SMS marketing often beats email and paid social in click-through and conversion rates.
The averages will wow you with 55% open rates (although many cite older reports of 98%) and 6x returns versus email. But these numbers mean little without context. Most SMS benchmark reports show how SMS performs, not why it works or how you can achieve similar results.
So, what makes this SMS marketing benchmarks report by Mobile Text Alerts different? Insights from 15+ founders, CMOs, and growth leads who manage SMS at scale across industries like SaaS, ecommerce, entertainment, and healthcare. Plus, I reverse-engineered the levers behind their numbers, so you can replicate their wins.
Take Edward White, Head of Growth at beehiiv, for example. He shared that in a recent churned-user campaign, a single SMS drove 40% of total conversions in under six hours. When they sent the same message by email a day later, just 15% of the recipients responded over the next three days.
This immediate impact is what gets you the most ROI from SMS campaigns. You won’t see it in paid channels, where costs rise and attribution gets fuzzy. In Edward’s experience, SMS consistently delivers 2x the ROI of email for time-sensitive campaigns.
So yes, SMS works. But how well it works depends on what you sell and who you sell to. Industry-specific benchmarks show how performance changes based on your vertical.
SMS marketing benchmarks vary by industry.
A 3x ROI might be decent in retail, but it’s exceptionally good for financial services companies. SaaS brands chase trial activations and product stickiness. Local services need appointments. So, you’ll set yourself up with the wrong baseline if you measure SMS conversion rates like it’s one-size-fits-all.
That’s why this report breaks down SMS performance by vertical. Use these industry-specific benchmarks to set smarter targets and tailor your campaigns.
TLDR: Top SMS Marketing Benchmarks in 2025
Timing matters. Jeffrey Zhou, CEO of Fig Loans, knows that very well.
He has seen SMS performance shift dramatically depending on SMS timing. His best results come from campaigns aligned with customers’ payment cycles. Plus, past behavior is important. “Users who’ve engaged with even one SMS before,” Zhou notes, “are 3–4x more likely to engage again.”
Zhou also points out that the best-performing SMS marketing campaigns rely on cross-channel engagement. Cross-channel users who open emails and respond to texts convert at higher rates than single-channel audiences.
Also, look at micro-interaction signals. Even partial engagement, like a user clicking but not converting, reveals what kind of content resonates.
In financial services, Zhou says, life stage indicators are particularly valuable. Key milestones like starting a new job, moving, or growing a family signal changing financial needs. In Zhou’s experience, SMS campaigns around these patterns perform measurably better.
Conversion doesn’t always lead to a purchase in SaaS. It can be a demo request, a free trial sign-up, or even someone activating a product feature. That’s why the right SMS at the right time matters more for SaaS brands.
Dwight Zahringer, founder of Perfect Afternoon, tracks a metric many overlook: conversion timing, how quickly users act after receiving a message. His team found that 90% of SMS conversions happen within 15 minutes of send time or not at all.
Message length also played a role. When Zahringer’s team ran multivariate testing for analyzing varying word counts across B2B SMS campaigns, they found that ultra-concise messages under 70 characters outperformed longer ones by 34%.
But timing and brevity weren’t the only levers. He also mentioned how moving from demographic targeting to behavioral sequencing increased conversion by 41% for ecommerce clients. It worked because they stopped guessing based on who the user was and started sending messages based on what the user just did.
They also tackled contact frequency tolerance thresholds with their proprietary fatigue scoring system. It measures individual user engagement decay rates over time.
Creating personalized cool-down periods between messages based on user engagement decay rates reduced unsubscribe rates by 27%. The magic is finding each segment's ideal frequency and not blasting on the marketing calendar's schedule.
Opens and clicks don’t move the needle for local service providers. They need appointments. That’s why Raymond Strippy, founder of Growth Catalyst Crew, suggests focusing on a metric that most overlook: click-through-to-appointment rate.
Strippy’s team has tested dozens of SMS campaigns across local verticals. In one A/B test for an electrician client, sending service reminders at 3:30 p.m. instead of 9 a.m. led to a 37% jump in responses, just by catching people as they mentally transition from work mode to home mode.
They also use SMS to amp up review generation. Sequencing SMS follow-ups 24-48 hours post-service resulted in 12-15% review conversion rate versus 3-4% with email alone. You can simply pull appointment data from the CRM and trigger personalized follow-ups via an SMS API service provider like Zapier.
Many businesses still collect opt-ins through text-to-join campaigns, where users subscribe by texting a keyword like JOIN or YES. Strippy asks local business owners to focus on second-message response rate instead of obsessing over initial opt-ins. “Engagement with the second message,” he says, “is what predicts long-term campaign value.”
