2022 texting & SMS marketing statistics

Text message marketing has been around for several years, but in 2022, it’s experiencing a massive renaissance.

On average, 27% more businesses are using text message marketing now compared to this time last year. Consumers are open to receiving texts from businesses they care about and now want two-way interactions with the brands they love.

As more businesses adopt this burgeoning channel for its cost-efficiency and sky-high open rates, digital marketers need to get creative when it comes to competing for their target audience’s SMS inbox. Use cases for SMS marketing now span everything from abandoned cart follow-up and flash sale alerts to contest promotion and customer support. 

In homage to a digital marketing channel that continues to grow, SimpleTexting is thrilled to launch its third installment of the SMS marketing report. We surveyed 1,300+ consumers, business owners, and digital marketers to understand how these parties view texting in 2022. 

We asked consumers about their mobile habits when it comes to texting, screen time, and two-way communication with businesses. We also asked business owners and marketing managers about texting adoption, use cases, and SMS marketing budgets in 2022.

So, what percentage of businesses are texting their customers, and what do SMS opt-in rates look like today? Dig into the insights below to find out. 

Key texting & SMS marketing statistics

• 1 in 3 consumers checks their text notifications within one minute of receiving a text.
• Over half of consumers (51%) reply to a text message within 1-2 minutes.
• Over half of consumers check their text messages 11 times a day or more.
• On an average day, consumers check their text messages more than any other app on their phones.
• In 2022, 70% of consumers opted in to receive texts from businesses.
• 61% of consumers say they want the ability to text a business back.
• In 2022, 55% of businesses text their customers.
• The majority of businesses report SMS click-through rates between 20 and 35%.
• 60% of business owners who text their customers plan on increasing their SMS marketing budget in 2022.

Key consumer insights

According to survey results, 1 in 3 consumers check their text notifications within one minute of receiving a text, and 85% of consumers check their texts within 1-5 minutes of receiving a text.

When it comes to age differences, younger generations are the speediest at checking their text messages throughout the day. 44% of Gen Z consumers check their text notifications within one minute of receiving a text––that’s 27% faster than the national average. 

What do reply rates look like when zooming in on text vs. email? Consumers largely reply to an email within a few hours (35%), and for 16% of consumers, it can take a whole day or longer for them to reply.

When we look at reply rates for texting, this time radically decreases. Over half of consumers (51%) reply to a text message within 1-2 minutes, and 33% reply within 5-10 minutes.

These stats bode remarkably well for businesses interested in two-way messaging to build stronger relationships with customers, leads, and employees. 

Consumers open their text messages much more frequently than their email, and 98% of those text messages aren’t just opened––they’re read. According to survey results, 53% of consumers check their text messages 11 times a day or more––only 29% of consumers check their email at the same rate. What’s more, consumers are more likely to have push notifications turned on for text notifications than email. 

With digital marketing channels like social media, you could have the greatest marketing messaging in the world—but the algorithms only show your content to a fraction of your followers. And with email, you can spend a lot of time on design and copy that ends up in a spam folder or is just plain ignored. 

That’s why text message marketing is the ultimate medium. They’re easy to send and are almost always read by your audience.

On an average day, consumers check their text messages more than any other app on their phones––even more than social media.

77% of respondents say that checking, sending, and answering text messages is the activity that they’re most engaged with on their phones throughout the day, followed by checking social media (64%), consuming news or entertainment (50%), and listening to music or podcasts (49%).

Emailing and making phone calls trails behind, only topping mobile gaming and shopping. 

Customer receptivity to SMS marketing is growing more and more each year. In our 2021 SMS marketing report, 62% of consumers had subscribed to receive texts from businesses.

In 2022, 70% of consumers subscribe to SMS marketing, indicating a 12% year-over-year growth in opt-in rates. The majority of consumers (55%) are currently subscribed to receive texts from 1-5 businesses, largely for things like shipping notifications, appointment/reservation reminders, special offers, and promo codes. 

On the whole, consumers are most likely to receive texts from businesses in the e-commerce and retail space (52%), followed by healthcare (49%), banking/finance (47%), and travel (26%). 

E-commerce and retail work symbiotically with texting for things like order notifications, shipment tracking, sales/promotions, and post-purchase reviews. E-commerce businesses see 98% open rates and 36% click-through rates because consumers can quickly and easily find special offers in their text messages, rather than sifting through websites, email inboxes, and social media feeds for the best sales. 

What’s more, younger generations are warming to text-to-buy options with the brands they trust most, removing the need for traditional mobile checkout. 20% of Gen Z consumers say they’re likely to use a text-to-buy functionality where they can make a purchase with a business directly through text.

At the same time, consumers are likely to subscribe to text messages from hospitals, doctor’s offices, or medical clinics for helpful reminders related to appointments, prescriptions, test results, and bills. The focus of healthcare staff can then shift from administrative tasks to patient care.

The majority of consumers value two-way conversations with businesses––61% of consumers say they want the ability to text a business back largely for things like appointments, reservations, and event reminders, as well as customer service. Surprisingly, baby boomers want to text businesses back more than any other generation!  

When asking consumers, “How would you like to contact a business when you have a question,” the largest portion (41%) say through text, followed by 35% through email, and 23% through phone calls. Consumers value mobile messaging support because it’s both responsive and convenient.  Where emails and phone calls can have larger-than-life lead times, texting lets consumers get in touch with businesses quickly with minimal disruption to their days. 

Key business insights

In 2021, 42% of business owners and digital marketers texted their customers using a text messaging service. In 2022, 55% of businesses use text message marketing with their customers, indicating a 27% year-over-growth in SMS adoption.

To boot, 60% of business owners who text their customers plan on increasing their SMS marketing budget in 2022, in part because they’re seeing their opt-in rates increase as well as stronger conversion rates attached to integrated marketing campaigns that include SMS. 

Over 1 in 3 business owners (38%) are using text marketing to boost sales and offer promotions. The sense of urgency that’s synonymous with texting works particularly well for marketing efforts like special offers and time-sensitive promotions. 

SMS marketing click-through rates (CTRs) are noticeably higher than email marketing CTRs––another reason why businesses are using this channel more than others. The majority of businesses report SMS marketing click-through rates between 20 and 35%. When it comes to email marketing, 64% of business owners report rates between only 1 and 10%. Historically, the average CTR for email marketing is under 3%. 

Finally, we looked at the primary reasons why so many business owners are investing in SMS marketing. The largest portion of business owners and digital marketers (35%) said they invest because SMS marketing platforms are so easy to use. 30% say they invest because of the large mobile audience.

A large mobile audience refers to the benefit of reaching virtually anyone with a cellphone, but it also refers to the benefit of texting in bulk and the capability of reaching large groups of people at one time.  

Wrap-up

All in all, the future continues to look bright for text marketing. On average, 70% of consumers are signed up to receive texts, SMS click-through rates remain strong, and consumers want to engage in two-way messaging with the brands they love most.

Visit our success stories to see how text messaging for businesses within e-commerce, retail, education, healthcare, real estate, and technology have leveraged SimpleTexting’s text messaging service to grow their sales pipelines and beef up their digital marketing strategies.

Interested in learning more about SMS? We can get you started with text marketing in just 10 minutes. And better yet? You can try it out for free. It couldn’t be simpler! 

The statistics in this report are derived from two separate surveys. We surveyed 813 U.S. consumers across a range of demographics from April 12th to 13th, 2022, and 501 U.S. business owners and marketing managers from April 12th to 15th, 2022. Interested in texting and SMS marketing insights from previous years? View our 2020 and 2021 SMS marketing reports.