Before you publish SMS marketing campaigns, you need to know what to measure. SMS metrics are crucial to understanding the performance and success of your campaigns. And SMS marketing KPIs will make sure you are always on the right track.
Marketing channels all have different KPIs, but at the end of the day, it’s important that your efforts don’t go to waste. And how to ensure that? By clearly developing SMS Marketing KPIs, and measuring whether you live up to the promise. It’s not enough to think you’re running a successful SMS campaign, you also need to define what success means for you.
Key performance indicators will tell you exactly what you need to improve, what works great, and what doesn’t. When you have that data, you’ll make smarter decisions that lead directly to higher SMS ROI and less stress and pressure.
Which SMS Marketing Metrics Are Most Important
When setting SMS marketing KPIs it’s important to know which key SMS marketing metrics are the most important in your case. Like with any other channel, SMS analytics are powerful and you can measure absolutely every one of SMS metrics. But depending on where you currently stand with SMS, you need to carefully choose SMS marketing KPIs. So which SMS metrics should you keep in mind when creating KPIs?
SMS Opt In Rates
How big is your SMS list? This is the first thing you need to analyze in order to set SMS marketing KPIs that are relevant, achievable, and growth-motivated. Maybe the first thing you need to focus on is growing your SMS list. The list growth rate is an important SMS marketing KPI, especially if you’re in the beginning stages of your journey with business texts.
Equally important to SMS opt in rates is opt out rate, which you also need to track in order to understand what your audience wants. If you have a high opt out rate after sending an SMS campaign, analyze why.
Did your subscribers expect something else? Did you meet their expectations? Do you send SMS campaigns too often so they’re overwhelmed and opted out? Maybe you’ve promised too much, but failed to deliver on that promise.
Critically thinking about the way you do SMS marketing, and comparing the actual results with SMS marketing KPIs will allow you to develop better campaigns with higher ROI in the future.
SMS Open Rates
SMS marketing open rate goes as high as 98%. You don’t want your efforts to go to waste, so after every campaign, you send out, and analyze SMS open rates in a 24 hours timeframe. SMS marketing benchmarks for open rates are between 90% and 98%, so based on your results, think about what you can do differently.
When setting SMS marketing KPIs, the first thing you need to ensure is that people actually open your campaigns. Because of that, aim for at least 90% SMS open rates and find ways to continuously achieve that.
Pro tip: To achieve higher SMS open rates focus on the first few words of your SMS campaign. Make them as enticing and persuasive as possible and people will gladly open them.
SMS Marketing Response Rates
If you’re using 2-way SMS, where subscribers can both send and receive SMS from your business, you need to track SMS marketing response rates as well. Not every SMS campaign will require this, but when responses are crucial for success, you need to make it as engaging as possible.
By focusing on SMS marketing response rates as key performance indicators, you’ll learn a lot about your audience, their habits, and the expectations they have from your company. Don’t let them down, but use this data to your advantage to make even better campaigns.
Pro tip: Test persuasive CTAs, and ask engaging questions that are simple to respond to. This will increase your SMS marketing response rate, and create brand loyalty among your subscribers.
SMS Marketing KPI: Increase Average Order Value
Once your SMS campaigns are running smoothly and you see some results, it’s time to focus on KPIs such as average order value and how to increase it. If you want to see high ROI for your SMS marketing efforts, it’s not enough to focus on conversions only. You need to know exactly how much money people spent because they loved your SMS marketing campaign.
Average Order Value is one of the most important SMS marketing KPIs, and you can calculate it by dividing the total amount of money people (who came to the website due to SMS marketing campaign) spent on the website and dividing it by the number of orders.
SMS Marketing KPI: Lower Cost Per Subscriber
To achieve higher ROI, you need to have the cost per subscriber as low as possible. At the beginning of your SMS marketing journey, it’s completely normal to test things out and have a higher cost per subscriber. But later on, when you have the data and you know which tactics are performing better, aim for the cost per subscriber to be as low as possible and track it as an SMS marketing KPI.
How Much Does SMS Marketing Cost
To properly measure SMS Marketing ROI, you need to know how much SMS marketing costs. Obviously, the goal is to earn more than you invest.
SMS marketing cost depends heavily on the volume, and if you have a ballpark figure of how many messages you’ll send monthly, our pricing will tell you a 99% accurate cost. The cost of SMS marketing is approximately less than $0,1 per SMS, which is quite cheap, considering the fact that you’re reaching your target audience immediately and effectively.
Compared to other channels, where you have to compete with hundreds of thousands of other businesses who bid for the same ads, SMS marketing is a powerful channel you can utilize now and enjoy the fruits of your labor crazy fast.
Measure SMS Marketing ROI
One SMS marketing KPI to rule them all – good ol’ ROI. Are you wasting your money, or investing wisely? SMS ROI highly depends on other SMS marketing KPIs we’ve mentioned, but at the end of the day you need to know exactly whether SMS is the lucrative channel or not.
It all comes down to whether your profit is greater than your investment, and that’s how you calculate SMS ROI. So put every expense on paper, such as cost per subscriber and cost per SMS, and see whether it makes sense for your business to invest further in bulk SMS marketing.
Pro tip: If you’re just starting out, it can take some time to get used to text marketing and get greater SMS ROI. But compared to other channels, SMS doesn’t have a steep learning curve. Learn the basics and use SMS analytics wisely and you’re good to go!
Explain Effectiveness with SMS Marketing Report
With Emitto, you can track all your SMS marketing KPIs and always see whether you’re reaching your goals.
Our powerful built-in analytics offer you all SMS metrics at a glance. You’ll know everything from the number of subscribers to click-through rate and be able to analyze and optimize your SMS marketing KPIs according to data.
With the super simple dashboard, you’re only a few clicks away from creating an SMS marketing report that will clearly explain the benefits of bulk SMS marketing to decision-makers. And they’ll know that investing in SMS marketing is a step in the right direction.
