Are you interested in learning what the average SMS marketing opt-in rate is? If so, we’ve got some good news for you, as recently a study about the average SMS marketing opt-in rates for the following advertising channels was released; email, in-store, social media, television and your brand’s website.
What is SMS Marketing?
SMS (text messaging) marketing involves businesses sending coupons and promotions via SMS to increase sales. It’s important to note that in the United States, SMS marketing requires that a consumer opt-in before receiving any messages. Top brands like Macy’s, Chipotle, Jack In The Box, Dressbarn, and Office Depot all use SMS marketing to reach their customers. An example of an SMS marketing message from Macy’s is featured below.
Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA)
When getting a consumer to opt-in to receive SMS marketing messages from your business, it’s very important that you’re following the rules for obtaining that opt-in set by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). When a consumer provides their phone number to your business, they have to opt-in by agreeing to receive “auto-dialed marketing messages“, and be made aware that by providing their phone number when making a purchase, there’s no agreement to receive auto-dialed marketing messages. Both of these things have to be clearly disclosed to the consumer during the opt-in process.
To learn more about the TCPA, and how it affects SMS marketing, check out these TCPA videos.
SMS Marketing Opt-In Rates
In the graph below, you’ll see the average SMS marketing opt-in rates for the different advertising channels used by brands to advertise their SMS call-to-actions. The percentages displayed are the percentages of consumers that opt-in to the SMS marketing campaign, compared to the total amount of consumers that saw the SMS call-to-action. For example, if 1,000 consumers see your SMS call-to-action on television, you can expect between 1% and 2.4% of those consumers to opt-in to your SMS marketing campaign, which would be between 10 and 24 consumers.
Each advertising channel is then broken out into whether the brand used the channel for a basic placement of their SMS call-t0-action, or a premium placement of their SMS call-to-action. The best way to think about the difference between a basic and premium placement would be to think of basic as it’s being included in the advertisement, but not the main focus of the advertisement, where premium means that it’s the main focus of the advertisement.
Below are the figures from the average SMS marketing opt-in rate graph above.
- Social Media: .7% – 2.9%
- Website: .7% – 1.4%
- Television: 1.0 – 2.4%
- Email: 1.6% – 10.5%
- In-Store: 2.3 – 3.2%
How to Increase SMS Marketing Opt-In Rates
Want to know the #1 way to increase SMS marketing opt-in rates? It’s so easy! All you have to do is give your customers an extra incentive to opt-in to your SMS marketing campaign. In order to grow your SMS list really fast, you cannot just ask customers to opt-in for the promise of future discounts and promotions, you have to immediately reward the customers for giving your business their mobile phone number. In one study it was found that by offering customers some kind of initial incentive to opt-in, businesses were able to grow their SMS lists 520% faster.
For more information of this strategy, check out this post.
Conclusion
As you can see, many advertising channels have a significant difference in SMS marketing opt-in rates depending on whether the brand decided to implement a basic or premium placement of their SMS call-to-action.
These SMS marketing opt-in statistics are similar to what we’ve reported before here on this blog, where studies have shown that retailers can expect to have an SMS database equal to 2-10% of their email marketing database. We’ve also reported on studies that have shown that the average restaurant SMS marketing opt-in rate is 791 SMS subscribers per location.
