What is SMS Marketing?

What are the benefits of SMS marketing?

SMS marketing's core benefit is reach that converts: Mailchimp SMS messages average a 14% click rate1, and texts arrive directly on the device customers already check constantly. The five benefits below explain why.

The benefits of SMS marketing messages for businesses include:

Direct and instant communication. Sending customers SMS messages allows you to reach intended recipients easily, regardless of their location or what they're doing. Because they're an instant form of communication, text messages offer unparalleled timeliness. Events, sales, and promotions that are often time-sensitive can easily be communicated to customers, ensuring they receive timely information that can influence their purchasing decisions.

High engagement rates. The notification sound of an incoming SMS message often elicits an immediate response. With your customers glancing at their phones regularly, the likelihood of them seeing your messages is extremely high.

Cost-effectiveness. SMS marketing comes with relatively low costs, allowing businesses of all sizes to market to their target audiences. When balanced against their high open and engagement rates, this cost-effectiveness offers a return on investment (ROI) difficult to compete with.

Personalized communications. Whether you're sending transactional messages or promotional text messages, SMS marketing tools enable businesses to create personalized messages that resonate with specific audience segments. You can segment customers by behavior, location, and other parameters to provide a more personalized experience with your business.

SMS is bi-directional. This allows customers to respond to messages in real-time, allowing them to provide feedback, place orders, or ask questions.

Who uses SMS marketing?

Most marketers already do. In a global survey of 2,005 marketers, 65.6% said they were already using SMS or text marketing and a further 27% planned to.8 Adoption is highest in retail and appointment-driven categories, where the message a customer needs is short and time-bound.

The pattern is worth reading carefully. The categories at the top sell products people buy on impulse or book by appointment — a flash sale or a confirmation is genuinely useful as a text. The categories at the bottom have the largest share still planning to adopt, which usually means the channel fit is less obvious: a news publisher or a course provider has plenty to say but rarely anything that needs saying in 160 characters within the hour.

Marketers who identified as revenue leaders were the heaviest adopters at 72.1%, against 66.5% of baseline marketers.8 If you're weighing whether SMS fits your business, the more useful question than "does my industry use it" is whether you regularly have something urgent and specific to say. Our guide to text message marketing walks through what that looks like in practice.

How SMS marketing works

SMS marketing works in three steps: build a consented subscriber list, write a short message with one clear call to action, and send it when your audience is actually available to read it. Each step is covered below.

A simple text message remains one of the most convenient ways to communicate with your customers. If you want to engage customers directly, SMS marketing might be exactly what your digital marketing strategy needs to take it to the next level. Understanding how SMS marketing works can help you create a foundation for your strategy.

Build and manage SMS subscriber lists

Before you can consider sending text messages to your customers, you need a subscriber list. You should receive explicit consent from customers before sending them a text message, ensuring they understand what they're signing up for. Using opt-in mechanisms like forms can ensure you obtain consent and abide by existing laws.

Also, provide subscribers with the option to opt out of receiving your SMS messages. Customers should be able to do this easily by sending a certain response back to you in the form of a text. The instructions for opting out should be clear and concise.

You should also regularly update your subscriber list to ensure its effectiveness. People often change their phone numbers, so if you're experiencing low engagement from some of your subscribers, removing them from your list might be beneficial while increasing your engagement rates.

Craft compelling text marketing messages

SMS content comes in the form of a text message. You're limited by how many characters you use, with most platforms only allowing for 160. However, you don't necessarily want to send your customers long text messages even if you can because the whole point is to make your content as engaging as possible.

Your content should be concise and use personalization whenever possible. Consider referring to the recipient by name or using data about past purchases to make the message feel tailored, fostering a stronger connection.

Your SMS messages should always end with a clear call to action (CTA). Whether you're promoting a deal or simply want recipients to visit your website, the CTA tells them what to do next and can help guide their decision on whether to take action.

In addition to all these elements, you should test and optimize your campaigns. Testing different messages, CTAs, and formats can help determine what resonates best with your audience.

Choose the right time for SMS campaigns

Sending SMS campaigns at the right time can increase the engagement rate while reducing the potential for opt-outs. Understanding your audience, including where they live, can make a big difference. Always consider time zones to ensure you never send messages while someone is sleeping or another time when receiving a marketing message might be considered a nuisance.

With this in mind, you can also analyze past data to determine the best time to send SMS messages to your customers. For instance, you might find that SMS marketing campaigns sent at 10 a.m. have a higher engagement rate than those sent at 6 p.m.

Is SMS marketing legal? Compliance and regulations

SMS marketing is legal in the US and Europe, but only with documented consent. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act governs US sends and GDPR governs European ones, and both require express opt-in plus a working opt-out in every message.

SMS marketing best practices include following compliance with various regulations. Like email marketing, SMS marketing has regulations associated with it. Missteps can lead to legal repercussions and a poor brand reputation. Complying with these regulations ensures that you respect the rights of your customers and can foster trust among them — benefiting both of you.