He has seen SMS campaigns using community-specific references (like ‘Before this weekend’s storm hits Augusta...’) outperform generic SMS by 22% for follow-up campaigns.
If you sell experiences, SMS can outperform email. Kelly Rossi’s data shows exactly how.
After two decades running digital campaigns at Marketing Magnitude, Rossi has zeroed in on the SMS metrics that actually matter: conversion rate and revenue per message. “While opens matter,” she says, “they're secondary to actual business outcomes.” This mindset helps her design high-performing campaigns that contribute to the bottom line.
For example, take a 72-hour flash sale campaign her team ran for a Las Vegas entertainment client. The SMS campaign delivered 6x ROI, compared to the brand’s usual 2.8x from email promotions. She tracked the results using a multi-touch attribution model that weights both first and last interactions.
But performance also depends on your SMS content, including whether you’re using SMS or richer formats like MMS marketing. In a multivariate test for a gaming company, Rossi’s team compared geographic targeting to messages focusing on past purchase behavior. Mentioning a customer’s buying history outperformed location-based messaging by 37% in conversion rate.
She also urges you not to overlook frequency tolerance thresholds. Even your highly engaged subscribers have distinct fatigue points. That’s why it’s important to segment users based on their engagement patterns and create custom frequency models. Rossi’s team did both, and retention went up by 22% and improved lifetime customer value across client accounts.
The real edge in B2B SMS marketing comes from knowing how and when buyers make decisions. Nicolas Breedlove, CEO of PlaygroundEquipment, learned that the hard way.
His team saw underwhelming results after pushing promotional SMS campaigns mid-quarter. The turning point came when they synced their SMS sends with schools’ budget planning cycles. Group texts sent 2–3 months ahead of budget allocation season outperformed similar campaigns sent off-cycle.
But timing wasn’t the only lever. Purchase stage segmentation played a key role, too. “Mid-funnel customers respond better to technical specification messages than to discount offers,” Nicolas says. Instead of pushing urgency, these messages helped buyers evaluate.
They also found that buyers respond to SMS differently depending on the product they’re looking for. Buyers exploring inclusive playground equipment responded to completely different messaging than those shopping for traditional setups.
If you manage marketing budgets between $20K and $5M, Milton Brown’s approach is worth considering. He has helped healthcare brands and nonprofits drive real business outcomes with SMS.
Brown suggests focusing on click-through rates and attribution window engagement to better understand actual intent. Timing plays a big role in both.
“Testing delivery times based on previous engagement history increased conversion rates by 32% for an ecommerce business,” he notes. He also noticed that Thursday evening texts regularly outperformed weekend sends across multiple verticals.
But timing alone isn’t enough. Consider connecting CRM purchase history with Google Tag Manager to build highly targeted segments. Or, pair SMS opt-ins with web forms for better segmentation and multichannel lead capture. Brown mentioned that a nonprofit grouping donors by contribution level and tailoring messages accordingly achieved a 41% higher donation rate.
Brown also asks businesses to track secondary engagement, or the percentage of users who take additional actions beyond the primary CTA. He sees this as a stronger signal of audience quality and long-term ROI.
After running campaigns for dozens of specialty retail stores across New York, Stephen Gold from The Gold Standard zeroed in on conversion rate and average order value. These metrics offer a complete picture of impact, rather than vanity metrics like open rate.
Take a Mother’s Day flash sale, for example. Instead of measuring opens, the team tracked $15.60 in revenue per SMS recipient, a far more meaningful signal of performance. It’s a benchmark that shows what happens when SMS aligns with urgency and high-intent buying behavior. On average, their SMS campaigns deliver a 4.5-5x ROI, compared to 3.1x from email.
Gold also keeps attribution clean by using incremental lift measurement through holdout testing. The team gets a clean read on SMS performance by excluding 10% of qualified subscribers from each campaign and comparing their purchase behavior to recipients.
In multi-variant tests, SMS referencing previously purchased products outperformed blanket promotions, driving a 40% higher engagement for dispensaries.
One of the biggest unlocks in retail SMS marketing performance came from understanding frequency tolerance by customer segment. High-value customers spending $500+ per quarter engage with up to three messages per week, while occasional shoppers tune out after just one. Setting custom frequency caps by customer segment improved retention by 22%.
Now, let’s look at SMS marketing benchmarks for other industries.
Open rates for SMS are consistently high across most industries. That’s why you can’t use it as the only metric that separates strong campaigns from average ones. What matters is what happens after your customers see the message.
Tracie Crites, CMO at HEAVY Equipment Appraisal, makes a compelling case: “A strong early response is often an indicator that the message resonated with the audience, while a low early engagement signals a need for adjustments.”
