How effective is SMS marketing?

A very common question that surrounds SMS marketing is it’s effectiveness and response rates. There are whispering rumours and stories from marketeers, business owners and businesses alike, that you can achieve wondrous, dreamland response numbers from your SMS marketing campaigns.

Well we are here to say that some of those stories you have heard may not have been just myths… You really can achieve amazing dreamland results from SMS marketing.


So let’s take a look at some industry stats around SMS marketing repose rates.

SMS marketing response rates
98% open rate (Source: Gartner)
45% response rate (Source: Gartner)
95% of all texts are read within 3 minutes (Source: Forbes)
75% of people would like to have offers sent to them via SMS (Source: Digital Marketing Magazine)
– Mobile offers are redeemed 10x more frequently than print offers (Source: eMarketer)
50% of those surveyed who received an SMS from retailers, made a purchase as a result (Source: Marketing Charts)
– Sales prospects who are sent text messages convert at a rate 40% higher than those who are not sent a text message (Source: OneReach)

So you can pretty much guarantee that every message you send out is going to be read by your customers – which means that SMS marketing is incredibly powerful, and goes someway to explain those whispering rumours you have been hearing about it.

Obviously like every marketing channel, there are no real cemented guarantees, responses and success can differ from campaign to campaign, and there are various things that can affect the response rate of an SMS marketing campaign.

Opening line
Go with something short and sweet and attention grabbing.

Content/message length
Keep it short and sweet and use words and phrases like hurry, quick, offer ends soon – to add some emergency to your message.

Tell them who you are
Make sure you say who you are and set your Sender ID to your business name.

Send an offer
Send an enticing deal or offer and be sure to let them know how to claim and purchase.

Include a website link
Let them click and go straight to your website

Make sure it’s relevant
Make sure you are sending the message to your customers who might be interested. Segment your customer database, men, women etc. So you are sending relevant messages.

Time of your message
Make sure you are sending the message at an appropriate time so people can respond – click here for more details on message timings

Now you know how effective SMS marketing is and what you need to do to run a great SMS campaign, why not have a read about what is an SMS marketing software here.

And why not give SMS marketing a try today, it’s free to sign up and with our prices it’s incredibly low cost. And who knows your SMS marketing campaign might go down in marketing response rate history.