For a digital marketing company, measuring SMS and email marketing metrics means more than just optimizing SMS and email campaigns. In the era of multichannel experiences, SMS and email campaign analytics give room for omnichannel improvement, including real-time communications with clients.
Sure, as a business owner, you have to respect your budget. But this may not even be enough: knowing how much money you have is knowing nothing compared to the room for action you get when having access to data like ROI, CTR, and bounce and conversion rates. These SMS and email marketing KPIs dynamically track your success and show how you can improve immediately and strategically.
No less importantly, taking control over your sms and email marketing metrics will help sharpen your real-time conversations with potential customers, whether you connect with them via chatbots, messengers, social media, or other communications channels.
Read on to learn everything you need to know about SMS and email marketing KPIs and how they can help you convert more clients in real-time conversations.
SMS messaging, if executed correctly, allows companies to generate, nurture, or transfer leads to other channels and even convert them on the spot. Think of an SMS like “Text FREE CALL to get a toll-free call from a local agent” – a perfect example of how you can initiate a live conversation with a text message.
Source: Statista
Mastering SMS marketing metrics is a surefire way to improve customer conversations.
Take, for example, email open rates. Emails with higher open and CTR rates catch more attention and are likely to convert more, and the same topics are likely to dominate live conversations. If most email subscribers are bothered about the same thing, this might be your biggest growth opportunity.
Let’s review how different sms KPIs can help improve your customer conversations.
The interaction rate compares the number of user interactions – clicking the embedded link or image, replying to the message, or forwarding it – to the number of delivered messages:
➥ Interaction Rate = (Number of interactions ÷ Number of delivered messages) x 100
For example, if 10,000 users received an SMS and 2,000 reacted by answering or clicking the CTA, your interaction rate would be 20%.
Not only is the interaction rate important for measuring SMS performance, but it is also vital for strategizing your marketing communications. Depending on user engagement with your marketing SMS, you can identify what topics evoke interest, how customers react to different messages, and what tone, phrases, and words you should avoid when speaking to them.
The deliverability rate is the percentage of SMS messages successfully delivered to the inbox:
➥ Deliverability Rate = (Number of delivered messages ÷ Number of all sent messages) x 100
The deliverability rate doesn’t offer much information regarding how to lead marketing conversations, but it allows you to clean your marketing lists from disengaged subscribers. For example, if your subscribers don’t respond to your SMS and emails, chances are they will never engage in a marketing conversation, and you should delete them from all your lists.
The SMS unsubscribe rate tells you how many people unsubscribe from your SMS list:
➥ Unsubscribe Rate = (Number of unsubscribers ÷ Number of all recipients at the start of SMS campaign) x 100
To turn your unsubscribe rate into valuable marketing conversational insight, you should know why these people decided to unsubscribe. They might have been disappointed with the content or timing, or they might have received a better offer—whatever the reason, it gives you a chance to improve your marketing on all fronts, including sales conversations.
But don’t overcommit. There will always be unsubscribes after an SMS campaign, sometimes for reasons beyond your control. However, the longer the subscribers are on your list, the less likely they are to unsubscribe.
Source: Postscript
Important: Ensure unsubscribing is easy to make it a reliable performance indicator. Otherwise, you’re risking annoyance and non-compliance.
The SMS marketing conversion rate measures how many of your SMS messages achieve the desired goals:
➥ Conversion Rate = (Number of conversions ÷ Number of all SMS messages) x 100
Whether the SMS conversion rate means the percentage of clicks, signups, or downloads, this data is perfect for optimizing your customer conversations.
There are two ways to optimize your marketing conversations by SMS conversion rate:
For example, if emails with link A convert 15% of users while emails with link B convert 3%, it’s only natural that product A is of higher interest and, other things being equal, should be recommended in a live conversation in the first place.
Continuous monitoring of the conversion rate is the direct way to craft clear call-to-actions, personalize messages for various customer groups, choose optimal timing, and eventually grow your SMS and conversational marketing conversion rates.
Phonexa’s E-Delivery is a bulk email and SMS marketing platform that allows you to set the exact conditions for your marketing outreach: on-site actions, replies, or manual setup. Likewise, it deeply integrates with other marketing channels like social media, blog, affiliate & referral programs, etc.
Book a demo to learn how Phonexa can improve your SMS marketing effectiveness, or take a product tour to explore the platform’s dashboard today.
Customer acquisition cost is the total cost a company spends to acquire a new customer through an SMS marketing campaign:
➥ Acquisition Cost = Total SMS marketing expenses ÷ Number of new customers acquired via SMS
Knowing your customer acquisition cost – for this, you have to take into account factors like cost per message, SMS fees, copywriting costs, etc. – means knowing what marketing campaigns are most effective. If your conversational marketing campaigns generate more profits, you might want to shift your focus from other acquisition channels.
The return on investment measures the revenue generated by your SMS campaigns compared to their total cost:
➥ Return on Investment = ((Revenue from SMS campaign – Campaign costs) ÷ Campaign costs) x 100
For example, if your business generates $10,000 in revenue, and the total costs are $2,000, your ROI is 400%. In other words, you earn $4 for every $1 spent.
Naturally, you can compare your SMS, email, and other ROI metrics with conversational marketing ROI and adjust accordingly. Underperforming channels might lack a unique selling proposition, resonating promotions, or accurate targeting.