In her experience, personalization and segmentation are critical levers. In one campaign targeting repeat customers, she noticed that personalized messages improved conversion rates by 23% compared to generic texts.
But don’t read click-through rates in isolation. “We once assumed a high CTR meant success, but it wasn’t until we looked at post-click conversions that we realized the landing page wasn’t optimized for the next step in the funnel,” Crites explains.
This idea of not stopping at the click runs through every conversation I had with marketers.
Aaron Whittaker, VP of Demand Gen at Thrive Internet Marketing, encourages looking even further down the funnel. He recommends tracking in-app bounceback rate and opt-in churn lag to understand user behavior beyond the initial click.
“If users bounce back into the app within seconds or minutes, the SMS is doing its job, driving action,” he explains. “Longer lag means you’ve nailed the cadence and content. When churn comes fast, it usually points to poor targeting or timing.”
Whittaker also stresses the importance of segmenting benchmarks by message type (promotional, transactional, re-engagement) and funnel stage. He says, “I don’t expect conversion from a top-of-funnel user in the same way I do from someone who’s already added to cart.” Context matters more than raw performance numbers.
While Crites focuses on early engagement and message-to-landing-page alignment, Whittaker expands the lens to retention patterns and message role. But both agree that SMS success depends on tying every metric back to behavior.
Also, consider looking into opt-out rates. As Crites puts it, “Understanding why people opt out can provide invaluable insights into message frequency, relevance, and timing. It’s critical to adjust your strategy accordingly to reduce churn.”
Ready to apply these insights? Try Mobile Text Alerts free for 14 days and experience how effective SMS campaigns help you grow ROI.
SMS triggers instant engagement in a way that very few channels can match. But not all engagement is equal. You must track how fast users act, why they act, and what happens next to measure SMS performance.
Take timing, for example. Daniel Lynch, a digital agency owner, has seen how quickly things change when a campaign lands at the right moment. He notes, “94% of SMS opens happen within three minutes, and over 60% of clicks happen within the first 15 minutes.” This immediacy makes SMS a natural fit for flash sales, limited-time offers, and appointment confirmations.
And engagement won’t probably happen if it doesn’t happen in those first few minutes. That’s why savvy SMS marketers focus on engagement velocity, tracking how much activity happens in the first 5, 15, or 30 minutes.
Luca Dal Zotto, who runs SMS at Rent a Mac, puts this into practice. His team tested how performance shifts when timing aligns with user intent. Zotto mentions, “SMS sent 5 minutes after a user action like cart abandonment or sign-up has click-through rates of up to 36%, versus the industry average of 9.2%.”
Luca also layers in personalization to improve engagement. He mentions, “Campaigns using the recipient's name or citing recent activity increase conversion by 22%.”
That’s something Jesse Morgan, an affiliate marketing manager at Event Tickets Center, sees every week. His team relies on behavioral segmentation. Morgan explains, “Segmenting by behavioral intent, like last-click search history, abandoned cart timing, or previous last-minute purchases, outperformed generic audience buckets every time.”
SMS engagement is about meeting users at the exact moment of intent, with content that feels like it was written just for them.
SMS open rates are the most yet the least useful number in your report. They look great on paper but don’t offer much diagnostic value. It won’t tell you why a campaign worked, or where it fell short.
Open rate acts as a delivery check rather than a performance benchmark. It tells you the message landed. Click-through rate, on the other hand, is the real sign of actual user intent.
Volodymyr Lebedenko, Head of Marketing at HostZealot.com, agrees and says, “Open and action typically occur within 30 minutes for time-sensitive transactional alerts like renewal confirmations or provisioning updates.”
For promotional campaigns, he notes that peak conversions tend to happen within the first 45 minutes. However, longer-tail results stretch out over 48 hours. This is precisely why open rates are useful for checking message visibility instead of measuring user intent.
Luca Dal Zotto notes, “Transactional SMS like order confirmations and delivery notices have an open rate of 98%.” (Editor's note: 98% is the commonly-cited stat; however, some recent research has suggested an open rate of 55% and a “view rate of 100%”). In one test, Dal Zotto's team added an upsell offer to a transactional message and saw repeat purchase rates increase by 19%. It’s a good reminder that even messages that nearly everyone sees still need to earn the next click.
If you want to benchmark SMS meaningfully, track what happens after the tap instead of just the open rate.
SMS drives fast opens and high engagement in marketing. But small missteps can cost you in trust, retention, and compliance. Hear how smart marketers tackle these challenges and build stronger campaigns.
Katie Breaker, Sales Director at BirdieBall, learned that chasing short-term gains doesn’t always pay off. She noted, “We made a mistake early on when we interpreted open rates as a sure sign of success. We thought that if people were opening the message, they were interested and ready to buy.”
