15 fascinating facts about text message marketing

SMS marketing has many things going for it: only 1% of text messages are spam, and SMS benefits from a 95% open rate (Esendex). But if 95% of your customers are going to see your message, you need to make sure your message is valuable to the recipient, and be mindful of the frequency and timing of your messages. You’re unlikely to be woken up by a new email, but the same can’t always be said of a text message alert!

While SMS marketing is a tool that needs to be wielded with finesse, there are so many good reasons to incorporate it into your next campaign. Here are the top 15 SMS marketing stats for 2021:

• 75% of consumers want to receive texts with special offers (SmallBizDaily)
• 78% of consumers say that text messaging is the fastest way to reach them (Tatango)
• Text messages have a 209% higher response rate than phone, email, or Facebook (Techjury)
• 70% of consumers say SMS is a good way for businesses to get their attention (Startup Bonsai)
• SMS produces engagement rates 6 to 8 times higher than retailers normally achieve via email marketing (Retail Dive)
• Compared to 2016, 23% more people opted in to receive SMS messages from companies in 2020 (Techjury)
• In 2021, marketing message volume is expected to increase by 40% as brands try to hold on to customers and drive new purchases (TxtCart)
• Young people check their phone every 8.6 minutes (The Telegraph) and the average Briton checks their phone every 12 minutes (Huffington Post)
• Consumers have 192x more unread emails than text messages (ZipWhip)
• 64% of consumers think businesses should contact them via text messages more often (MobileMonkey)
• 77% of consumers are likely to have a positive perception of a company that offers SMS (eRetailers)
• Retailers should send two messages per week in peak seasons, and one message per week in non-peak seasons, to minimise unsubscribe rates (Retail Dive)
• 61% of us are now comfortable sending and receiving emojis in the workplace (Forbes), which is good news for SMS marketers, as sending emojis in messages triggers the same satisfaction as actually interacting with another person (Skipio)
• SMS marketing grew by 92% for consumer businesses, and 197% for B2Bs, from 2015 to 2017 (Rebrandly)
• Despite all of this, 65% of businesses are not currently using SMS to communicate with customers, so you still have the chance to gain a competitive advantage (Commify).

As a bonus fact, the most effective way to get existing customers to sign up to your mobile mailing list is to combine on-premises advertising with email; these two actions alone will get over 10% of your customers to opt-in to text message marketing. For new customers, adding a mobile number field to your online forms is the most successful tactic. But if you further add an incentive to sign up, such as an exclusive discount, you can increase the volume of sign ups by 520% (Tatango).

Need any help with your SMS marketing campaign? Your FastSMS account manager is here to help – so just get in touch for ideas, case studies and best practice hints and tips.