For time-sensitive messages — a reservation confirmation, a reminder a few hours before doors open, a waitlist spot opening up — SMS and email are not equally effective. The channel you pick changes whether a guest actually sees the message in time to act on it.
SMS wins on speed and open rate
Text messages are read, on average, within minutes of arriving — most people don't let unread texts pile up the way they do email. That makes SMS the right channel for anything time-sensitive: confirmations, same-day reminders, and 'your waitlist table is ready' messages that need a fast response.
It's also the channel that works best on a guest's actual night out — someone standing outside a venue checking their phone is far more likely to see a text than to open an email app.
Email still has a role — just not this one
Email is well-suited to longer-form, non-urgent content: a monthly newsletter, an event announcement two weeks out, a detailed receipt. It's a worse fit for anything where a guest needs to act within the hour, simply because it competes with a much noisier inbox and doesn't carry the same urgency.
A note on compliance
SMS marketing and transactional messaging in the U.S. are regulated under TCPA and carrier-level A2P 10DLC rules — guests need to consent to receive texts, and that consent can't be a pre-checked box on your booking form. It's worth building this in from the start rather than retrofitting it later; see our guide on A2P 10DLC for the specifics.