What Is a Good Click Rate for SMS Marketing
- Harrison Baron
- Jul 15, 2024
- 6 min read
Look.
Texting is the number one contact method for customer satisfaction.
Yup!
Your target audience would prefer to open SMS messages than read emails or social media posts. Still, you must know how to run an effective SMS marketing campaign to achieve a positive experience, in this case, a high open-rate.
This post will discuss SMS messaging and how you can drive a good click-through rate.
Let’s get cracking!
What Is SMS Marketing?
SMS marketing refers to how your business communicates with its customers via text messages about promotions, updates, news, flash sales, and more.
To run an SMS marketing campaign, the customer has to opt-in. In other words, you must have a customer’s permission to send them text messages.
What is a Click-Through Rate (CTR)?
A click-through rate (CTR) refers to the percentage of customers that have clicked on a hyperlink in your SMS texts.
For instance, if 20 customers receive your SMSs and 5 clicks on the hyperlink contained in the message, your CTR would be 25%.
Why Are Businesses Hesitant to Using SMS Marketing?
Several myths prevent business owners from leveraging SMS marketing to grow their brands.
In fact, these could be reasons you’re not running an SMS marketing campaign yet.
SMS Marketing Isn’t As Effective as Any Other Digital Marketing Strategy
Sure, sending marketing emails to prospects is a good strategy to draw potential customers in. With an average return on investment (ROI) of 40%, it is not surprising that many businesses prefer it to most marketing methods.
Well, guess what? SMS marketing has a higher open and conversion rate average than email marketing. Sounds a little bit far-fetched?
Think about it. The average CTR rate for an email campaign is 6 to 7%. On the other hand, text messages have an average CTR of 45%.
That’s a huge difference right there!
SMS Marketing Doesn’t Work if you’re Targeting an Older Demographic
Older adults don’t use smartphones, right? Wrong. According to SMS marketing statistics, 67% of adults above 50 years old own a smartphone. Only a measly 6% don’t use cell phones at all.
What’s more, an average person goes through their phone 85 to 150 times a day! And the beauty of it is that your older audience doesn’t even have to be on social media. All they require is a basic phone and the ability to read SMSes.
Commercial Text Messages are a Bother to Your Customers
As long as you don’t bombard your prospects with messages, many customers won’t mind clicking through your offer.
In fact, 75% of people say they’d like to receive offers through SMSes. Besides, 66% of customers who’ve subscribed to a brand’s SMS marketing list have bought something after a single message!
Also Read: What Are The Best Tools To Help MSPs?
Managing SMS Promotions is Cumbersome
Managing SMS marketing campaigns isn’t one of the hardest things to do.
You can use an SMS marketing platform such as Text Request to stay on top of things.
The software allows you to send messages, respond to queries, store your prospect’s details and track your campaign’s progress straight from your laptop or mobile device.
How to Properly Measure Average SMS Click-Through Rates
As an SMS marketer, tracking the right metrics is crucial.
While the metrics may vary depending on your business goal, some elements remain the same irrespective of your objective or niche. These are:
Measure Your List’s Growth Rate
Your list growth represents how fast your subscriber lists are growing. You can calculate the rate on a weekly, monthly, or yearly basis. A steady growth indicates a positive customer experience and, by extension, a positive ROI.
Here’s the formula to calculate your growth rate:
Previous subscribers – Current subscribers
____________________________________
Previous subscribers
Monitor Your Click-through Rate
For starters, the click-through rate isn’t the same as the response rate.
Response rate represents the number of people who’ve opened your SMS but haven’t clicked on the link within the message.
Click-through rate, as stated, is the percentage of people who’ve engaged with your message by clicking on the link in your SMS.
You can use tools like Google Analytics to track the number of unique clicks that your SMS campaigns have generated. With this figure, you can calculate your CTR as follows:
Number of clicks
_________________________ X 100
Number of delivered SMSes
Check Your Opt-out Rate
Some customers will opt out of your campaign irrespective of how good your SMS marketing software or messages to customers are.
However, a high opt-out rate isn’t a good sign. It could indicate problems with your campaign like poor timing, high frequency, wrong target audience, or irrelevant message content.
So, be sure to monitor your opt-out rates to enable you to test which text works the best for your campaign.
Measure Your SMS Conversion Rate
Conversion represents the percentage of the target audience that takes valuable action by responding to your call to action.
They can do this by signing up, calling, replying, visiting your online store, or simply buying your product.
Measuring your conversion rate allows you to understand better the products, services, or offers that are engaging your prospects and bringing in conversions.
You can calculate your conversion rate as follows:
Number of subscribers that take action
_________________________________
Total number of subscribers
Check the Cost Per Redeeming Subscriber
Before you declare your SMS marketing campaign a success, you must determine the cost of each lead and whether it’s profitable.
That way, you can know your earnings per message and, by extension, enable you to create realistic SMS marketing budgets.
You can calculate your SMS marketing cost as follows:
Message cost of each delivered SMS
_______________________________
Conversion rate
How to Increase SMS Marketing Click-through Rates
Now that you know the metrics to monitor, let’s look at some strategies that you can leverage to improve these metrics to generate better results from your SMS marketing efforts.
Re-evaluate Your Promotional Messages
What you talk about in your message marketing campaign can affect your response, unsubscribe rates, and conversion rates. Start by segmenting your prospects based on behaviors, interests, and how they subscribed to your list.
That way, you can use the info you need to create SMSes and special offers that’ll draw more subscribers and clicks.
Check your Call-to-Action (CTA)
Crafting a compelling yet persuasive CTA is critical to generating clicks and can trigger an increase in conversion rates. So, create a CTA that provides values, draws attention, and creates a sense of agency. Some CTAs you may consider trying out include:
Shop now
Opt-in
Text to win
Get started
Send Your SMSes at the Right Time
The time you send your marketing SMS can affect the response rates. If you send promotional messages for exclusive offers on pizza at 6:00 AM, chances are, the engagement rates will be significantly lower.
According to research, the best time to send marketing texts on weekdays is 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM and 2:00 PM to 4.00 PM.
While the timing may vary depending on factors like time zones and location, it would be best to check what time your target audience is likely to open your SMS and, most importantly, take the desired action.
Tweak Your Offers
It makes perfect sense to test several offers to see how they impact your click-through rate and conversions.
The idea is to send persuasive offers that trigger the desires. Some offers may want to try out include:
Bonus when you upgrade
Discount on next purchase
Get a Free product
Additional samples
Extra reward points or cash
So, What’s a Good Click Rate for an SMS Campaign?
Well, the truth is, it depends on your business, what you’re promoting, and the frequency of sending the SMSes. Signal, for instance, ran an SMS marketing campaign in 2012 and found that their average click-through rate was 6.16%.
The company collected data from 20 different campaigns varying from 5,000 to 2.5 million subscribers.
On the other hand, A Dynamic report claimed the SMS marketing CTR is about 4%, averaging 8% for retail and 14% for entertainment. The company analyzed hundreds of thousands of SMS transactions across 1,500 networks and 42 mobile operating systems in several countries.
Final Thoughts
The CTR for SMS marketing messages may vary based on the aforementioned factors.
However, that doesn’t take away the fact that SMS marketing is an excellent way to boost sales, increase reach and win new customers.
The secret lies in reviewing your SMS marketing strategy from time to time to check what’s working and what’s not,
So, set your goals, understand your target audience, and gather the data you need to create and run an effective SMS campaign.
You don’t have to be a marketing nerd to succeed with your SMS marketing program. All you need to do is create a robust SMS strategy.
To your success!