10 SMS Marketing Metrics You Need To Be Tracking

These days, we have tools at our disposal which make it incredibly easy to send out SMS marketing campaigns.

But how do we know if those campaigns are performing?

Just like email, if you continually send SMS messages without tracking their performance, you’ll never know the return on investment (ROI), and that makes the entire strategy rather questionable.

However, unlike email, you can’t track opens or clicks with SMS marketing. But that doesn’t make it any harder to measure your ROI. SMS campaigns deliver a wealth of feedback you can use to your advantage.

In this article, we’ll look at the standard SMS marketing metrics you need to be tracking, and then dive deeper to see how much further we can measure ROI.

The standard metrics

These are the most common metrics you should be tracking for your SMS campaigns. They’ll give you a base level of engagement to work from and help inform your future strategy.

• Conversions: the number of people who completed the action you wanted them to (e.g. booking a table)
• Conversion rate: the number of conversions divided by how many people received the SMS
• List growth rate: measures how fast your SMS subscriber list is growing (usually weekly, monthly or yearly)
• Response rate: this measures how many people take action after receiving an SMS

But what if we want to look closer at engagement and ROI?

Going deeper: fruitful SMS metrics

SMS marketing can be incredibly fruitful, but you need to look beyond open and click rates to really build a profitable strategy going forward.

Here are three key metrics which lie beyond the obvious stuff. The more time you invest in them, the more you’ll discover about your audience.

1. Return rate

Every SMS message you send to guests should be tailored specifically for them. Get this right, and you should see a healthy return rate.

This metric will enable you to see the effectiveness of individual messages. How many return visits are booked after receiving a certain SMS? Whether it’s a high or low number, you’ll get a great idea of what messaging is and isn’t working.

2. AVPG (Average Visits Per Guest)

Great SMS marketing has the ability to drive huge amounts of loyalty. In return, that should raise the average visits per guest and make you feel more confident about predicting future bookings and profit.

The more you can tie the AVPG to direct SMS sends, the more you’ll know how effective the latter is. More importantly, you’ll build a picture of the revenue and loyalty you’re generating via SMS marketing.

3. Average time between visits

SMS messages are capable of bringing people back to your venue at short notice and with little lead time. That means you should be able to reduce the average time between visits with the right messaging.

So, the lower this metric, the better. If it results in a high figure, you’re either not sending SMS messages at the right time, or the ones you are sending aren’t hitting the spot.

Always think ROI

The goal with the 10 metrics we’ve noted above is to develop a set of KPIs which are directly attached to ROI. This will ensure that every message you send is targeted and worth its weight in gold (literally).

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