The list growth rate is the number of acquired subscribers during a given time to the total number of SMS recipients on your list:
➥ List Growth Rate = ((Number of new subscribers – Unsubscribers) ÷ All subscribers at the start of a period) x 100
So, if you started the month with 10,000 recipients on the list and by the end of the month gained 300 more but deleted 100, your List Growth Rate would be 2% for the month
The list growth rate enables dynamic analysis of marketing campaigns that aim to expand audience reach and offers a more predictable approach to SMS strategy planning. With respect to conversational marketing, this metric gives you an idea of what content resonates with new customers.
| Decide on the Target Metrics | Develop a structured plan for text message analytics outlining what metrics you will track and how you will collect the data. Consistency and clarity in measurements are crucial for data-driven business development. |
| Set Your Optimization Goals | Define clear goals for your SMS campaigns to track relevant SMS marketing metrics. For instance, if you aim to increase conversions in marketing conversations, focus on the most converting SMS or SMS that receive the higher click-through rates. |
| Use All Available Data | A good optimization is a multichannel one. Use all available data, noting the most important metrics and anomalies. Take your past campaigns as benchmarks and see how new campaigns perform against them. |
Good old marketing emails are the most cost-effective way to tap into 4,5 billion people.
The numbers don’t lie:
Source: Statista
With the right email marketing analytics tools, you can collect exhaustive customer data and track email marketing KPIs in real time. The good news is that many email marketing metrics repeat SMS marketing metrics, so you won’t have to reinvent the wheel.
Just rinse and repeat.
The most common metric, and the one that is the easiest to measure, is your email open rates:
➥ Open Rate = (Number of opened emails ÷ Number of all sent emails) x 100
With open rates, it is quite simple: the higher the open rates, the higher the interest in your brand or rather the title of the email. Then you can follow the well-trodden path: take what world and discard what doesn’t work. Not without guesswork, but you can interpret your successful email titles into meaningful conversations.
The click-through rate is the percentage of delivered emails that result in users clicking one or more links within them:
➥ Click-Through = Number of link clicks ÷ All delivered emails x 100
CTR is one of the email campaign metrics closely watched by most digital marketers because clicking the link usually corresponds to user conversion – the main purpose of most emails. In the context of conversational marketing, click-through rate demonstrates how well your message resonates with the audience and whether it’s good enough to spark a conversation.
Source: SuperOffice
Email CTR varies across industries and ranges between 1.5% – 3.1%, and you can make the most out of it by using the following in your emails:
Remember, though, if you’re starting a new email campaign, warm it up slowly so your ESP can get used to the increasing volume. Otherwise, they might flag your emails as spam.
The Bounce Rate measures the percentage of emails that could not be delivered to recipients’ inboxes:
➥ Bounce Rate = Number of undelivered emails ÷ All sent emails x 100
There are soft and hard bounces:
It is crucial to remove bounce addresses from your email list because they harm your email sender’s reputation, reducing the effectiveness of your email campaigns and possible transition to live conversations.
Email sharing and forwarding rate indicate the percentage of your emails that participants shared on their social media or forwarded to their contacts:
➥ Email Sharing/Forward Rate = Number of shared/forwarded emails ÷ All delivered emails x 100
To initiate more sharing/forwarding and facilitate the process, marketers typically include share/forward buttons. The sharing and forwarding email data analytics is valuable for measuring the viral potential and reach of your campaign.
The crucial aspects for improving this email marketing metrics are:
Increasing the sharing/forward rate means you’re also improving the email list growth rate, so don’t hesitate to explicitly ask your subscribers to spread your content if they find it useful – this can be framed as an offer to extend a conversation to their network.
Email ROI assesses the overall effectiveness of an email marketing campaign:
➥ Return on Investment = ((Revenue from email campaign – Campaign costs) ÷ Campaign costs) x 100
ROI alone is a good indicator of what content your audience wants to see and how they may react when you bring up specific things in the conversation. But you can go even further, tracking email-driven conversations to evaluate how the customer journey evolves with different types of emails.
You can do the same for all your touchpoints, especially if you have the right software to automate data tracking across marketing channels. As valuable as SMS, email, and conversational marketing are, you can only maximize conversion if you coordinate all your marketing efforts within your overarching marketing strategy.
Tracking SMS and email marketing metrics is crucial for understanding the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. Data-driven insights from these metrics can significantly enhance conversational marketing by revealing what resonates with your audience and where improvements are needed.
The benefits of Phonexa’s eight-in-one performance marketing software suite come into play here, providing solutions for SMS, email, conversational, affiliate, social media, and other marketing avenues. The smooth integration of click and call tracking into traffic channels ensures you have a complete view of your marketing performance.
Here are the eight proprietary solutions you get at a single price starting at $100 a month (online price calculator):
| LMS Sync | Lead tracking & distribution |
| Call Logic | Call tracking & distribution |
| E-Delivery | Bulk email & SMS automation |
| Cloud PBX | Cloud phone system |
| Lynx | Click tracking for user journey control |
| Opt-Intel | Suppression list management |
| HitMetrix | User behavior recording & analytics |
| Books360 | Automated accounting |
Take a product tour to sneak peek into Phonexa or book a demo for a free consultation.
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