SMS text messaging has been around for more than 30 years. It was a native application on mobile phones long before anyone had heard of the smartphone. Despite the transition to more sophisticated messaging systems like Messenger, WhatsApp, and Snapchat, SMS remains an essential feature on our mobile devices.
There are many reasons why SMS is still such a popular technology. The simple nature of text messaging means that SMS messages can be sent and received on any device, including feature phones (sometimes, somewhat unfairly, referred to as dumb phones), without access to mobile data plans or Wi-Fi. This makes SMS an almost universal communication channel, ideal for connecting with people across generations, socio-economic groups, and geographic locations.
When compared to other channels, SMS also has the advantage of not being completely overwhelmed by marketing messages. This makes SMS the perfect channel for connecting with your public when a message must be received and acted upon. As such, SMS text messaging is an essential marketing and communication channel for schools, healthcare organizations, and charity and nonprofit groups.
How to Use SMS Analytics to Adjust Your Marketing Strategy
As with any other marketing channel, careful analysis of your SMS campaigns will empower you to make more strategic marketing decisions. Analyzing your SMS analytics will help you:
- Check your strategy’s effectiveness and make changes from there: SMS analytics will help you track customer responses and engagement, enabling you to make real-time adjustments to your marketing strategies based on your audience’s reaction to your campaigns.
- Segment customers to target them more accurately: SMS analytics assesses your campaign performance and allows you to make data-driven marketing adjustments based on audience preferences. This approach allows for greater customer segmentation, creating opportunities for more personalized and targeted campaigns to boost engagement and conversions.
- Track customer behavior for future marketing campaigns: SMS analytics provides businesses with customer insights and behavioral patterns, enabling marketers to refine their marketing strategy and optimize future campaigns.
- Identify customer churn and make a strategic plan to prevent it: SMS Analytics provides insights into customer engagement and response rates. This can detect and prevent customer churn, allowing marketers to create more targeted strategies for retention and re-engagement.
- Improve your bottom line and determine what type of engagement is valuable to your customers: SMS Analytics helps you pinpoint the types of engagement that are most valuable to your customers, enabling you to tailor your SMS marketing efforts, maximize customer satisfaction, and drive profitability.
Top SMS Analytics Metrics
If you are familiar with email marketing, you’ll already know many SMS marketing analytics metrics. These include:
Delivery Rate
Indicating the percentage of SMS messages successfully delivered to their intended recipients. It serves as a key indicator of the overall effectiveness of a business’s SMS marketing efforts.
A high delivery rate indicates a well-maintained and up-to-date contact list, reliable infrastructure, and compliance with regulations and industry best practices.
Factors such as incorrect or inactive phone numbers, network issues, or carrier filtering can lower delivery rates. Any message not delivered is a missed opportunity for engagement and can impact the campaign’s overall success.
To improve delivery rates, businesses must regularly clean and update their contact lists, work with reputable SMS service providers, and ensure that their messages adhere to compliance standards and carrier requirements.
Response Rate
Measuring the percentage of recipients who actively engage with or respond to SMS messages sent by a business. This metric reflects the effectiveness of the message content and the call-to-action within the SMS campaign.
A high response rate is typically a positive indicator, demonstrating that the audience finds the messages compelling and that the campaign achieves its goals of generating sales, collecting feedback, or fostering customer engagement. A low response rate may suggest that the messaging or the timing needs improvement.
Monitoring the response rate allows businesses to fine-tune their messaging strategies, optimize content, and adjust their campaigns to maximize customer engagement and the overall success of their SMS marketing efforts.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Indicating the percentage of recipients who receive the SMS message and engage further by clicking on links or taking specific actions contained within the message.
A high CTR suggests that the SMS campaign successfully captures the recipients’ interest and encourages them to take the desired actions, including visiting a website, making a purchase, or filling out a form. Monitoring the CTR is essential for understanding the effectiveness of the message content, the strength of the call-to-action, and the overall impact of the campaign.
Businesses can use this metric to refine their SMS marketing strategies, optimize content relevance, and enhance the user experience to increase engagement and drive the desired outcomes from their text message marketing efforts.
Messages Sent
Indicating the total number of SMS messages dispatched to the intended audience. It is a crucial measure for evaluating the scale and reach of an SMS campaign.
A higher number of messages sent may indicate a broader marketing initiative, but it doesn’t provide insights into the campaign’s effectiveness or recipient engagement. Monitoring the messages sent is a starting point for understanding the scope of a campaign, but it should also be analyzed in conjunction with other SMS metrics like delivery rate, response rate, and conversion rate to gain a comprehensive view of the campaign’s success.
This metric is valuable for businesses to track the operational aspects of their SMS marketing efforts and helps them manage their resources and budget effectively in reaching their target audience.
Messages Received
Representing the total number of SMS messages that successfully reached and were acknowledged by their intended recipients. This metric is a key indicator of the campaign’s effectiveness in engaging the target audience.
A higher number of messages received suggests that the campaign has effectively delivered its content and that the recipients have acknowledged or interacted with the message.
By monitoring the messages received, businesses can assess the campaign’s reach and overall impact, helping them refine their SMS marketing strategies to enhance recipient engagement and achieve their marketing goals. It’s a crucial metric that, when combined with other metrics like response rate and click-through rate, provides valuable insights into the success of an SMS marketing campaign.
Unsubscribe Rate
Also known as opt-out rate, this metric represents the percentage of recipients who have chosen to stop receiving SMS messages from a particular sender. Monitoring the unsubscribe rate is essential for businesses as it provides insights into the effectiveness of their messaging strategies and the quality of their contact lists.
A high unsubscribe rate can indicate that the content or frequency of messages is not resonating with the audience or that the recipient list includes individuals who are not interested in the content, which can result in increased costs and lost potential customers.
SMS Marketing is Not a One-Way Street
It’s important to remember that SMS marketing, like email and social media marketing, is not a broadcast marketing channel. Used correctly, it is a robust sales and customer service tool, generating customer responses and feedback. Therefore, there are also analytical metrics to be observed regarding two-way communication via the channel. These include:
Time of Response
Representing the average time it takes for an organization to respond to SMS messages received from customers or recipients. A quicker response time generally indicates a more efficient and responsive communication system, leading to improved customer satisfaction and engagement.
On the other hand, a longer response time might signal potential issues in customer service or marketing operations. Monitoring this metric is vital for businesses aiming to deliver timely and effective SMS-based support, engage customers promptly, and enhance the overall success of their SMS marketing and customer service efforts.
Time to Resolution
Measuring the average duration for a customer’s inquiry or issue, received via SMS, to be resolved to the customer’s satisfaction. Tracking this metric is essential for evaluating the efficiency and effectiveness of customer service operations through SMS. A shorter time to resolution indicates a prompt and efficient support system, enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty.
On the other hand, a longer time to resolution may indicate areas in need of improvement, such as response time, agent training, or process streamlining.
Dig Deeper into Your SMS Analytics
To learn more about how the marketing experts at emfluence can help you dig deeper into your SMS analytics and create more timely, relevant, and engaging text campaigns, contact us today at expert@emfluence.com.
