Most brands treat SMS as a second email channel, sending the same calendar to a phone number, and they pay for it in unsubscribes. SMS is a tighter, more expensive channel than email, and the rules that work in the inbox backfire in a text thread.
Across the 17 brands in our SMS benchmarks, the typical send earns a click rate around 8% while losing about 1.28% of its recipients. That second number is the one most guides ignore, and it decides whether an SMS program compounds or quietly shrinks the list it depends on.
This post covers what good SMS performance looks like in real numbers, how to get consent right, how often to send, which flows earn their place, and how to write texts people act on.
TL;DR
- In our benchmarks, SMS click rate runs from about 4.5% at the 25th percentile to 20.5% at the 75th, with a 7.96% median across 17 brands.
- Every send has a cost: the median SMS send loses about 1.28% of recipients, so consent and restraint are not optional.
- Lead with flows, not blasts. Triggered texts reach people at a moment they created, so the message is expected.
- Keep copy short, with the brand name up front and one clear action.
What Is SMS Marketing?
SMS marketing is the practice of sending permission-based promotional and automated text messages to customers who have opted in, using SMS for text and MMS for images.
It runs in two forms: campaigns, which are one-off sends to a segment, and flows, which trigger automatically on a customer's behavior like an abandoned cart or a recent purchase.
The channel is powerful because a text lands on the lock screen and gets read within minutes. That immediacy is also why it is unforgiving: an email that misses sits unopened, while a mistimed text gets an opt-out, and every opt-out is a subscriber you can't text again unless they opt back in.
SMS Marketing Benchmarks: What Good Looks Like
In our benchmarks across 17 active SMS senders over a trailing 12 months, the middle half of SMS click rates runs from 4.5% at the 25th percentile to 20.5% at the 75th, with a 7.96% median. Unsubscribe rates run from 0.56% to 2.11% across the same band.
These are distributions, not targets, so the question is which part of the band your program sits in.
| Metric | P25 | Median | P75 | P90 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SMS click rate | 4.5% | 7.96% | 20.5% | 36.8% |
| SMS unsubscribe rate | 0.56% | 1.28% | 2.11% | 2.67% |
The spread is wide because SMS performance varies more than email does, shaped largely by a brand's category and how it collects numbers. A list built from recent, engaged opt-ins tends to sit higher in the band than an older, colder one.
For context, the median email click rate across the same portfolio is 0.68%, but it is a different channel, so don't compare the two directly.
The unsubscribe row is the one to watch. At a 1.28% median, roughly ten sends to the same list shed more than a tenth of it if list growth does not replace them.
That is a rough illustration rather than compounded math, but the point holds: every text has a list cost, and a send that does not clearly beat that cost is losing subscribers for nothing.
Get Consent the Right Way
SMS marketing requires express written consent before the first promotional text, which in the US is a higher bar than email. A compliant signup discloses what the subscriber is agreeing to, confirms the opt-in, and makes leaving easy.
Get this wrong and the cost is not just legal risk, it is deliverability, because carriers filter senders with weak consent practices.
The working checklist is short. Collect express written consent with a clear disclosure at signup, send a confirmation text, honor STOP and HELP keywords automatically, name the brand in every message, and respect time-of-day limits. US carriers also require business senders to register their numbers before sending.
The standards worth reading are CTIA's messaging principles, the industry guidelines carriers enforce. This is general guidance, not legal advice, so check the rules that apply to your business and the states you sell into.
How Often Should You Send Marketing Texts?
Send when there is a real reason, not on a fixed calendar. There is no universal number of texts per month that works, because the right cadence depends on your list's tolerance and how much your sends earn against the unsubscribe cost.
Let the reason drive the send: a launch, a restock, VIP early access, or a genuine deadline all justify a text, while “it is Tuesday” does not.
The unsubscribe percentiles are the guardrail. Because the median send costs about 1.28% of the list, texting without a reason spends subscribers you cannot get back.
If you run SMS inside Klaviyo, Smart Sending blocks repeat texts to the same person inside a set window, which stops the worst over-sending, but it is a safety net, not a strategy.
When to Send SMS
The highest-performing SMS windows in our data are 8am and 5pm ET, which you can see in our send-time data across 94 SMS broadcasts.
Those peaks line up with the moments people check their phones at the start of the day and the commute home, and they differ from email's best windows because the two channels get read on different rhythms.
Send in the recipient's local time, and keep well inside daytime hours, since a marketing text at the wrong hour reads as an intrusion and draws opt-outs. The send-time report goes deeper, so treat this as the short version.
Lead With Flows, Not Blasts
The highest-return SMS is almost always a flow, not a broadcast, because a triggered text reaches someone at a moment they created, so the message is expected.
