SMS Opt-Out Rate

SMS opt-out rate is a metric for messaging that shows what percentage of people have unsubscribed from your phone number. This is by taking the number of contacts opted out, divided by the number of contacts sent in a time period. This can be measured on a 7-day or 30-day basis.

The recommended SMS opt-out rate should ideally be less than 1%, and if you experience above 3% carriers may begin to either filter messages or trigger a compliance warning.

How to avoid high opt-out rates:

  • Compliant opt-ins:
    Always follow compliant opt-in practices, be transparent and upfront about what messages a contact will receive
  • Message contacts post-opt in:
    Always message contacts right when they opt-in to confirm who you are and what they will receive. (If they give you their number, and you wait weeks or months, they will likely not remember they opted in)
  • Consistent SMS:
    Send messages consistently and give subscribers an opportunity to opt-out (include opt-out language like 'reply stop to stop' on broadcast messages). 

High opt-out rates are often triggered by:

  • Inconsistent messaging: If you don't send subscribers any messages for months, then all of a sudden come back and send a promotion, they may forget they opted in. 

SMS Error Rate

SMS error rate is a messaging health metric that measures the amount of errors that occurred when sending SMS. This includes errors like sending to a landline, sending to a non-working phone number, attempting to send to a malformed number, sending to an unreachable device (out of range, etc), or carrier errors like carrier-filtered messages.

The recommended SMS error rate should ideally be less than 3%, and if you experience above 5% carriers may begin to either filter messages or trigger a compliance warning.

How to avoid high error rates:

  • Compliant opt-ins:
    Make sure you collect phone numbers in a compliant way. High error rates often come when you import a bunch of old phone numbers and/or people give fake numbers. See our guide on avoiding fake numbers and opt-in compliance here. 
  • Remove fake / bad numbers:
    Roezan does this automatically for you! See our guide on Roezan phone number automatic validation
  • Honor opt-outs:
    Roezan again does this automatically for you.

SMS Open Rate

Unfortunately, SMS does not have an "open rate" metric like email does. There are some studies that have measured the average SMS open rate to be extremely high between 98%-99%, however there is no mechanism to measure this outside of a controlled study.

As an alternative metric, we pay attention to delivery rates, opt-out rates, click-through rates (when using Roezan's link shortener), and most importantly SMS ROI.

SMS Click-Through Rate

SMS CTR or click-through rate is a measure of what percentage of contacts clicked a trackable link in a text message.

The average CTR of SMS varies pretty dramatically, averaging between 6-19% depending on the study. However, we see many clients with a much higher CTR than this! 

This CTR fluctuates wildly depending on how big the list is, your relationship with the list, the copy / offer of the SMS.