SMS Marketing Analytics to Quantify Campaign Results

If you’re running SMS campaigns, you’ll inevitably face questions about their value–whether from your own team, leadership, or participating franchisees. However, demonstrating ROI is just one reason to track SMS-specific analytics.

SMS campaign metrics allow you to directly compare the performance of different text marketing strategies, enabling continuous refinement of your approach. Additionally, SMS marketing analytics provide valuable insights into your customer base, and setting measurable benchmarks establishes clear goals for your marketing team and franchisees.

Remember, you can’t retroactively track past campaigns, so choosing a platform like Voxie that automatically documents analytics at both the campaign and group level is essential for unlocking the true potential of SMS marketing.

Essential SMS Marketing Analytics to Benchmark and Analyze

• New subscribers - This metric tracks the number of new contacts added to your SMS subscriber list over a specific period. Monitoring new subscribers reveals the growth of your potential audience, reflecting the effectiveness of your list-building efforts and overall marketing reach.
• New unsubscribes - This metric quantifies the number of contacts who opted out of your SMS subscription within a defined timeframe. Tracking unsubscribes helps you understand if your messaging is resonating with your audience; a spike in unsubscribes may indicate issues with content, frequency, or overall campaign relevance.
• Messages sent (SMS and MMS) - This tracks the total volume of text and multimedia messages deployed in your campaigns. Monitoring the number of messages sent helps to assess the overall activity and reach of your SMS marketing efforts, as well as understand platform usage.
• Message delivery rate - This SMS metric indicates the percentage of sent messages that successfully reached recipients’ mobile devices. A high delivery rate is crucial, as undelivered messages represent wasted effort and potential missed opportunities to engage with your audience.
• Open rate - This metric reflects the percentage of recipients who opened the multimedia message and viewed its content. Open rates offer insights into the appeal of your subject lines and the visual elements used, helping to refine your message content to maximize engagement.
• Marketing campaign message interaction rate - This SMS metric gauges the level of engagement users have had with a marketing campaign message. This rate may be measured by actions such as link clicks, number responses, or survey completions.

Other SMS Marketing Analytics to Track

• New contacts by entry point - This marketing metric breaks down the sources through which new subscribers are entering your database (e.g., website forms, QR codes, event registrations). Analyzing new contacts by entry point identifies your most effective acquisition channels, allowing you to optimize your marketing spend and focus on high-performing sources.
• Recently created marketing campaigns and their stage (draft, scheduled, and live) - This metric provides visibility into your campaign pipeline and pacing. Monitoring draft, scheduled, and live campaigns helps assess monthly marketing output, ensure alignment with revenue goals, and identify bottlenecks—especially when campaigns stall in the draft stage.

Factoring in Costs of Running SMS Campaigns

Your SMS marketing ROI—return on investment—depends on two critical types of data: the measurable success of your campaigns and the costs incurred to launch them. While marketing platforms like Voxie can integrate with your other business tools to help attribute revenue to your SMS marketing efforts, accurately calculating the total costs requires offline calculations.

These calculations should encompass not only the price of your SMS marketing tools and carrier fees but also the resources invested in growing your subscriber list, producing engaging graphics and content for your SMS outreach, and managing the marketing efforts overall. A comprehensive cost analysis ensures an accurate assessment of your SMS marketing ROI.

How to Analyze the SMS Marketing Analytics to Extract Value

Effective analysis of SMS marketing analytics is key to maximizing your return on investment. By evaluating these metrics, you can identify the best times for engagement, uncover valuable trends to inform spending decisions, and refine your overall SMS strategy.

Evaluate at the Campaign Level

Let’s say your SMS Black Friday campaign had a click-through rate (CTR) of 13%. Is that good? Compare it against past Black Friday campaigns, as well as other campaigns throughout the year. By assessing differences in messaging, visuals, offers, and subscriber list makeup, you can formulate hypotheses about effective tactics. For example, the more SMS analytics you have, the fuller your understanding will be about the recipient’s journey from the moment their phone dings to the final interaction.

Assess Strengths and Weaknesses

The more SMS analytics you gather, the clearer your understanding of the recipient’s journey will be. If the interaction rate of a campaign is low, it could indicate subpar messaging, a lackluster offer, or even low-quality subscribers. Alternatively, if the SMS generates clicks but no revenue change, it could point to an underperforming landing page, unclear messaging, or unmotivating products.

Evaluate by Entry Point

Analyze SMS metrics based on how contacts entered your list. Did subscribers acquired through a specific promotion or channel demonstrate higher engagement rates or conversion rates?

Evaluate by Audience Sub-Groups

Targeting specific audience segments with tailored offers and messaging is crucial. For instance, let’s say you own a small chain of sandwich shops and want to appeal to different customer groups:

• Target younger audiences near a college campus with SMS messages about late-night delivery and free soda, potentially pausing these campaigns during summer.
• Target subscribers visiting your downtown location with 15% off salad offers timed to lunchtime on weekdays.

If you sent everyone a BOGO discount, did one subscriber type click at higher rates? Did a group have a higher response rate for one product? Did a specific day and time generate greater interactions for a segment? The more SMS analytics you gather, the more you will come to understand how to successfully target subsects of subscribers rather than treating your contact list as a monolith.

Evaluate Success by Franchisee or Localized Management

For franchise organizations in which franchisees craft select messages, some will naturally outperform others. Use SMS marketing analytics to determine which localized strategies yield the best results and identify franchisees needing extra training. Share SMS metrics with individual franchisees, comparing their performance to company-wide benchmarks.

For more franchise-specific promotional strategies, read Franchise Marketing Strategies That Deliver Proven Results.

The collection and analysis of SMS marketing analytics should be used to inform and test theories. The more SMS analytics you gather, the more you will come to understand how to successfully target subsects of subscribers.

Additional Tips for Maximizing the Value of Your SMS Analytics

Set Clear Campaign Goals

Have a well-defined objective for each SMS campaign to ensure accurate interpretation of the metrics. A campaign focused on building awareness for a new product should be measured differently than one aimed at clearing out last season’s inventory.

Choose an Intuitive Analytics Dashboard

Opt for a platform like Voxie that offers an intuitive analytics dashboard. Data is more likely to be utilized if it’s easily understandable. Avoid complex spreadsheets and instead, choose visually appealing dashboards that automatically generate charts comparing SMS metrics day-over-day and month-over-month.

Consider External Factors

Don’t overlook external influences that can impact SMS interactions, such as weather, economic conditions, political events, and competitors’ offerings. Keep your market research current and maintain open communication with those closer to the customers, like your franchisees. They can provide localized context to unusual SMS analytics performance that might not be apparent at the national level.

Invest in Your SMS Analytics With the Help of Voxie

Voxie provides the tools and clarity needed to gather, analyze, and act upon SMS marketing campaign data, allowing you to view metrics at the campaign, location, and national levels. Visualize performance to identify trends and connections, while smart integrations enable you to combine SMS data with other marketing insights for richer analysis. Schedule a demo with Voxie to learn about the many capabilities this platform delivers to galvanize your SMS campaigns.