Spot high and low performing SMS campaigns with industry benchmarks

You recently sent an SMS campaign to your customers announcing a limited-time 25% off promotion. Now, as you look at the performance metrics you ask yourself, “Are these metrics good or bad?” “Should my conversion rate be higher?” “Did this perform better than my SMS campaign a few months ago?”

With clear answers to these questions, you can determine how to invest your valuable time to optimize your SMS marketing.

Klaviyo now provides industry benchmarks for your SMS campaigns so, just like with your Klaviyo email campaigns, you can quickly see how your messages are performing compared to similar companies. 

With industry benchmarks, you can:

• Set reasonable performance targets using industry averages as a guide
• Prioritize your time and focus on campaigns that have the most to gain
• Engage more customers with your texts by optimizing your low-performing campaigns and continuing to send high-performing campaigns

Make meaningful comparisons

Every quarter, Klaviyo’s report on SMS benchmarks by industry gives you a peek into how metrics vary across the ecommerce world depending on the vertical. For example, the average SMS click rate in Q2 for health and beauty was under 7% whereas the average click rate for toys and hobbies was almost 11%. It may seem like a small difference, but comparing your performance to irrelevant data can lead to decisions that don’t benefit your business. 

You’re a marketer at an online health and beauty retailer and your SMS click rate has been trending close to 9%. During an SMS performance recap with your boss, you tell her your campaigns are not performing as they should. If you had been looking at the average metrics in your industry, you’d know your metrics are actually outperforming your competitors. Your boss would have been praising your work instead of discussing what needs to improve.  

Klaviyo first released in-product benchmarks in December 2020. Since then, our SMS customer base has grown exponentially providing us with more data to shed light on how one industry compares to another. Today, we have enough insight to break down SMS campaign performance not just by big industry categories — like ecommerce versus education — but by more niche categories within ecommerce. For instance, within ecommerce you can now see the difference in performance between food & beverage and automotive. 

Want to give it a try? When looking at the results of your SMS campaigns, you will now see how they compare to other brands in your industry.

You’ll have relevant comparisons for key SMS metrics, including click rate, conversion rate, revenue per recipient, and unsubscribe rate. These benchmarks make it easy to spot areas of concern or opportunity so you know where to focus your time to get more from text marketing efforts.

Set goals and track improvement over time

As more and more brands adopt SMS, industry performance will continue to evolve. We’ll continue to update our SMS industry benchmarks on a monthly basis so you can identify market trends over time. If your SMS campaign metrics are trending downward in a specific quarter, your industry benchmarks can help you understand if that’s specific to your brand or a broader trend that is impacting all companies in your industry. If it is specific to your brand, no need to worry. Check out our SMS Academy courses to help turn your performance around. 

If you are new to SMS, you can use this data to assess where your program is today and to set realistic targets for where you want to be as you continue to learn and optimize. See the chart below? You’re the blue line, and your industry average is the green line. Keep an eye on this data to measure how you perform against the competition.

Improve your SMS marketing with industry benchmarks

SMS marketing is a great way to create stronger connections with customers through personalized communications. In fact, 37% of Americans prefer to receive brand communications through text. When done right, it unlocks a whole world of benefits for business. However, it’s important to think strategically about which texts you send to your subscribers. If your customers don’t find the content relevant, they will quickly unsubscribe and find somewhere else to shop. Keeping a close eye on industry benchmarks will help you understand how customers respond and where to focus your efforts to improve.

If you’re already using Klaviyo for SMS, see how your campaigns are performing today. Discover where you’re excelling and where you may want to invest a bit more time.

If you’re new to SMS, we have plenty of resources to help you get started. Check out The crawl, walk, run approach to launching a strategic SMS program or our “What is SMS marketing?” deep dive.