A tactical gear brand we work with put SMS on automated flows instead of campaign blasts, and those SMS flows drove 15.7% of its total BFCM attributed revenue from a list of 85,000.
The flows that earn their place are the same high-intent moments that drive email, with a text added for immediacy. Add one of the abandoned cart texts to the email sequence for shoppers who left a full cart, and add a nudge to your welcome flow for new subscribers who clicked but did not buy.
Branch opted-in buyers into a post-purchase SMS touch for shipping and reorders. Each fires on behavior, so it lands when the customer is already paying attention.
Write Texts That Earn the Click
A text that earns the tap is short, names the brand up front, carries one clear action and one link, and uses urgency only when it is real. A phone is a cramped, personal space, so a text that reads like a forwarded email gets ignored or reported.
An organic food brand we work with kept its Earth Day texts tight, with high urgency, short copy, and a single action, and SMS conversion rates ran 20 to 33% across three sends.
Standard SMS segments hold 160 characters, dropping to 70 once you add emoji or special characters, so every word has to work. Curly apostrophes and quotes count as special characters too, so a text pasted from a doc can quietly split into two messages.
Example texts (illustrative, with a placeholder brand). Counts include “[link]”; a real link adds roughly 20 to 25 characters, and each text still fits in one message.
| Example | Text | Characters |
|---|---|---|
| Welcome | [Brand]: You're in. Here's 10% off your first order: [link] Reply STOP to opt out | 81 |
| VIP early access | [Brand] VIP: your early access starts now, before everyone else. Shop first: [link] | 83 |
| Last call | [Brand]: last few hours on the sale. This is the final text, don't miss it: [link] | 82 |
Segment Your SMS List
SMS rewards tight segmentation even more than email, because the channel is expensive in opt-outs and a broad blast wastes that cost on people who were never going to act.
The segments that matter most are VIP and early-access buyers, recent purchasers, and engaged subscribers kept apart from quiet ones. In the organic food brand's Earth Day campaign, the VIP early-access SMS hit a 33.3% conversion rate and drove $6,098.
In that campaign, the VIP text alone brought in more than half of the roughly $10.5K in SMS revenue.
Build these segments on behavior and value, the same way you would segment an email list, then send your most aggressive offers only to the people most likely to welcome them.
Coordinate SMS With Email
SMS and email work best in sequence, not in duplicate, each carrying the part of the message it is best at. In the organic food brand's Earth Day campaign, the VIP email went out first to set up the offer, a VIP SMS followed, and the main send used both channels in the peak window.
The text was the fast, short reminder the email could not be, not a copy of it. Decide what each channel is doing before a campaign so no one gets the identical message twice. Our peak-season calendar shows how that plays out over BFCM.
What Most Brands Get Wrong About SMS
The three most common SMS mistakes all come from treating it like email: texting the email calendar, blasting the whole list for every promotion, and cutting corners on consent.
Each trades a durable asset, the opted-in list, for one short-term send, and the damage shows up later as rising unsubscribes and falling deliverability.
Texting the email calendar ignores that SMS tolerance is far lower, so a cadence that is fine in the inbox burns the list in texts. Blasting the whole list for every promotion spends opt-outs on people who had no interest, when a tight segment would earn more for less.
And skipping consent hygiene, from unclear signup language to missing STOP handling, puts carrier deliverability at risk for the whole program, not just one send.
Running SMS so it earns its place beside email is the work that goes into the SMS programs we run for the brands we manage.
How to Measure SMS Performance
Measure SMS on click rate and unsubscribe rate against the percentiles above, on revenue per recipient, and on list growth net of unsubscribes.
That last one is the honest scoreboard, because a program can post strong per-send revenue while quietly shrinking the list that produces it. A send that lifts revenue but costs more than 2% of the list has to clear a higher bar to repeat. Track the membership, not just the money.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What's the Difference Between SMS and MMS?
MMS carries images, GIFs, or video alongside the text and allows longer copy, while SMS is plain text only. MMS also costs more per message, so use it when an image does real work, like showing a restocked product, rather than by default.
2. Do You Need a Dedicated Phone Number for SMS Marketing?
Yes. Business SMS runs on a dedicated sending number, typically a short code, a toll-free number, or a 10-digit long code. Each comes with different throughput and registration rules, and your SMS platform usually guides setup for whichever type you choose.
3. Can You Text Customers Who Bought From You but Never Opted In?
No, not in the US. A purchase is not consent to marketing texts, which require their own express written opt-in. Collect SMS consent explicitly, even from existing customers, before sending them a single promotional text.