Tracking the right SMS marketing KPIs is essential for improving campaign performance and maximizing ROI. These metrics reveal what’s working, what needs adjustment, and where new opportunities are hiding, helping you to make data-driven decisions that get results.
In this guide, we’ll break down 11 must-track SMS marketing metrics, how to calculate them, and why they matter for your business.
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<h2 id="Why">Why SMS KPIs and Metrics Matter</h2>
SMS marketing is fast, personal, and effective — but only when it’s backed by data. Tracking your SMS KPIs over time allows you to spot trends, optimize strategy, and share proven results with your team.
KPI metrics can help your marketing team:
- Understand customer behavior and engagement
- Refine content, timing, and segmentation
- Minimize unsubscribe rates and wasted time
- Maximize conversions and revenue
Your SMS KPIs can provide a picture of your overall business health, help you stay in touch with customer satisfaction, and dial in on what your customers want from you.
<h2 id="Track">11 SMS Marketing KPIs to Track</h2>
Below are the most important SMS marketing KPIs every team should monitor. Each KPI reveals valuable insights into the health and performance of your SMS marketing campaigns.
Subscriber Growth Rate
This metric is a leadership favorite. When your marketing team can show consistent growth in your subscriber base, it shows that you are actively tracking toward your goals. Plus, there’s nothing like a positive slope on a graph to instill confidence!
Subscriber growth rate is good for more than leadership optics, too. If it’s positive, this metric serves as a clear indicator to your marketing team that content, messaging, and frequency are appropriate for your audience. If it is negative or weak, it might be time to reconsider your SMS marketing strategy or A/B test different variables such as send times.
You can choose to calculate subscriber growth rate weekly, monthly or annually — whatever makes the most sense for your team.
List Size
List size refers to the total number of opted-in subscribers on your SMS list. It’s the foundation for other KPIs, such as click-through rate, conversion rate, and ROI. While it doesn’t tell you how engaged your audience is, it provides a baseline for measuring performance and growth.
Pro tip: Segment your list into smaller groups to track performance by audience type, behavior, or location.
Click-Through Rate
The higher your click-through rate (CTR), the higher your ROI. Click-through rate measures the percentage of your subscribers that clicked on a link in your SMS. The CTR gives you valuable insight into how engaged your subscribers are, as well as the efficacy of your language and messaging.
To get your number of unique clicks, use an SMS marketing platform or analytics tool such as Google Analytics, which allows you to track campaign metrics through custom URLs (UTMs).
Then, divide it by the total number of SMS messages delivered, and multiply times 100. As with all metrics, track over time to determine what campaign aspects are working and what you need to improve.
Conversion Rate
Conversion rate is also closely tied to ROI. The better you understand your conversion rate, the more you’ll know which products or offers customers find most enticing. You can invest in the offers that convert or find new ways to nurture those that don’t.
It’s important to first define what counts as a “conversion” for each campaign. Is it a reply to the text? A phone call? A sign up? A purchase?
Once you’ve decided on a specific conversion action, review your campaign to see how many subscribers took that action. Divide the number of actions by the total number of subscribers in the campaign.
Attrition Rate (Opt-Out Rate)
The attrition rate metric tracks the percentage of subscribers who opted out over a specific period of time. While some churn is expected, a high attrition rate could signify poor messaging, irrelevant content, or too frequent communication.
To calculate your attrition rate, divide the total number of opt-outs that occurred during the specified time period by the number of subscribers you had at the start.
Response Rate
The response rate KPI measures the percentage of recipients who replied to your SMS message. It’s particularly useful for two-way SMS campaigns, surveys, and promotions that invite customer interaction.
Utilizing clear questions, prompts, or in-message actions can be an excellent way to boost response rates. To calculate this KPI, divide the number of responses by the total number of delivered messages. Multiply that number by 100 to get your response rate KPI.
Subscriber Acquisition Cost
Your subscriber acquisition cost (SAC) tells you how much you’re spending to acquire each new SMS subscriber. This metric is critical for budgeting and evaluating channel efficiency.
Return on Investment
ROI is the golden ticket to proving your success. In general, it’s calculated by dividing the delta of money gained and spent (return) by your initial spend (investment). A positive ROI validates your business’ investment, while a negative ROI indicates you may need to refine your targeting or messaging.
This is a reliable metric for comparing different marketing campaigns and tactics, as it boils down to: What are we getting out of our investment?
Delivery Rate
This KPI shows what percentage of your messages were successfully delivered to recipients. Low delivery rates may suggest issues such as invalid numbers, carrier filtering, or lack of opt-in consent.
Regularly cleaning and updating your SMS list to remove outdated or undeliverable contacts can help to significantly improve your delivery rate. To calculate this KPI, divide the total number of delivered messages by the total number of sent messages.
Open Rate
Open rates give you a sense of how many recipients viewed your message. Some platforms estimate open rates using read receipts or link previews.
To calculate open rate KPIs, you’ll need to divide the total number of opened messages by the total number of delivered messages.
Revenue Per Message
Revenue per message (RPM) tells you how much revenue you’re generating per text message sent. It’s a useful way to understand exactly how much you’re making per SMS message and can be an effective way to evaluate the efficiency and profitability of each campaign.
To get your RPM KPI, divide the total revenue from a specific campaign by the number of total messages sent within that campaign.
<h2 id="How">How to Improve SMS Metrics</h2>
Improving your SMS marketing KPIs starts with a smarter overall strategy. Here’s a few proven ways to boost results.
- Regularly clean SMS contact lists. Remove inactive or duplicate contacts to improve delivery and engagement.
- Run A/B tests. Test different CTAs, send times, and message formats to see what best piques your audience’s attention.
- Avoid sketchy short links. Use branded, secure links to boost trust and click-throughs.
- Create compelling calls-to-action. Keep CTAs clear, actionable, and benefit driven.
- Deliver real value. Exclusive offers, reminders, or tips all help to keep content relevant and useful to your audience.
- Segment contact lists by behavior or interest. Send personalized and tailored messages using filters or Tags to keep messaging relevant.
- Don’t over-text. Frequency fatigue is real. The best rule of thumb with SMS campaigns is quality over quantity!
Track and Optimize Your SMS KPIs With Textedly
With Textedly’s built-in analytics, segmentation, automation, and data collection tools, you can go beyond tracking KPIs to actually improving them. Monitor trends, fine-tune your content, and drive measurable results with every SMS campaign.
Ready to start creating custom campaigns that generate ROI? Get started with a free Textedly trial!
