7 minutes to read

How To Set Your SMS Goals — Improve Your SMS Marketing ROI

Mapping the benchmarks is a proven way to be successful in any industry, and the SMS marketing is no exception. Basically, the objectives set for a campaign fall into two camps ― quantitative return on investment (ROI) and brand engagement building. And the second is often even more important than it seems at a first glance. Both of them are measured by the key performance indicators (KPIs).

Various promotions such as sales, promo codes, offers tied to time etc. are able to boost deals in the near-term. While enhancing goodwill among your loyal customers improves visibility, and can result in your sales growth on a long-term horizon. Accurately tracking leads and transactions with the business texting software under your fingertips, you will effortlessly determine whether you are promoting in the right places, and how healthy your text marketing strategy is. 

Keep in mind that a dollar value is not the only metric available to monitor the ROI. Mutually integratable tools will be particularly helpful here, such as eTrading platform, CRM solution, payment processing and bulk SMS manager. But ultimately, all performance objectives must meet the SMART criteria, i.e. be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound. Concentrate on the more easily tracked crucial things.

Goals related to the quantitative SMS marketing ROI may include:

  • Generating $10,000 in extra revenue in June 2021;
  • Increasing cost per order by 25% compared to a current year value;
  • Decreasing customer acquisition costs by 6%;
  • Achieving 1,000 pre-orders for an upcoming service.

Goals related to the brand building are, for example:

  • Growing the engagement (likes, shares and responses) on the Facebook by 25% by May 2021 by developing thought-leadership content;
  • Attracting 3,000 or more entries in the Independence Day giveaway;
  • Gaining 20 newsletter subscriptions by the end of the month; 
  • Reaching a 65% user profile completion rate on your business website.

In either case, ensure that your decisions are real-time and data-driven. You will need the software developed particularly for SMS marketers in order to access the priority metrics and analytics, as well as to manage and segment contacts, draft texts, and eventually send them out in bulk.

Who Is Your Customer

It is essential to determine what people you will be trying to reach, since they are your main guiding force. Ask yourself, who actually requires things you offer, has a phone and is open to receive your attention? However, specificity, target orientation and personalization do not necessarily mean that only your focus group will purchase your product. Good message resonates with the recipient zooming up, among other mobile marketing KPIs, the conversion rates. Key factors to consider are:

  • demography;
  • social and economic status;
  • psychographics (preferences, likes /dislikes, attitudes);
  • consumer behaviours.

For instance, we can start with females between 25 and 40. Next, we study data available on that demographic segment incrementally adding other characteristics and consumption patterns. This is a good way to figure out your perfect customer’s portrait.

If you already guess whom to focus on, but kind of vaguely, surveying the recipients after initial mass SMS messaging will provide you information about who are not as open to messages as others, and who needs to be reached out more. Your competitors are another source to glean information for narrowing down your audience. This can even give a chance to fulfil the market gap overseen by the larger companies.

However, in BSG we believe the most important is understanding what people’s demand is satisfied by your goods and services. This gives rich ideas on how to speak in order to stay in touch with customers’ realities and needs, especially within the 160-character SMS limitation. Our best strategies to increase SMS ROI establish goals not only for a campaign, but those that your supporters expect from you.

Benchmarks to Look Out For

As we mentioned, any campaign needs its success to be measured in deliverables called KPIs. They should be established in advance; however, the temptation to launch a promotion effort without much planning is not uncommon. People tend to reckon upon getting into the swing of things along the line, which can result in poor performance. On the contrary, starting every campaign with KPI will keep you motivated, target-driven and confident.

Let alone, when your management team asks you to rationalize your investment into text marketing, solid KPIs will clearly illustrate your fabulous and intensive job. KPIs can be adjusted anytime to meet your specific business needs. The key indicators listed below will back you up in establishing a framework.

  • Number of Subscribers

Your ad copy may be the best in the field, but if no one is reading it ― it is worthless. To ensure that your list is continually growing, you will need a lookup mobile number (MNP) service allowing you to refine your database. Regularly track the subscription dynamics to determine your strategy’s bottlenecks.

  • Click-Through Rates

The assumed SMS open rate is around 98%, and most of the population read them within 5 minutes after arrival. Click-Through Rate (CTR) is valuable for messages with links. Good practice is to place a single shortened link per message. Additionally, a link shortener tool enables the click tracking. CTR is the total number of clicks divided by the total number of times the link was viewed.

  • Conversion Rates

Conversion rate is the number of subscribers having taken action valuable for your business, divided by the total number of the texts sent. If you’re encouraging people to buy or interact on your website, there are special parameters called UTM. Having them in place, any time when a purchase is made on your site, you’ll know whether or not they have followed the link in your campaign. This indicator can be improved using the hit-and-miss method: trying different keywords and phrases in your calls to action.

  • Opt-ins

The number of people who have consented. The sources of their consent to receive messages matter. Those might be your checkout form, popup window on your landing page, even a paper form. Monitoring where people opt in informs your decisions to expand your contact list.

  • Opt-Outs and Re-Subscribers

Keeping your subscribers is just as important as growing their number. The soaring number of people rejecting your messages, e. g. by replying “STOP” to a message, indicates that you’re sending the improper content and/or not to the proper recipients. The statistics of those who opted out but later came back might also be enlightening.

  • Average Response Times

This is an internal benchmark to assess your efficiency. Since the majority of texts are read instantly, clients tend to expect the response to their messages just as fast. So, work to reply as soon as the feedback arrives. Yet, checking your response time can give a cue, if you are texting at a time comfortable for your users.

  • Revenue and ROI

With modern analytics, you track the total revenue generated from people who have interacted with your messages, as well as ROI ― the said amount divided by the total cost of the campaign. For example, if you send 1,000 texts which generate $200 in revenue with a message cost of two cents, you’ve spent $20 to make $200 so your ROI is $180. 

Moreover, an established bulk SMS provider will spread click-through rate, cost per click, cost per action and many more metrics broken down by the countries or any other criteria ― clearly before the eyes.

Keeping in mind the tips listed above, setting the mobile marketing goals can become notably straightforward. And using BSG digital marketing platform will add even more value providing you all advantages of state-of-art technologies.