Why SMS Is Important to Your Cross-Channel Strategy

SMS marketing is known for both its impressive open rates and its swift time-to-opens, with 98% open rate and 90% of all SMS opens happening within three minutes of delivery. But the power of SMS doesn’t stop at opens. Braze data shows that SMS campaigns can help brands achieve a 2.2X uplift in monetization.

Ahead, we’ll share even more top reasons why SMS marketing is important for brands looking to strengthen relationships with their customers and how to maximize your SMS efforts.

3 Reasons Why SMS Campaigns Are Important

Every year we study the state of customer engagement across the globe and across industries as part of our annual Global Customer Engagement Review. Now in our fourth year, as part of our 2024 study, we analyzed the interactions of 9 billion users with nearly 1,000 customers that use the Braze customer engagement platform to see what drives activation, monetization, and retention. According to this year’s findings, here are some of the powerful benefits of SMS marketing.

1. SMS campaigns boost customer engagement

We compared what happens when companies keep in touch with customers via text message marketing versus when customers receive no SMS campaigns, and it’s clear that SMS outreach delivers a sizable impact.

According to our analysis, SMS marketing increases average sessions per user by 52%, compared to customers who receive outreach via other channels (but not via SMS), and by more than 18X, compared to when customers receive no engagement messages at all.

2. SMS campaigns drive more purchases

Encouraging more purchases per user is critical to successful customer monetization, and SMS is a secret weapon of best-in-class marketing teams. SMS outreach can increase purchases per user by 2.2X compared to when users receive outreach via other channels (but not via SMS) and by 220X, compared to when customers receive no campaigns at all.

3. SMS campaigns increase user lifetimes

SMS marketing can be a real asset for strengthening customer retention. Customers who receive SMS campaigns have 38% higher average user lifetimes compared to those who receive outreach via other channels (but not via SMS) and 9.9X higher average user lifetimes, compared to customers who receive no messaging at all.

How adding SMS can increase activation, monetization and retention

To explore how SMS paired with other channels can increase key performance metrics, Braze has analyzed billions of customer interactions with hundreds of global brands. Our findings reveal how effective SMS can be at boosting user sessions, increasing purchases per user, and enhancing user lifetimes.

Not yet using SMS? See how supplementing SMS messaging to existing channels can drive more purchases.

Want to learn more?

Check out our new guide Mix and Match: Supercharge Engagement, Monetization, and Retention with Cross-Channel Experiences for more insights on how different channel combinations impact engagement, monetization, and retention, and how to optimize your customer engagement results channel by channel.