Like with any marketing campaign, the only way to see the Effectiveness of Your SMS Marketing is to consistently measure and analyze the key areas of the campaign. In order to do this effectively, the key metrics need to be identified, measured and analysed in order to learn and improve future campaigns.
Fundamental metrics for assessing effectiveness of your SMS marketing
1. Delivery rate of your SMS marketing campaign
The delivery rate is the percentage of successful messages delivered to all subscribers. Delivery rates vary widely based on a variety of factors (list size, message frequency, and pre-paid phone composition). A low delivery rate may mean your list needs to be cleansed. You can use the HLR Lookup functionality to help cleanse a list, preventing sending messages to invalid numbers.
2. Open rate
Open rate is a measure and percentage of the number of subscribers that open and read the SMS campaign after receiving it. In South Africa over 98% of SMS messages are read and most within 4-5 minutes of their receipt, compared to 22% of emails, 29% of tweets and 12% of Facebook posts.
3. Opt-out rate
The opt-out rate is the percentage of recipients who opt out after receiving an SMS campaign. Having a high opt-out rate can be a result of a number of factors; firstly you are targeting the incorrect audience, or the content in the SMS provides no value to the user. Improved and segmented targeting, and split testing your SMS campaigns can help decrease opt-out rates. The average opt-out percentage for SMS campaigns is a mere 5%.
4. Click-through rate
The click-through rate measures the proportion of subscribers who initiated action with respect to an advertisement that redirected them to another page where they might purchase an item or learn more about a product or service. The average click-through rate (CTR) of URLs included in SMS messages is 19%, compared to just 4.2% CTR for Emails.
5. Conversion rate
The conversion rate is the proportion of visitors who take a valuable action. This can be a purchase, signup, phone call or simply a page view. Linking your SMS campaigns to valuable conversions can provide you with an insight into your ROI from the SMS campaign, and help you improve future campaigns.
These metrics are extremely useful for companies as they allow them to track the progress of their SMS campaigns. The information gained from these metrics enable businesses to make changes where necessary and therefore continually improve the effectiveness of their marketing strategy.