What Are SMS Conversion Rates?

Marketing is hard. Customers’ expectations are rising, and the pace of change is accelerating. Layer on top of this the rising cost of customer acquisition (CAC), and it’s no wonder that total global digital marketing spend is set to reach 306 billion by 2020. 

Source: Reforge 

With oceans of how-to content out there, you’d think that it’s never been easier to run great revenue-generating marketing campaigns. The problem is that a lot of companies are using the same digital marketing strategies, and it’s creating intense competition.

Beyond rising CAC, it’s evident in the lower open rates for email marketing, the competitiveness of paid media channels, and the fact that people are turning to direct mail.

If you’re desperately seeking a way to increase your conversions, we recommend putting down the stamps. Instead, take advantage of the extremely high click-through rates (CTRS) and conversion rates of text message marketing. 

This article takes a look at the conversion rate of SMS marketing campaigns from third-party studies as well as our customers. It also examines how you can build an SMS marketing strategy that maximizes conversions.

First, What Is the SMS CTR Benchmark?

We analyzed close to 10,000 SMS campaigns to bring you this SMS CTR benchmark so drum roll, please. 🥁

The SMS CTR benchmark is 30%. That’s right–a whopping 30% of people click on a link in an SMS.

Calculating the Conversion Rate for SMS Marketing

If you’ve come across our marketing material, you may have seen us referencing the fact that SMS has an average open rate of 98%. It’s crazy to us how highly underutilized SMS messaging is by marketers. 

Even if you don’t care about sky-high open rates, response rates that are eight times higher than email, and click-through rates of 30%, you’ll find the conversion rate of SMS marketing impressive. Instead of one single conversion rate metric, here are a couple:

• Salesforce found a conversation rate of 45% for brands using SMS
• SEJ reported a conversion rate of 17% for text advertising campaigns
• Our customer, Whisker Seeker, routinely seeks a 25% conversion rate on its SMS promotions
• Toroe Eyewear increased its e-commerce store’s conversion rate by 200% using text marketing

What is the Conversion Rate for SMS Marketing?

From a variety of sources, we can see the average SMS marketing conversion rate is 29%. In terms of the average increase in conversion rates attributed to text message marketing, it’s 156%. The conversion rate for SMS is much higher than other digital marketing channels:

• 3.26% for email marketing
• 3.17% for Google Ads
• 9.21% for Facebook ads  

SMS marketing’s conversion rate is 200% higher than the next best performing marketing channel.

How to Increase Your SMS Conversion Rate

In a world where people spend an average of 20 hours a week on their mobile phones and send 60 texts per day, your mobile marketing strategy should include bulk SMS marketing. Here are three tips on how to convert more text message recipients.

1. Include a Clear Call to Action (CTA)

Even though text messages are short, you need to communicate what you want your recipient to do quickly and clearly. The call to action should be immediately apparent to your recipient. No clever wordplay or unnecessary words are needed here.

Most phones only display the first few words of a text message in the phone’s messaging app. This means it’s essential to communicate what the text is about in the first sentence. Otherwise, you risk your customer deleting the message before they even read it.

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2. Personalize Your Message

As a marketer, you know that personalization matters. One study from marketing charts found that visitors who viewed three pages of personalized content converted at double the rate for those who only saw two pages with customized elements. 

While personalizing web content and landing pages can be a complicated undertaking, it’s not hard to send personalized texts. A lifestyle brand may decide to address customers by their first names, whereas a financial services company may wish use to use a title and surname for a more professional feel. With SimpleTexting, you can do both.

Using our keyword-based Data Collection feature, you can collect information such as your contact’s first and last name, as well as email.

Are you hungry, Derik? Show this text to a waiter and get a 40% discount on a Meat Supreme Pizza from Mellow Mushroom this weekend.

3. Use SMS A/B Tests

Brands that run A/B tests for email campaigns report a 37% higher email marketing ROI than brands that don’t run any A/B tests. The same is likely true for SMS campaigns. This article walks you through how to run an A/B test to improve your SMS marketing. You could test out the impact of different offers on conversion rates:

One SimpleTexting customer ran a test to determine whether including a photo using MMS increases click-through rate:

They found that the campaign with an image had a CTR that was 52% higher than the campaign with no image.

If you’re struggling with low conversion rates from email and digital advertising channels, then it’s a great time to try SMS marketing. There are several ways to take advantage of SMS conversion rates. 

Make sure you include a clear CTA in your texts, personalize your messages, and A/B test to take note of what works and what doesn’t. This way, you can achieve the highest possible ROI from your SMS campaigns.