SMS marketing benchmarks
Ecommerce SMS benchmarks from 321 million messages: click-through and conversion rates for campaigns against automation, plus revenue per message and deliverability.
SMS reverses email's economics: almost everything is delivered and read, so the interesting columns are clicks and orders. Across 321 million messages from 150,000 ecommerce brands, campaigns click at 12.39% and automated messages at 20.34%.
Conversion is where the channel's reputation for volume gets complicated. Per message sent, campaigns convert at 0.12% and automation at 0.77%; per click, 0.97% and 3.81%. Revenue per message follows the same shape — $0.15 against $0.74 — which is why list size matters far less than trigger design.
Deliverability differs too, 96.6% for campaigns against 92.8% for automation, and consent rules make the channel unusually expensive to get wrong. Benchmarks cannot tell you whether your programme is compliant in your market.
Ecommerce SMS — campaigns vs automation
Who is in this sample: 321 million SMS messages from 150,000 ecommerce brands, calendar 2025
| Industry | Click | CVR |
|---|---|---|
| Campaigns (one-off sends) | 12.39% | 0.12% |
| Automated (triggered) | 20.34% | 0.77% |
Industry names are reproduced in the publisher's own wording.
Source
- Publisher
- Omnisend
- Data period
- Calendar 2025
- Sample
- 321 million SMS messages from 150,000 brands (campaign metrics from 246 million sends)
- Geography
- Not stated
- Statistic
- Figures are averages
Notes on this table
- Ecommerce senders only.
- The page states two sample figures (321M messages, 246M sends) without reconciling them.
- Conversion rate here is per message sent, not per click. The publisher's click-to-conversion rates are 0.97% for campaigns and 3.81% for automation.
- Revenue per message: $0.15 for campaigns against $0.74 for automation.
- Deliverability: 96.6% for campaigns, 92.8% for automation.
How to use these numbers
A benchmark is a description of someone else's sample, not a target. The number worth hitting is your own break-even: the cost per acquisition your margin allows, or the return on ad spend that leaves a profit after the product is paid for. Use the calculators to work that out first, then use the benchmark to ask whether the market is even priced for it.
When your number sits far from the table, check the sample before checking your account. A store compared with a lead-generation sample, or a brand-heavy account compared with broad prospecting, will look broken while being perfectly healthy. The universe line above each table is there for exactly that check.
Calculators for these metrics
Frequently asked questions
- Why is the SMS conversion rate so low if click rates are high?
- Because it is measured per message sent, not per click. Automated SMS converts 3.81% of its clicks — the 0.77% figure divides by the whole send, which is the honest denominator for comparing against email.
- Are automated messages really five times better?
- On revenue per message, roughly: $0.74 against $0.15 in this sample. Automation reaches people at a moment they chose — a cart, a browse, a shipment — where a campaign interrupts.
- Does this cover markets outside ecommerce?
- No. The sample is ecommerce senders only, and no geography is stated. Cost per message and consent rules vary enough by country that revenue-per-message figures should be read as a shape, not a forecast.
How this data is handled
- Every figure is transcribed from a public report and carries its publisher, sample, data period and a link. Nothing is estimated or rounded to “about”.
- Publishers are never blended. A click-through rate from one report and a CPM from another never appear in the same row.
- Each table states who is in its sample, because advertiser mix — not disagreement — explains most of the spread between reports.
- Publisher errors and dated datasets are footnoted rather than quietly corrected or refreshed from another source.