Text Message Tracking: How to Track Your SMS [2024]

Can you relate to any aspect of the following scenarios?

• A frustrated customer service rep is struggling to understand a cryptic text message from a disgruntled client. With a click, they can access the entire message history, revealing the root of the customer's issue and resolving it instantly.
• A marketing manager is sweating over an upcoming SMS campaign, unsure if their message will resonate. They track real-time engagement, tweak the wording based on feedback, and witness the campaign soar.
• A concerned parent is worried about their teenager's online activity. Text message tracking provides peace of mind, revealing safe interactions and highlighting potential dangers.

These are just a few scenarios where text message tracking shines and allows you to take control of communication and make wise and informed decisions about your texting efforts.

In this article, we’ll go over text message tracking and how it works (focusing primarily on text message tracking for business-related SMS efforts)—and how you can best use text message tracking for your own business.

What Is Text Message Tracking?

Text message tracking refers to tracking data and activity in relation to text messages.

From a business perspective, with text message tracking, you’re able to see information such as:

• What text messages were sent out
• What text messages were received in
• Delivery status of text messages
• Click rates on links within a text message
• Response rates of people replying to text messages
• Opt-out rates of people unsubscribing as a result of your text messages

Analyzing this data can help you make better decisions about how to get the most of your text messaging campaigns—whether that’s for employee communication, customer service, or marketing promotions.

Another form of text message tracking would be related to tracking activity on a specific device. A couple of legitimate forms of this type of tracking would be employers tracking employee activity on company-owned devices (as long as the users are aware that they are being tracked), and parents tracking their children’s messaging activity.

There is a strain of text message tracking that’s actually spying and is both unethical and (in most cases) most likely illegal. This kind of text message tracking should not be engaged in.

How Does Text Message Tracking Work for Businesses?

For business campaigns, you can engage in text message tracking via the SMS service you’re using to send out your text messages.

Most SMS options will give you access to data that you can use to track your texting campaigns and their results.

Here’s how it works in the Mobile Text Alerts platform…

Tracking Multi-Blast Campaigns

Let’s say you’re an ecommerce business running a multi-blast texting campaign for Mother’s Day, promoting Mother’s Day products over a period of 4 weeks leading up to the day itself.

You can group all of those blasts into a “campaign” and then you’re able to view tracking data for those messages as a whole. The data you’re able to view includes:

• Delivered: Number of delivered messages
• Unsubscribe Rate: Percentage of people who unsubscribed in response to the messages
• Response Rate: Percentage of people who responded to the messages
• Click Rate: Percentage of clicks the messages yielded in relation to the number of people who received the message
• Message Credits Used: How many of your SMS provider account’s message credits were used to send these messages

Tracking One-Off Blasts

Within your SMS platform, you’re able not only to track the data across entire multi-blast campaigns but also to track data for individual text blasts using a Message Report.

The Message Report shows you tracking data for each blast including:

• Message Content: What the content was for each message
• Recipients: A list of everyone who received your message
• Delivery Status: Whether the message was successfully sent to individual recipients
• Credits: How many of your SMS provider account’s message credits were used to send the message
• Date Sent: The timestamp at which the message was sent
• User: Which user on your SMS provider’s account sent the message
• Delivery Rate: Percentage of recipients that were successfully sent the message
• Response Rate: Percentage of people who responded to the message
• Unsubscribe Rate: Percentage of people who opted out in response to the message

Tracking Individual Conversations

Perhaps you want to engage in individual 2-way communication with your recipients. You’re able to track some aspects of your 2-way conversations from your Message Report and Inbox.

The Message Report will show you the following tracking data:

• Message Content: What the content was for the response you received
• “From”: The phone number that the message was sent from
• “To”: The phone number that the message was sent to
• Date Sent: The timestamp at which the message was sent

The Inbox will show you the following additional tracking data:

• Assignment: Which user(s), if any, were assigned to monitor a specific conversation
• Conversation History: The complete history of messages sent to and from a specific recipient
• Opt-In Method: The method by which the recipient was added into your texting database

In addition to all of the above, you can view a Link Tracking report to see how many total clicks your links are getting.

How Can Text Message Tracking Help Improve Your Texting Campaigns?

Delivery

• Helps make sure you’re not wasting money on undelivered messages
• Can give you a clue that you need to change your message approach so that your messages aren’t flagged as spam

Click Rate

• Helps you determine if your message content and timing are successfully leading people to follow through with your CTA

Response Rate

• Helps you determine if your message content and timing are successfully leading people to follow through with your CTA.

Unsubscribe Rate

• Helps you evaluate if there’s a mismatch between your content and your audience
• Helps you determine whether you’re not providing enough value

Message Credits Used

• Helps you understand how much money your messages may be costing you
• Helps you know how to make best use of your money
• Helps you save money

You can use any and all of the data points mentioned in the section above to help improve your texting campaigns and/or to help you better organize your texting efforts.

Delivered / Delivery Status / Delivery Rate

Delivery data can help you see if your messages are having any delivery issues. Delivery issues could be the result of having landline phone numbers in your recipient list or of something in the message content that is flagging mobile carrier spam filters.

Understanding this datapoint can help you make sure you’re not wasting money on undelivered messages. Or it can give you a clue that you need to change your message approach so that your messages aren’t flagged as spam.

Click Rate

If you have a CTA in your text messages that asks people to click a link, then tracking link clicks is a must in order to determine whether your message is effective.

Evaluating your messages’ link clicks will help you determine if your message content and timing are successfully leading people to follow through with your CTA.

If your link clicks are lower than you’d like, you can consider optimizing your content, offer, or timing. You could also consider whether your audience might not be the right fit for your campaign.

Response Rate

Along the same lines as click rate, the response rate can tell you if your messages are being effective in terms of prompting your recipients to respond.

This metric will be the most helpful if you send campaigns that have a CTA asking for a response. As with click rate, these numbers will help you determine if your message content and timing are successfully leading people to follow through with your CTA.

Again, if you aren’t reaching your response rate goals, you can reevaluate your content, offer, timing, and/or audience.

Unsubscribe Rate

While click rate and response rate can tell you how many people are following through with your CTAs, the unsubscribe rate can tell you how many people are opting out in response to your messages.

If a lot of people are opting out, this could indicate a problem in your approach. Thus, this metric will help you evaluate if there’s a mismatch between your content and your audience, or if you’re not providing enough value.

Message Credits Used

Most SMS platforms and services allow you a certain number of messaging credits to send your messages.

“Message credits” data helps you understand how much money your messages may be costing you. Therefore, having a good understanding of your messaging credits can help you know how to make best use of your money or can even help you save money.

Misc.

Most of the other data points mentioned above are more for organizational purposes. These other data points can help you keep track of what message content, message history, phone numbers, and which account users are sending your messages.

Understanding all of that information can help you be as organized and efficient as possible and ensures that you have the right historical data on hand in case you need it for any kind of auditing or evaluation purposes in the future.

How to Get Started Tracking Your Text Message Campaigns

To get started with tracking your text message campaigns, you can get a free trial of the Mobile Text Alerts SMS platform & API here.