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The click-through rate of SMS

November 07, 2022

Inserting a link in a SMS ad generates traffic to your website and encourages your customers to make a purchase. The click-through rate is therefore one of the most important performance indicators of a communication campaign. And as with many other KPIs and statistics (conversion, ROI...), SMS is the n°1 channel for mobile marketing. Find out what click-through rate you can expect with a SMS marketing campaign, as well as how to calculate, analyze and optimize this key indicator.

click-through rate SMS

What is the click-through rate?

The "click-through rate" or "CTR" (Click Through Rate) is the percentage of people who clicked on a link after seeing it (clicks/impressions). For SMS, this statistic is derived from the number of recipients who clicked on the link contained in SMS, divided by the number of people who opened SMS.

For example, if 10 customers receive your brand's SMS and 2 of them click on the URL, the click-through rate is 20%.

How to calculate a campaign's click-through rate SMS

The formula is quite simple.

Let's say you sent 500 SMS to 500 different telephone numbers. Of these recipients, 50 actually clicked on the link in your SMS. This means your click-through rate is 10%. 50 divided by 500 equals 10%.

To obtain this statistic, the challenge lies rather in your ability to know the number of clicks on the URL. While this data is often available within a sponsored links, emailing or social ads campaign, few SMS providers give you access to these statistics.

At smsmode©, we enable you to calculate click-through rates natively with the URL shortener function smsmode©.

How does it work? Instead of using a classic URL in your SMS, you first shorten the link with the "URL shortener" function smsmode©. Once the link has been shortened, you can place it in your message.

Thanks to this function, not only do you save characters, but after sending your SMS, you'll be able to see in real time how many customers clicked on the link.

The Rich SMS function, including a Landing Page editor and URL shortener available by subscription, goes even further. It lets you :

  • centralize your mobile marketing campaign on one platform,
  • edit a landing page with your colors easily,
  • to know how many people clicked on its URL,
  • analyze, as for an email, which CTA (Call To Action) was clicked on the mobile landing page.

 

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Rich documentation SMS
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If you don't use the short link generator smsmode©The tracking of link data from your SMS messages can only be done using analysis software such as Google Analytics, in order to be able to analyze the results and performance of each campaign. In this case, be sure to set up filters on your links to ensure that clicks come from your campaigns SMS.

Unfortunately, adding UTMs will make your URLs endless, which lengthens and confuses your communication, not to mention the sense of mistrust that the link may cause.

What is a good click-through rate for a SMS campaign?

There is no hard and fast rule for what constitutes a good CTR. A satisfactory CTR depends mainly on the objectives set by the company. Each campaign has its own requirements.

A single click that leads to a conversion and therefore a sale can sometimes be enough, as this sale can cover your costs and match the expectations of your marketing campaign SMS. Other customers may need a CTR of more than 10% to generate a sufficient number of leads that would lead to an appropriate amount of new business being generated subsequently.

What is the average click-through rate on SMS ?

The statistics on this point vary greatly depending on the source:

  • According to a 2012 study by Signal, the average click-through rate for SMS marketing is 6.16%. The data came from 20 different SMS marketing campaigns, ranging in size from 5,000 to 2.5 million recipients.
  • In 2013, Dymark published a report on mobile marketing click-through rates. In this analysis of nearly a billion SMS across 1,500 mobile networks and a multitude of countries, the click-through rate for retail was 8% and for entertainment 14%.
  • According to MessageDesk, for a SMS containing a link, the average click-through rate is around 36% .

From what smsmode© has observed among various campaigns in France, thehe click-through rate for SMS marketing is between 6% and 16%.

One thing's for sure, whatever the data used, click-through rate, like conversion and ROI, is yet another KPI where SMS comes out on top. Even 6% seems huge compared to email marketing (2.80%), sponsored links (1.98%) and social network advertising (0.05%) (source: tatango.com).

And it's up to you to make these averages your minimum 😉.

How can you optimize the click-through rate of your SMS ?

Let's start by sweeping aside the obvious: including links in SMS is the best way to get clicks. Without links, the recipient of your messages has nothing to click on and nowhere to go.

Assert your brand identity

A low click-through rate is often due to mistrust on the part of the recipient. To reassure them, remember to correctly identify yourself as the sender of the message. The best way to do this is to personalize your Sender ID. Alternatively, at the very least, mention your brand name in the body of SMS.

Another good practice is to preserve your brand in the link. Unknown URLs can be perceived as spam. This can affect your performance.

Watch the number of characters in your message

A SMS is limited to 160 characters. If your link or message is too long, you risk incurring additional charges, or even sending a truncated SMS if you're using an API and there's a configuration or query fault (nbr_message=1 for example).

Also take into account the mandatory presence of the STOP sign SMS.

Use line breaks

The line break costs you only one character, but it saves you structure. These line breaks make your communication clearer, more professional and allow you to present your link as a real CTA.

Personalise your message

The more personalized a message is to your consumers, the higher the click-through rate.

Some ideas for personalization:

  • Use the personalization fields, to insert names, first names, company in the messages.
  • Integrate SMS into your marketing automation workflows, to push a restocking, anniversary or relaunch offer.
  • Segment your contact base to send the right product to the right consumer. (If you can't segment your base, you can always include two links in a message, one for men, one for women for example).

View link preview images and optimize your statistics with RCS

Have you ever heard of RCS? This new messaging protocol is a revolution in mobile marketing. It enables many things, including personalized previews. To benefit from this preview, all you have to do is set a title, description and image when you create your link, and then insert it into your SMS messages.

Stats soar with RCS! We've seen 3X higher clicks and conversion on RCS campaigns.

Contact us to find out how many of your contacts are compatible.

The next KPI

You now have all the keys you need to calculate and optimize the click-through rate of your campaigns. The next KPI to optimize is the SMS conversion rate, which will enable you to calculate the conversion rate for each campaign, giving you a clear view of the return on your SMS marketing investment.

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Our team advises you

Interested in our services? Our account managers and technical team are at your disposal to answer any questions you may have about our SMS solutions, and to advise you on how to set up your campaign.

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