Jimmy Kim argues SMS should be sent far less often than email because it interrupts users with vibrations and sounds, while email sits quietly in an inbox. One bad SMS can trigger opt-outs, spam reports, and carrier-level deliverability problems. The cost of a mistake is much higher on SMS.
On SMS, you should send less than you think. All right, will you expand on that? Because I think this contradicts about what we talk about in terms of email frequency. It so does. And that's the point, 'cause SMS is fundamentally just such a different channel and people treat it like email with a phone number and it's absolutely not. All right, all right, walk me through this. Okay, sure. So email is a permission-based channel where people skim their inboxes once or twice a day. But SMS is like this interruption channel where the phone vibrates or dings in their pocket. And cost of a bad SMS is way higher than a cost of bad email because when the phone literally interrupts them, well, they get the attention and they get angry at the brand where a bad email just kind of gets ignored and a bad SMS, well, they're going to opt out from that or worse, get reported as spam, which can cause like a carrier-level deliverability problem that I've seen too.
