SMS or Email Marketing in Morocco: Which Channel Has the Best Return on Investment

Faced with the pressure of management to justify every Dirham spent on acquisition or loyalty, the question of the return on investment (ROI) of the various marketing channels is critical. Which email or SMS is really the most profitable on the Moroccan market?

This is the biggest gap between the two technologies.

• Email Opening Rate (Morocco): In the B2C sectors (E-commerce, Retail), an opening rate of 15% to 25% is considered an excellent performance.With the arrival of the "Promotions" tabs on Gmail and the increasingly strict anti-spam filters, 8 out of 10 emails are literally never seen by your customers.
• SMS Opening Rate (Morocco): This is brutal but true: SMS displays a total opening rate of more than 95%. In Morocco, the SMS notification "force" attention. Except if your message is filtered by the operator, it will appear directly on the home screen of the target phone, whether it has 4G or not.

Each byte carried on the network of Maroc Telecom, Orange or inwi has a cost for the provider (interconnection cost SS7).

• About 0.01 to 0.03 MAD (or even free on flat-rate plans).
• Cost for one SMS: Between 0.48 MAD and 0.792 MAD depending on the Sender ID and plan.

The illusion of free: Sending 100,000 emails costs 1000 MAD. Sending 100,000 SMS costs 65,000 MAD (at 0.65 MAD, the Starter rate with a validated Sender ID). If you stop at the accounting cost of sending, the email has already won.

Imagine a "Private Sales: -30% today only" campaign to a base of 10,000 loyal Moroccan customers. The average basket on your site is 500 MAD, with a conversion rate per click of 2%.

The Email Scenario: - Cost of the campaign: ~100 MAD - Customers who open the email (20%) : 2 000 - Customers who click on the link (3%) : 60 - Final purchases (conversion 2%) : 1,2 sales - Revenue generated : ~600 MAD (positive ROI but ridiculous volume).

The SMS Scenario: - Cost of the campaign: ~3 500 MAD (via a SMS Bulk API) - Customers who read the SMS (95%) : 9 500 - Customers who click on the link (often between 8% and 12% for the SMS): 950 - Final purchases (conversion 2%) : 19 sales - Generated turnover: ~9 500 MAD (Net Profit of 6,000 MAD).

The SMS requires a much higher investment (CapEx), but its “Absolute Revenue” will almost always crush that of the email for urgent impulse sale.

The SMS format (160 characters) is limited, and insert a long argumentary risk of costing you 2 or 3 segments per customer.

You must use Email for: - Rich content, complex B2B, monthly newsletters. - Building brand image (Visual, HTML). - Sending invoices and PDF.

The Modern Multi-Channel Strategy (Recommendation): Do not choose the SMS "OR" Email. Use the Waterfall system.1. Send your promotional newsletter massively by Email (very low cost).2. Wait 48 hours and isolate in your CRM (or via Zapier) all Moroccan VIPs who have not opened or did not click on this email.3.Send a SMS targeted reminder ("J-1 for our private offer!") only to this subgroup (Cost controlled, fearful efficiency).

This is how the largest e-commerce players in Morocco maximize their technical ROI.