Sending your first SMS campaign may seem stressful, but it gets easier over time. Eventually, you’ll no longer worry about hitting “send.” But like other inbound tactics, you shouldn’t just send a bunch of texts and hope for positive results. Ensure your efforts are successful and result in a high return on investment (ROI) by evaluating key performance indicators (KPIs).
But which ones should you measure? Here is a list of significant KPIs to track and how they impact your SMS marketing’s ROI.
Messages Received
Following how many of your messages were successfully delivered should be one of the first KPIs you measure when surveying the success of your campaigns. A high number of bounces or undelivered texts may suggest something is off in your technical setup, which adversely affects your outcomes.
Pro tip: SMS marketing platforms track your sends, receives, replies, and analytics in one dashboard so you can monitor the health of your campaigns. Additionally, you can dive deeper into other essential metrics.
Click-Through Rate
If you’re a marketer, you’ve heard the term click-through rate (CTR) when discussing your email campaigns. CTR measures the percentage of users who take an action by clicking on a link within one of your messages. You should assess it when it comes to examining your SMS marketing because it’s a direct link to how people are interacting with your texts.
If you’re using the same offer or link across different mediums, like social and SMS, you can create custom tracking URLs for your text message campaigns by adding parameters with a URL builder. That way, you can zero in on the CTR of just your SMS marketing efforts. To calculate CTR manually, take the number of clicks and divide it by the total of delivered texts then multiply by 100. Then you’ll want to look for a higher CTR because a better percentage is indicative of a more substantial ROI.
Read More: Choosing the Right KPIs for Your Marketing Strategy
Opt-Outs
No matter how impactful your SMS campaigns are, you’re bound to have a few opts-out here and there. However, you shouldn’t shrug off an abnormally high opt-out rate. When a large percentage of your users are unsubscribing, it may mean your campaigns are not sufficient. Whether it’s a lack of personalization, relevant links, or frequency, more opt-outs mean your campaigns are not resonating with your audience – which can cause a blow to your ROI.
Attrition Rate
As noted, some of your contacts will eventually opt out for varied reasons. An attrition rate calculates the number of people who do so in a specific time frame. Calculate it by dividing your opt-outs from the designated time frame (ex: January - February ) by the total number of subscribers at the beginning of that period. A lower rate suggests your efforts during that time frame are working. A higher rate can imply multiple things, like a natural lull in business, or campaigns that are not speaking to your contacts.
Conversion Rate
The success of any SMS marketing campaign relies heavily on its conversion rate. Conversions rates show the number of users who took your intended action like a reply, sign up or purchase. If you don’t utilize an SMS platform, you can calculate conversion rates by dividing the number of users that took your specific action and dividing by the total amount of recipients in that campaign.
You can also track SMS marketing conversion rates easily with HubSpot workflows. Set up your workflows with your trigger and SMS messages, then set your goal. For example, if your contacts are stuck in the payment process, you can set up a series of texts to remind them to finish signing up. You can set up your goal of “became a customer” or “deal closed won” and track your percentage through HubSpot’s workflow performance tab.
Every single conversion like this should be considered a gain, so the higher your rate, the healthier your ROI will be. You can keep it high by regularly eliminating poor campaigns and building upon stronger ones.
How To Get Your ROI Percentage
While these KPIs affect your SMS marketing ROI, they don’t give you an actual number to report. Subtract the total amount you spent on your SMS campaigns from the total amount you earned, then divide again by the total amount you spent on SMS campaigns to compute an ROI percentage. You can also calculate your ROI percentage easily by taking a look at closed deals that were enrolled in any SMS workflow.
Get SMS Marketing Help from Lynton and The Twilio HubSpot Extension
SMS marketing is cost-effective and engaging, but you need to actively measure specific KPIs to be sure your individual campaigns are contributing to a good ROI. For help determining what KPIs to track, or to get started with SMS marketing, reach out today.
You can also explore the Twilio HubSpot extension from SyncSmart for help with SMS reporting. automatically logs every SMS message sent and received by a contact, so you can easily measure the ROI of your SMS marketing campaigns and see how they impact your bottom line. The app ensures you'll never miss important data again — so why wait? Start tracking your SMS records today and take your reporting to the next level with the Twilio HubSpot extension.
