What Are the Most Important Metrics to Track for SMS Campaigns?

Do you know the right metrics to track SMS campaigns?

Tracking and analysis are essential parts of any marketing campaign, and SMS marketing is no exception.

If you track your performance correctly, you can detect your strengths and weaknesses and optimize your strategy for future campaigns.

The question is how to track the performance of your SMS marketing campaigns. 

Of course, you have to define specific and measurable goals and metrics for your marketing strategy to be able to measure and analyze them.

In this blog post, we’ll introduce the most important metrics to track SMS campaigns. Also, we’ll help you with the best practices to improve your performance in these SMS marketing metrics.

Key Metrics To Track SMS Campaigns

Let’s review the key sms marketing metrics that help you measure the performance of your campaigns.

Delivery Rate

The delivery rate measures the number of successful messages delivered to the intended recipients compared to those that were failed or blocked.

Here is the formula to calculate one of the top SMS marketing metrics:

Delivery Rate = (Delivered Messages) / (Total Sent Messages) × 100

The delivery rate ensures that your contact list is up-to-date and your messages are reaching the audience.

In fact, if your recipients don’t receive your messages, you’ll waste all of your time, money, and efforts in your SMS marketing campaigns.

So you need to consider the delivery rate to be one of the key metrics to track SMS campaigns.

Let’s see why the delivery rate of your SMS campaign might decrease:

• Your messages were sent to invalid numbers or non-existent numbers.
• The carrier or recipient has blocked your messages.
• The receiver uses a don’t disturb service.

To prevent these issues and improve your performance, you can consider the following tips:

• Keep your contact list updated and remove invalid or inactive numbers.
• Use double opt-in processes to confirm subscriber details.
• Avoid spammy language and excessive use of special characters to prevent carrier blocks.

Open Rate

There are two possible conditions when you send users SMS messages: recipients may either open your messages or choose not to.

You can easily measure the open rate by dividing the number of opened messages by the total number of delivered messages.

A high open rate can result in effective copy and timing, showing that your content is interesting enough to catch the user’s attention. 

However, a low number of them indicates you need to change your tactics in order to improve your list segmentation.

Although the open rate is one of the top SMS marketing metrics, it’s only measurable for MMS or app-based messaging platforms.

If you’re looking for a way to refine your strategy, try these methods below:

• Personalized SMS for engagement
• Use shorter subject lines
• Try different times and ways
• Use compelling subject lines or preview text for MMS campaigns.
• Utilize high-quality, relevant images or GIFs to capture attention.
• Send messages at the best time so that the majority of recipients engage.

Click-Through Rate

Many times, you include a link to your webpage and ask recipients to click. The number of people who click on the link is one of the key metrics for SMS marketing campaigns.

This is actually called CTR and can be calculated by the following formula:

CTR = (Number of Clicks) / (Delivered Messages) × 100

However, SMS campaign links can be CTA, exclusive offers, or product sections.

By tracking the click-through rate, you can determine whether your SMS/MMS is effective enough to attract more customers and encourage them to take action.

 A high click-through rate indicates your links and calls to action are compelling, and your audiences engage with them.

To improve, you can follow these workarounds below:

• Use shorter link URLs.
• Highlight important points and use bulleted and numbered lists.
• Write concise, engaging messages with a clear call-to-action (CTA).
• Personalize messages with the recipient’s name or relevant details to capture attention.
• Offer something special to encourage your audience to click on your links.

Unsubscribe Rate

One of the best metrics to track SMS campaigns is the unsubscribe rate or opt-out rate. You need to track the number of subscribers who unsubscribed from your text message list over time.

The opt-out rate is important because it helps you figure out how many customers are satisfied with your SMS marketing campaigns.

Of course, sending useful content to subscribers is the most effective way to keep customers engaged. However, for some reason, many people are not willing to receive ads and you need to minimize the number of these people in your subscribers.

Here are some tips to prevent people from unsubscribing:

• Respect your audience by limiting the number of messages you send. It’s recommended to keep your messages less than 2 per week.
• Make opt-out instructions clear but non-intrusive.
• Focus on value-driven content to keep subscribers engaged.

Conversion Rate

This is also one of the top sms marketing campaign success metrics. 
The conversion rate measures the number of recipients who take the desired action you ask them. For example, you define purchases as the desired action for your SMS message campaigns.

To calculate this metric, divide the number of people who performed an action by the total audience of the ad.

Conversion Rate = (Number of Conversions) / (Delivered Messages) × 100

An increasing conversion rate percentage indicates that you’re successfully driving customers to make purchases from you.

To improve this metric, you’d better follow the tips below:

• Align the SMS content and offer it with your audience’s interests.
• Optimize landing pages for mobile devices to reduce friction in the conversion process.
• Test different CTAs or offers to identify what drives the most action.