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act requires businesses to obtain express written consent before sending promotional SMS campaigns and mandates the inclusion of an opt-out mechanism in every single message.

For European audiences, you'll need to follow General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). GDPR dictates strict rules about personal data collection and use. Consent must be explicit, with users having the right to access, modify, or delete their data.

The easiest way to ensure compliance is to have clear opt-in and opt-out mechanisms in place when sending bulk SMS messages. You should maintain thorough records of consent, subscriber interactions, and list management to demonstrate compliance if it ever comes into question.

Strategies for successful SMS marketing campaigns

Capturing and retaining customer attention is marketers' number one priority. Unfortunately, it's easier said than done. As brands continue to test new marketing mediums, SMS has been proven effective. To harness its potential, you'll need a robust strategy that includes:

Segmentation and targeting

Knowing your audience is the first step to a successful SMS marketing strategy. By segmenting your audience, you can tailor your messages more effectively and achieve better engagement. You can use demographic segmentation by classifying your audience based on age, gender, location, or occupation. A skincare company might send different promotions to different segments based on age.

Customer data can also help you craft more personalized and compelling content. For instance, something as simple as using the subscriber's name can make the message feel more personal. Celebratory messages and special offers during birthdays or special occasions can also have a similar effect.

You can also use behavioral segmentation based on purchase history and website interactions to send targeted messages. If someone recently purchased a pair of jeans, your next SMS message to them might recommend a certain top with a discount code they can use.

Integrating SMS with other marketing channels

Cross-promoting using SMS and other channels like email and social media can yield even better results. At the same time, leverage SMS marketing's strengths to your advantage. Use SMS marketing for timely reminders or flash sales and other channels for more detailed communication.

You can also use SMS marketing to solicit feedback after customer interactions across channels. Once they make a purchase on your website, you can send them an SMS asking for feedback.

All communications with customers should provide them with a consistent experience, regardless of the marketing channel. This consistency reinforces the campaign's messages and enhances brand recall. Ensure the tone, language, and style remain consistent across all SMS messages and align with your brand identity.

Promotions, offers, and discounts

SMS marketing is ideal for driving sales and engagement through promotions, offers, and discounts because they create a sense of urgency and FOMO — fear of missing out — that makes customers want to take action. The direct and instantaneous nature of SMS allows you to offer limited-time offers to subscribers, drastically shortening the time it takes for them to make a decision.

You can also send subscribers exclusive discounts as a reward for their loyalty to drive sales while enhancing the appeal of signing up to receive marketing messages. Exclusive previews, limited spots, and testimonials also appeal to your subscribers' FOMO.

By notifying them of exclusive offers, you make them feel more privileged. Telling them about limited spots or product availability can drive quick decision-making, while testimonials demonstrate how others are enjoying your products or services and make customers want to join in.

SMS vs. email marketing: which should you use?

Use both. SMS and email do different jobs, and Mailchimp's own send data shows they perform best together: Mailchimp users saw up to a 2x higher click rate when they used both Email and SMS.5 SMS wins on immediacy and click rate, email wins on volume, detail, and cost per message.

The volume figure is the one most marketers get backwards. Even among businesses running both channels, email carries the overwhelming majority of sends — SMS earns its keep on a small number of well-timed messages, not on frequency. If you already run email, the practical move is to use SMS and email together and reserve SMS for messages that genuinely cannot wait.

What are the downsides of SMS marketing?

SMS has four real constraints: a 160-character limit, a higher cost per message than email, stricter consent requirements, and country-by-country availability. None of them disqualify the channel, but they do determine whether it fits your business.

• You get 160 characters. Anything needing explanation, comparison, or images belongs in an email. SMS is for the message a customer can act on without reading twice.

• Every message costs money to send. Unlike email, where an extra send is close to free, SMS is priced per message. That reverses the usual logic: frequency hurts you twice, once on spend and once on opt-outs.

• Consent is harder to get and easier to lose. A customer who is mildly annoyed by an email ignores it; a customer mildly annoyed by a text opts out. Mailchimp SMS Marketing has an average unsubscribe rate of 1.3%3 — low, but it compounds, because an opted-out subscriber is gone permanently. Worth understanding why subscribers opt out before you scale sends.

• It isn't available everywhere. Mailchimp SMS Marketing is currently available in 37 countries and territories globally, including 34 in Europe. If a meaningful share of your audience sits outside that list, SMS can only ever be part of your reach.

SMS suits businesses with something genuinely time-sensitive to say — a booking, a delivery, a short sale window. If your marketing is mostly educational or your list is small and geographically scattered, email will do more for less.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) for SMS marketing

Four KPIs tell you whether SMS is working: delivery rate, click-through rate, conversion rate, and opt-out rate. Track them in that order — a message has to arrive before it can be clicked, and be clicked before it can convert.