That assumption didn’t hold up for long. Her team soon realized high open rates weren’t resulting in conversions. That’s why they started focusing on relationship-building instead of pushing sales in every message. She noted, relationship-building pays off and gives much better ROI than if you were just trying to close a sale with every text.
Amra Beganovich, founder of Colorful Socks, also shared that being intentional gives you better results. She doesn’t treat SMS as a quick version of email. Instead, her team builds SMS campaigns as a distinct channel with its own rules. She says, “The goal should be speed, relevance, and a clear reason to click.”
Her team segments SMS by urgency and user intent, sending back-in-stock alerts, early access drops, and restock notifications only to customers who recently clicked or browsed. This behavior-driven targeting led to a 47% increase in CTR compared to email. They also slowed down cadence and refined opt-in clarity, reducing unsubscribes by 28%.
Both Breaker and Beganovich agree that sending fewer, more thoughtful messages outperforms high-volume sends.
For Jason Hennessey, founder of Hennessey Digital, the challenge is attribution. He says, “First-click attribution still matters to us. We want to know what channel sparked a movement. SMS often does the heavy lifting silently, especially when layered with retargeting.”
To capture SMS's real impact, his team tags landing pages with SMS-specific UTM tags and tracks downstream behavior across touchpoints. “Without it, you give credit to the wrong tools. SMS deserves more credit than it gets sometimes,” he explains.
SMS marketing is no longer about urgency and open rates. The best marketers now treat SMS as a strategic lever for speed, sentiment, and segmentation. Success depends on how quickly you respond to user signals, how well you personalize, and how responsibly you function amidst shifting compliances.
John Pennypacker, VP of Marketing at Deep Cognition, says you must tap into first-party data like browsing behavior, service history, and user preferences to dynamically segment and personalize messages.
His team also tracks engagement by delivery time. Before scaling a campaign, they test send times on small segments to optimize for response. He added, “Properly timed messages drive better engagement, even when the content stays the same.”
Chris Brewer, Managing Director of Best Retreats, shared that emotional framing and lightweight personalization always beat longer pitches. He also emphasizes on tracking user sentiment because “high CTRs don’t mean happy users.”
Meanwhile, Allan Hou, Sales Director at TSL Australia, focuses on what he calls the response window, or how long it takes for users to engage after they receive a message. He added, “People may engage with your message immediately or in a couple of hours, but there's a noticeable drop-off after 24 hours. Knowing this helps follow-up actions or secondary messages that help close the loop.”
Understanding the window of time in which users are most likely to act after receiving SMS is important for tailoring campaigns.
Hou also sees SMS as a performance driver for time-sensitive campaigns. He explained, “If you're targeting a very specific audience like freight clients or urgent logistics needs, SMS often generates quicker responses and higher returns per engagement.”
The patterns are clear across every conversation. Here’s what high-performing teams are doing differently:
1. What are the average open, click-through, and conversion rates for SMS campaigns?
What matters most with SMS are the click-through rate and conversion rate. Top-performing SMS campaigns see 21-35% CTR and 11-30% conversion rates, especially when companies send SMS in response to real-time user actions like cart abandonment or sign-up.
2. How does SMS ROI stack up against email or paid channels?
SMS consistently outperforms email for time-sensitive campaigns. ROI ranges from 2x to 5x, especially when using segmentation and urgency. Campaigns tied to churned users, flash sales, or upsell flows drive more revenue than most email or paid social efforts.
3. Which SMS KPIs are worth tracking?
Focus on CTR, CVR, unsubscribe rate, and response timing. Most engagement happens in the first 15 minutes. Watch metrics like bounceback rate (post-click drop-off) and opt-in churn lag (how long users stay subscribed) to fix message fatigue early.
4. How can you improve engagement through smarter segmentation and timing?
Use behavioral triggers over static segments. SMS sent within 5 minutes of user activity can hit 36% CTR. Personalization, like referencing recent actions, can increase conversions by more than 20%. Frequency matters, too. High-value buyers tolerate 3 texts a week, while casual users don’t.
5. How do SMS benchmarks shift by industry?
Benchmarks vary widely. Retail flash sales can earn $15+ per recipient. Finance texts convert at 21–30%. Education sees 23.8% CVR on appointment reminders. Nonprofits that segment by donor behavior boost conversions by 40%. Urgent industries like logistics perform best with fast, transactional messaging.
Hey, I’m Sudipto, a B2B SaaS content strategist and writer. I share practical insights on content marketing in my newsletter, Content Strategy Insider, to help content marketers do better work and get noticed. If you’re looking to connect on content strategy, writing, or consulting, feel free to reach out on LinkedIn.
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