Return On Investment

Economically speaking, ROI is the most important SMS marketing metric to track.

As it comes from the name, ROI measures your profit from your investment in the SMS market.

Now, let’s see how to measure this metric. 

ROI = (Revenue from Campaign−Campaign Cost) / (Campaign Cost) × 100

In fact, you have to subtract the total cost of sending SMS messages from the total revenue generated by your SMS campaign program.

The average return on investment is over $5 for every dollar. Increasing ROI shows you’re driving more sales to your e-commerce business. 

Therefore, if you want to adjust your content message to improve this metric, you should try targeting the right audience and experimenting with different promotional channels.

The important matter is that other SMS metrics will affect the ROI of your SMS marketing campaign. So you have to work on them if you want to reach a higher ROI.

Opt-In Rate

The opt-in rate (also known as list growth rate) is the last item on the best metrics to track SMS campaigns.

Through this metric, you can track the number of new subscribers who recently joined your text message list over time.

In other words, it displays an ascending chart of your SMS message list. You can easily calculate it by subtracting the number of new subscribers from the number of unsubscribes and dividing the result by the total number of text messages in the list. 

If you think your opt-in marketing campaigns are not successful, you need to follow the tips below:

• Offer additional bonus content
• Consider special offers for those subscribers who share your text messages with others or those who promote your text messages in other marketing channels like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and more.

Best Practices to Improve Your SMS Performance

Now that you know important metrics to track for SMS campaigns, it’s good to see how you can improve them.

1. Segment Your Audience for Targeted Messaging

If you want to improve your conversion rate, you need to divide your audiences into several groups based on important factors like:

• Age
• Gender
• Location
• Previous purchases

Audience segmentation ensures that your messages are relevant to each recipient. This makes your SMS marketing highly targeted, leading to higher conversion rates.

For example, if you have a clothing store, you can segment your audience by gender and past purchases. This way, women and men receive relevant clothing suggestions that fit their interests.

The conversion rate (CR) and click-through rate (CTR) are the key metrics to track to ensure you’re correctly segmenting your audience.

2. Use the Right SMS Platform

SMS marketing is now so competitive that you can’t rely on manual efforts to succeed. You need to choose the best SMS tool that fits your requirements. Almost all of the key SMS KPIs are dependent on the tools and features you use.

You have to select a tool that offers advanced features like:

• Automation
• Segmentation
• Scheduling
• Shortened links
• Integration with other platforms

By taking advantage of these features, you can make sure that your SMS campaigns reach maximum efficiency. 

Our recommendation in this regard is WP SMS. It’s one of the best SMS plugins for WordPress websites and lets you run SMS campaigns directly from your website’s dashboard.

WP SMS supports more than 300 SMS gateways like Twilio and offers a diverse pricing package plus a free version.

You can easily try the demo of WP SMS before starting your SMS campaigns and see if it fits your business needs.

3. Make Friendly Relationship

You should not appear like a selling machine in your MSS campaigns. If you want to improve your SMS campaign metrics, you must build a long-lasting partnership with your recipients.

So try to use a friendly tone of voice and talk to your audience at a personal level. Instead of bombarding them with constant ads, create value in your messages. Focus on their needs and interests and try to share helpful tips, exclusive offers, or updates.

You can also consider the following tips to personalize your messages:

1. Greetings with First Names
2. Acknowledging Past Purchases
3. Anniversary or Milestone Messages
4. Event or Appointment Reminders
5. Recommendations Based on Behavior
6. Celebrating Personal Occasions
7. Feedback Requests

4. Write Clear and Compelling CTAs

A strong CTA is essential in SMS marketing and plays a crucial role in improving your key SMS metrics. Use CTAs like “Shop Now,” “Claim Your Discount,” or “Reply YES to RSVP” to clarify the next step your recipient should take.

In fact, clarity and urgency are key here because you don’t have much space to explain your request a lot. So think of various CTAs and conduct research to see what your competitors use as CTAs in their messages.

5. A/B Test Your Campaigns

A/B testing is one of the best methods to optimize your messages and improve your SMS campaign metrics.

You need to draft two versions of your messages and test them to see which one is better. You might test different CTAs, timing, wording, or offers. The higher engagement rates and conversion you get, the better.

Conclusion

We mentioned essential factors called the best metrics to track SMS campaigns to enable you to analyze your business performance. After measuring them, you need to think of methods to improve them. In conclusion, by personalizing your content, setting your SMS campaigns for intended deadlines, segmenting your subscribers, and other solutions you can optimize your campaigns and improve the metrics.
Of course, using a versatile SMS tool like WP SMS can be of great assistance in this regard. If you want to reach a higher ROI, you need to automate your SMS marketing campaigns using such tools. So why wait? Try the demo of WP SMS to make sure it can help your business.

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