As with any marketing channel, measuring the efficacy of SMS marketing and understanding your return on investment is crucial. Key performance indicators let you monitor campaign performance and fine-tune your strategy. If you're new to SMS marketing, these four are the ones to start with.

Delivery rates

Delivery rate is the percentage of SMS and MMS messages that reached their intended destination. It sits upstream of every other metric — a message has to be delivered before it can be opened.

Measuring delivery rates tells you how well your sending setup is working and surfaces problems with carriers or subscriber numbers. A low rate usually points to invalid numbers or carrier filtering. Following SMS compliance guidelines and collecting numbers through proper opt-in mechanisms is the most reliable way to keep it high.

Click-through rates (CTR)

Click-through rate is the percentage of recipients who clicked a link in your message. For reference, Mailchimp bulk SMS achieve an average click rate of 14%1 — useful as a benchmark when you're judging your own first campaigns.

This is the metric that matters most for campaigns driving traffic to a product or landing page. A high CTR means it was both read and compelling enough to act on. A steady decline across several sends usually signals fading subscriber interest before the opt-out rate does.

Conversion rates

Conversion rate is the percentage of subscribers who completed the action you wanted after clicking — a purchase, a signup, a submitted form. Click-through rate measures attention; conversion rate measures outcome.

A high conversion rate means the campaign is driving traffic and turning it into results. Watch for campaigns that convert consistently well: the offer or content in those sends is the one your audience actually wants.

Opt-out rates

Opt-out rate is the percentage of subscribers who unsubscribed from your messages. For context, Mailchimp SMS Marketing has an average unsubscribe rate of 1.3%.3

Monitor it as a satisfaction measure. Spikes after a run of frequent messages mean your send frequency is too high. A steady climb across several campaigns points at something more structural — wrong send times for your audience's time zones, or a mismatch between what subscribers expected and what you're sending.

"" Given it's interruptive nature, customers who sign up for SMS are more likely to convert simply due to the fact they're okay with you interrupting them from time to time in a way email doesn't. ""

                  — Scott Cohen, CEO, InboxArmy

Analyze and interpret SMS campaign data

Understanding the metrics behind an SMS campaign is crucial for gauging its success. Utilizing sophisticated tracking tools and analytics can help you understand campaign performance and find key areas for success while pinpointing improvement areas.

By analyzing metrics like delivery rates, CTRs, and conversion rates, businesses can extract actionable insights to improve their future campaigns.

Use Mailchimp to improve your SMS marketing campaigns. Our SMS marketing tools can help you create and measure SMS campaigns. Craft text-based, personalized campaigns that encourage customers to take action. Mailchimp SMS e-commerce users saw up to a 22x ROI after launching their first SMS Marketing campaign4 — you can calculate your email and SMS ROI for your own numbers. Then, measure your campaign performance with our robust data and analytics tools.

Key Takeaways

• SMS marketing offers immediate reach, with messages typically opened within minutes, ensuring timely information delivery.

• SMS boasts higher click and engagement rates compared to other marketing channels, leading to better customer interaction.

• SMS marketing is relatively low-cost and can be scaled easily to reach large audiences without a significant cost increase.

• Businesses can tailor SMS messages based on customer behavior and demographics, enhancing the personal touch and improving engagement.

• SMS works best alongside email rather than instead of it — Mailchimp users saw up to a 2x higher click rate when they used both Email and SMS.5

Disclaimers

1 14% SMS Click Rate: Based on SMS messages sent by Mailchimp SMS Marketing users globally from 11/30/24 to 11/30/25. Click rate is defined as the percentage of delivered messages that registered a click

2 Based on internal aggregate Mailchimp data

3 SMS Marketing unsubscribe rate: Based on the average weekly rate of SMS Marketing messages sent by Mailchimp users from 10/27/24 to 10/12/2025.

4 Up to 22x ROI: Based on e-commerce revenue attributable to Mailchimp users' SMS Marketing campaigns and Mailchimp SMS spend (not including plan cost) within one year of launch of first SMS campaign from 10/01/24 to 10/17/25. ROI calculation requires an e-commerce store that is connected to a Mailchimp account.

5 Up to 2x Higher Click Rate: Based on US Mailchimp users who sent both email and SMS campaigns compared to users who sent email-only campaigns from 8/1/23 to 7/28/26. Individual results may vary.

6 Based on internal aggregate Mailchimp data

7 Based on internal aggregate Mailchimp data

8 Ipsos & Mailchimp, Thought Leadership 2024. Global online survey of 2,005 marketers. Industry figures are subgroup results; base sizes: fitness and sports, home, furniture and outdoor goods, toys, games and leisure goods n=373; apparel and accessories n=326; beauty and wellness n=198; tourism and travel, entertainment and events, restaurants and bars n=290; home, professional and business services n=522; news, media and content n=110; education and e-learning n=145. Segments defined as Baseline Marketers, Performance Marketers, and Revenue Leaders.