SMS Marketing Benchmarks to Measure

SMS Performance Benchmarks to Analyze Your Brand’s Standings for 2023 and Beyond 

Reliable, up-to-date SMS marketing benchmarks are mission-critical for a successful marketing strategy. Benchmarks allow us to measure campaign performance, set realistic data-driven goals, gauge progress, and make better decisions as an organization.

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Analyze Campaign Performance With These Metrics

If you’re not monitoring your campaign’s metrics, then how will you know if your marketing strategy was a success? Benchmarks are a quantifiable way to track a campaign’s performance and determine if changes need to be made ahead of launching another. Metrics also assess customer engagement and if your ad dollars are being spent efficiently.

Here are the most up-to-date metrics you should be tracking to ensure success in your next SMS marketing program. 

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Bounce Rate

Website Bounce Rate = Percentage of one-page visits ÷ the total number of page visits

SMS Bounce Rate = Total bounced ÷ total sent

Bounce rate represents the percentage of visitors to a website who came, saw, and then left without taking any action. Bounce rate is important because it shows how engaging your website content is and what might be driving visitors away. For example, if you have a modal on your website and your bounce rate is high, it’s a good indicator that changes need to be made to it to make visitors want to continue engaging with your page. With Voyage, you can create fully-customized modals that will help grow your subscriber list.

SMS bounce rate is the percentage of people on your subscriber list that did not receive your message. Regularly scrub your SMS subscriber list and remove any inactive or invalid subscribers or duplicates to help improve your bounce rate and boost overall engagement with your brand. 

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Click-Through Rate (CTR)

CTR = Number of ad clicks ÷ number of times your ad is seen

Measure CTR to determine how effective your imagery, keywords, and call-to-action copy are. For example, if you see that your advertisement has a lot of views but few clicks, it’s likely that one of these factors needs to be changed to better appeal to your target audience.

By harnessing the power of Voyage’s segmentation and drips inside the platform, the  member-to-member lending platform Wealthshare was able to achieve 85% CTR. The strategy behind the success? Instead of sending every message in the drip to every subscriber, Wealthshare first sent a series of three messages. If a subscriber clicked on any of the three initial messages, they received two more. Finally, if they engaged with the second set, they received the final two messages in the sequence. 

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Conversion Rate (CVR)

CVR = (Number of conversions ÷ total visitors) x 100

CVR is the percentage of website visitors who successfully executed a transaction. For example, if 100 customers view a website and 5 of them decide to make a purchase, then the CVR is 5%. For eCommerce brands, the typical CVR ranges between 1 and 3%.

If you’re looking to amplify your CVR, look no further than back-in-stock SMS alerts. Back-in-stock notifications are powerful conversion drivers for online shoppers and brand loyalists. With SMS open rates around 98%, these notifications garner conversions that move inventory and boost engagement with your customer. For example, the online kitchenware and appliance store Everything Kitchens, displayed a back-in-stock button on product pages that encouraged customers to sign up for text alerts. In just 30 days, $1,200 of revenue was generated with a CVR of 12%.

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Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)

CPA = Total amount spent on campaign/channel ÷ number of new customers acquired from that channel/campaign

Wondering if a specific marketing channel is worth the cost? Then calculate your campaign’s CPA. CPA measures the cost of acquiring a new customer through a particular campaign or channel—a highly valuable metric for eCommerce companies. For example, if you spent $2,000 on ads and acquired 100 customers, then your CPA is $20.

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Cost Per Click (CPC)

CPC = Total cost of clicks ÷ total number of clicks

 Make sure you aren’t spending money on ads that aren’t driving conversions by measuring your campaign’s CPC. CPC represents how much it costs each time someone clicks on your advertisement, and is a crucial metric because it quantifies the cost of a brand's paid advertising efforts. For example, if your ad gets two clicks, one costing $0.50 and one costing $0.20, the total cost is $0.70. You then divide $0.70 (the total cost) by two (the total number of clicks) and come up with an average CPC of $0.35.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)

Customer Lifetime Value = (Customer Value * Average Customer Lifespan)

CLTV helps track your customer experience and how your customers contribute to your company as a whole, including the total amount spent throughout the period of their relationship with your brand. The higher your CLTV is, the more loyal and valuable your customers become. Increasing the value of your present consumers is crucial for the development of your brand because keeping existing customers is much more cost-effective than finding new ones.

First Mate by Voyage makes it easy to boost CLTV. By looping in live agents to act as your brand ambassadors via SMS, you’ll provide a personalized, one-on-one customer experience.

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Delivery Rate

Delivery Rate = (Number of delivered texts ÷ the total number of texts sent) x 100

SMS delivery rate is the percentage that shows how many messages are being delivered successfully. Improve deliverability rates by making sure phone numbers are accurate, refraining from "spam-like" communications, and using shortcodes when sending bulk messages. Carrier partners tend to reject messages that look like spam, so it’s crucial to carefully craft your texts.

Practicing good list hygiene habits will help to fix deliverability issues and ensure your subscriber list is viable for your next campaign.

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Opt-Out Rate (OOR)

OOR = (Total number of unsubscribes ÷ the total number of emails delivered) x 100

OOR represents the percentage of subscribers who opt-out of receiving text messages or emails from your business, making it a direct measure of the value subscribers are receiving. For example, if 1,000 messages are delivered and 10 subscribers have opted out, then your OOR is 1%. A good OOR is one that remains below 0.5%.

With Voyage, you can build your list intelligently and have confidence that your messages adhere to opt-in and opt-out compliance guidelines, helping to keep your OOR low.

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Return On Ad Spend (ROAS)

ROAS = Total campaign revenue ÷ total campaign cost  

ROAS is the amount of revenue that is earned for every dollar spent on a campaign. For example, $100k revenue / $25k ad spend = 4x ROAS, meaning for every $1 in advertising spent, $4 in revenue is generated. ROAS is a key metric for determining the strategic success of SMS marketing.

With Voyage’s powerful segmentation and dependable deliverability leading the way, jewelry company Lokai was able to generate a highly impressive 916X ROAS.

Return On Investment (ROI)

ROI = (Net income ÷ cost of investment) x 100

ROI is the ratio between net income and investment and helps your brand assess if ad dollars are being spent wisely. If a campaign has a high ROI, then it indicates that the SMS investment outweighs the costs. A good example of this can be seen through the success story of beanbag chair company, Moon Pod. 

Moon Pod partnered with Voyage to begin their SMS journey and engage subscribers at every stage using segmentation and multi-message drips. In addition to a subscriber growth of more than 65 percent, Moon Pod was able to make $185 for every $1 spent with Voyage.

Benchmark Tracking Made Easy with Voyage

Get a comprehensive look at the success of your campaign with Voyage Dashboard. The dashboard enables you to fully evaluate key metrics from every single one of your campaigns, including active subscribers, unsubscribers, new subscribers, attributed revenue, and return on ad spend. 

The dashboard also makes it easy to view your upcoming campaigns at-a-glance and create new campaigns directly from your calendar. All metrics can be exported into a report for seamless shareability.

Get in touch today to find out how Voyage can help launch your next campaign, set data-driven goals, and measure overall performance.