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What’s the Cost of Mass Texting? (And What’s the ROI?)
Mass texting services often have different cost structures. Here are the questions to ask when reviewing them.
Mass texting services often have different cost structures. Here are the questions to ask when reviewing them.
In our roundup of text message marketing trends to watch in 2021, we argue that next year will see the adoption of SMS on an even greater scale.
Not only has Forrester Research predicted that consumers will get more texts in 2021, but SMS marketing spend is set to grow to $83 billion by 2024.
With SMS marketing response rates reaching 45%, it’s no wonder why businesses are interested.
Most marketers and business owners don’t doubt the effectiveness of SMS. The question they want to know: how much does it cost to send mass text messages?
Here’s how to evaluate the cost of mass texting and outline what kind of ROI you can expect.
Before we go any further, a mass text messaging service lets you send an SMS or MMS message to a group of people, big or small.
Mass texting can be used across several industries to send special offers and promotions, emergency alerts, staff communication, daily text message updates, sweepstakes, and more.
If you’d like to learn more about how businesses are using mass texting, we recommend reading through our success stories.
Here are the six questions you need to ask when evaluating a mass text messaging service on cost.
Most mass texting solutions’ pricing is based on purchasing a certain amount of messages that you can then send on a monthly or annual basis.
You can check out our per-message rates on our pricing page. Like most providers, the more messages you send, the cheaper each message will be.
And before you ask, no, you don’t get charged for receiving SMS messages with our service.
If a platform offers you an unlimited text marketing plan, there’s a catch typically involving a limit on the number of contacts you can have.
That’s because SMS aggregators charge SMS providers like SimpleTexting a price per message.
If a service says that all of its customers send as many messages as they want without any limits, they’d quickly go out of business.
We don’t charge any flat platform fee at SimpleTexting–our pricing is based on the volume of messages you send.
If you’re going to buy a car, the price might be the first thing you’re going to ask about to ensure it’s within your budget. But you don’t stop there. You’ll ask about the number of miles, the engine, and so on.
That’s because if the brakes don’t work, it doesn’t start, and the windscreen is badly chipped––it’s not much use to you no matter how cheap it is.
The same is true for your text messaging service. For example, if you need to send emergency text alerts, you want to know your service offers quality customer service.
There are also other factors like ease of use. Often when a platform is at the very bottom of the market in terms of price, it’s because there’s been little to no investment in the user experience or functionality.
The best way to put a value on these “intangibles” is to read reviews on third-party websites like G2 Crowd and Capterra. If they are overwhelmingly positive, it’ll be clear customers feel like they’re getting value for money.
It’s worth making sure that your mass texting services’ monthly plans have no contracts or hidden fees. You’ll also want to be able to freely upgrade, downgrade, or cancel at any time. With SimpleTexting, you can do all three right from your account.
On our quest to give customers as much flexibility as possible, we let them hold on to unused credits. Any credits they don’t use will roll over until the end of the following month.
We offer a 20% discount on our yearly plans and often mass texting solutions will offer an annual discount. It’s worth considering if you’re looking to save money in the long term.
You’ve determined your plan amount, and now you’re wondering what kind of return you can expect.
Of course, how you measure ROI will determine what you’re trying to achieve. But to give you an idea, here are a few examples of what others have achieved:
The open rate of SMS messages is 98%, the click-through rate of texts is 36%, and the conversion rate of SMS is 29%.
If you’re using it to save time, the average response time for a text message is only 90 seconds, and the response rate is 7.5x higher than email.
The best way to determine your potential ROI is to apply these metrics to whatever you want to use mass texting to achieve.
There’s a misconception that SMS is an expensive communications tool. The reality is that it’s not only affordable, but it’s also so effective that you have to ask yourself: can you afford not to be using it?
Drew Wilkinson is the Head of Marketing at SimpleTexting. Drew has more than a decade of experience managing successful integrated marketing programs to build brands, raise awareness, and generate demand.
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