Businesses that text are 217% more successful than those that don’t [2023 study]

Businesses that text customers are 217.33% more likely to report success than businesses that don’t use text messaging.

That’s a new finding derived from the original data in SimpleTexting’s State of Texting and SMS Marketing 2023 proprietary research study.

Exactly 400 unique businesses participated in this study, with data provided by 292 business owners and 108 marketing managers, all based in the United States. This sample was not derived from SimpleTexting’s customer or audience base but through a third-party provider.

P.S. Want a look at our latest data? Check out the 2024 report.

In demand: Consumers want businesses to text them

💡 Key finding: Businesses that text are 2.17 times more likely to report marketing success.

In 2021, 62% of consumers had subscribed to receive texts from at least one business. In 2023, 71% of customers have subscribed to receive texts from businesses.

That’s a 14% increase in adoption with more consumers who are:

1. Aware they can get text messages from businesses.
2. Willing to receive texts, with 52.6% wanting one every other week.

To summarize: The majority of your audience is likely open to getting text messages from your business.

Look, it’s always risky knowing where to invest your effort. And having worked in the marketing, sales, and customer service industries, I know how noisy it can be.

It seems like there’s always some new or innovative concept for social media, emails, ads, blog posts, business listings, reviews, chatbots, and the list goes on. These are all things you could do.

For your small business, the questions become:

• What should we do?
• What tactics will have the greatest impact on our business?
• What will provide the most value to our customers?

That’s why building on a channel you know your audience prefers can be a worthwhile investment.

Low risk: Texting is a low-risk, low-cost investment with high rewards

💡 Key finding: 90.09% of businesses that text their customers report marketing success.

Let me rephrase that: Marketing is successful at 9 out of 10 businesses that leverage text messaging.

It sounds like texting is a sure bet for marketing success.

There are examples of businesses that have…

• Increased average order values by 3-4x
• Seen consistent paid conversion rates of 25%
• Improved response rates by 25-30%

…all with texting.

While there are varied reasons for the success behind these stories, there are several unique truths for business texting specifically.

With texting:

• Your audience is protected from spam. There are laws to prevent unwanted texts and easy methods for people to report spam, which means your texts have more impact than marketing tactics like randomly targeted ads.
• There’s no ever-changing algorithm to worry about — like with social media or organic search engine optimization (SEO).
• You own your contact list. And when you text your contacts, you can rest assured you’ll reach them (as long as your messages meet compliance requirements).

Texting starts as little as $29 a month. For the modest investment, texting can be an additional channel to support your marketing success.

Editor’s note: Keep in mind, this data is correlative. Businesses that report marketing success are highly likely to use texting as a component of their strategy, but texting is likely not the only marketing channel these businesses use.

Emerging: More businesses are texting in 2023

💡 Key finding: 85.75% of businesses text customers in 2023. That’s a 56% increase since 2022.

The rate of business texting adoption has been increasing drastically over the past couple of years:

That’s a 31% adoption rate increase for text marketing from 2021 to 2022, and a 56% increase from 2022 to 2023. If you’re looking at that jump from 42% in 2021 to 86% in 2023, that’s a 105% adoption rate increase for business texting in just two years.

It makes sense. After all, 71% of consumers have already subscribed to receive text messages from businesses. It looks like more businesses are simply capitalizing on this trend.

Long story short: If you adopt texting for your business, you’re not the first. You’re among good company.

These stats also indicate that texting isn’t just for big businesses. The percentages couldn’t be this high if that were the case (more than 95% of all businesses in the U.S. are small businesses).

In fact, there is evidence to suggest that texting for small businesses is extremely lucrative. Most people (91%) prefer supporting small businesses when it’s convenient, according to a report sponsored by Zendesk (PDF).

To sum it up:

• Your customers want you to text them.
• Your competitors are taking advantage of the opportunity.
• If you’re a small business, you’ve got a leg up on the big dogs because your customers prefer to support you.
• You can use texting to engage your customers with minimal investment.
• Texting is convenient, which increases your chances of influencing profitable customer action for your small business.
• It’s highly likely you’ll be successful with text marketing.

Give business texting a test drive with a free trial from SimpleTexting.