One of the major benefits of SMS marketing, besides 99% SMS open rates, is how fast customers open SMS marketing messages. How fast are SMS marketing messages opened? Multiple industry sources suggest 90% of SMS marketing messages are opened within 3 minutes. What’s even crazier is that 99% of SMS marketing messages are opened within 20 minutes.
What is SMS Marketing?
SMS marketing is one of the most effective marketing channels to reach your customers because while emails can sit unopened in an inbox for hours — or worse, sent directly to the trash folder — as we said above, 90% of SMS marketing messages are opened within the first 3 minutes. In addition to that, 78% of consumers say that SMS marketing is the fastest way to reach them. That makes SMS marketing a perfect channel for marketers who have a time-sensitive promotion or alert to share.
SMS Marketing vs Email Marketing
Unfortunately there’s not much data about how fast emails are opened, and the data we did find is based on hours, not minutes like SMS marketing. For example, we found one source that said about 10% of email recipients opened within the first hour after the send, and 90% of the total opens happening only after 80 hours. Yes, you read that correctly… 80 hours! To put that in context, by the time 90% of your customers have seen your SMS message, less than 1% of your customers have seen your email. By the time your SMS message has been opened by 100% of your customers, only 3% of your customers have opened your email.
Why are people so quick to open SMS messages? When you look at all the devices you have, and the media you consume, there’s nothing that is closer to your customers than their mobile phones. This is why 90% of SMS marketing messages are opened within 3 minutes, because their mobile phones are always close by.
