the one that was tried first. An AI workflow that orchestrates both, choosing the channel per message, outperforms a strategy that commits to either one alone.
Consent and frequency
The one risk with SMS is overuse. Because it works, it is tempting to over-send, and over-sending turns a high-response channel into a blocked number. The discipline is to reserve SMS for messages the customer genuinely wants — confirmations, reminders, replies to their enquiries — and keep marketing blasts to email. A channel that stays useful stays responsive. A channel that gets spammed stops working entirely.
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