The land of SMS or text message marketing metrics and analytics is a little unknown and can be a little difficult to navigate. This is especially true since the explosive success of SMS marketing in the past couple of years has left many marketers using traditional email or web analytics to look at their text data. Sure, some of the traditional web analytics are universal and can be easily applied to text message marketing, but it doesn't cover the unique nature of the promotional platform. For now, continue to look at your SMS data through the basic analytic lens, but add these three critical SMS metrics so that the picture of your marketing strategy becomes clearer.
Request for More Information
Since text message marketing is limited by character space, it's very difficult to include all of the relevant information your customer needs about your call-to-action. You have to pick and choose what information to put in, and often, some valuable information is left out.
As a standard practice for text message marketing, most SMS messages include short codes for customers to text back to ask for more information.
Why does this critical SMS metric matter to you?
Well, if there's a spike in requests and all of your subscribers are asking for clarification on the same thing, then there's a problem with your SMS content.
Also, this applies to requests for help or technical assistance.
Clickthrough Rate
Most SMS marketers look at open rates instead of click-thru rates because, well, open rates are so glorious. More SMS messages are opened than emails, day in and day out, and if that isn't an ego booster, then I don't know what is.
Open rates are all well and good, but they don't paint the full picture as to how successful your call-to-action is. A subscriber may open your text, read it, decide that it's not for them and delete it.
What's more important are those subscribers that click on your links embedded in your SMS message to find out more about your promotion or to act on it.
Click-thru rate is a precursor to conversion, meaning, that a click-thru rate is the step before a subscriber signs a petition or purchases an item.
An impressive open rate is meaningless because it shows that your text message isn't intriguing or compelling your subscriber to act.
To improve on this critical SMS metric, aim for a high click-thru rate, and then set your sights on improving your conversions.
Top Content / Promotions
It's sad how often businesses try to recreate the marketing wheel for every promotion. Yes, it's valuable to shake things up a bit. But, sometimes, the tried-and-true promotions, the ones that produce the best results, more conversions and great sales numbers, are what you need to focus on.
Take some time to review which promotion or content performed the best and which ones performed the worst. Eliminate the bad, while sticking with the good. You don't have to always copy verbatim your most successful promotions. Use them as a benchmark for future SMS campaigns. Also, look at why certain promotions work better than others do. Is it the promotion itself? Is it the time of day or day of the week that it was sent? Is it the way that it was written?
Dig a little deeper.
Want to learn more about critical SMS metrics?
If you're interested in learning more about critical SMS metrics you can use to boost your SMS campaigns and their success, be sure to contact us!
