What Is Performance SMS?

Making sure your messages are delivered is the first step toward high-performing SMS. After all, if your audience never gets the message, there’s no way to convert them. To ensure your campaigns are reaching the desired recipients, you need to keep tabs on your key technical metrics. 

Key Technical Metrics 

Thanks to advanced features, such as direct carrier connections, intelligent routing, and real-time monitoring, a reliable SMS platform, such as TextUs, ensures maximum technical performance.

See how TextUs' analytics dashboard helps you monitor and optimize your SMS performance.

Once you know that your text messages are getting delivered, you need to optimize that messaging for maximum effectiveness, which relies on your ability to measure the actual outcomes of your SMS campaigns—results that will be the foundation of your Performance SMS strategy. These measurements, known as key performance indicators (KPIs), will ultimately tell you how well your messages are performing.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Tracking and optimizing these KPIs will enable you not only to stay close to your customers and engage them on their own terms but also boost conversions by ensuring messages are as relevant and compelling as possible. 

You can’t improve or manage what you don't measure—this is the essence of Performance SMS. Yes, you need to know what’s working and what’s not working for your texting campaigns, but more importantly, you need to know why. High-performing messages are well-received for a reason. Here are some best practices to ensure they resonate: 

Audience Segmentation

Sending the right message to the right person is key to higher engagement. We all know the feeling of sending a strongly worded message to the wrong person—it’s not a good look. That’s what makes proper segmentation of your audience critical. When the wrong person gets your message, the chance of getting the desired response is low—even if your messaging is top-notch and your offering is unbeatable.

SMS software integrations with popular customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, such as Salesforce, and workflow automation tools, such as Zapier, leverage your business data to inform your campaigns, ensuring you reach the right reader every time. Such timely, behavior-based messages make communications more relevant; thus, they’re more engaging and likely to convert. 

Personalization

Let’s take it a step further, though, because recipients don’t just crave messages that are relevant—they want to feel like you’re talking directly to them. This is the goal of personalization via Performance SMS, which enables businesses to use customer data to personalize messaging and cadence, drastically improving performance. 

A/B Testing

Boosting your SMS performance relies on your ability to test different messages to optimize for the highest CTR or conversion rate. Campaign features, such as A/B tests, allow you to compare and contrast the effectiveness of various elements to get actionable results. These elements can include message length, format, structure, language, and the inclusion or exclusion of links, emojis, and rich media.

Timing and Frequency

Text messaging is quite a personal form of communicating—often you’re reaching customers in the same inbox they use to chat with their friends, families, and peers. That means cadence is key. Knowing when to reach out and when not to—and how frequently—can be challenging to pin down, but it’s critical to engagement. 

Regrettably, there is no rule of thumb for when and how often to send text messages to your audience (that is, without annoying them). This knowledge can only be gained through analyzing accurate customer data and in-depth market research. You'll want to look into the daily schedules and behaviors of your target customers and determine your delivery times according to when they are most likely to be responsive (or, at least, receptive). 

Compliance

Sure, your messages must be high-quality from a customer perspective, but they must also be suitable from a compliance perspective. With SMS, adhering to regulations, such as the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, is crucial to avoid deliverability issues and legal problems. These standards are in place to protect both businesses and consumers; it’s your responsibility to stay informed on the latest regulations and comply with them—something a solid Performance SMS solution can help with. 

Deliverability Filters

You don’t have to rely on your gut for determining whether or not your messages will get through. Performance SMS software like TextUs has filters in place to alert you as you craft a message if it may affect your deliverability. For example, if you’re using too many emojis or common spam words, TextUs message composer will let you know so you can optimize for deliverability.

Ready to start your high-performing SMS campaigns? Talk to a TextUs expert today.

As we can see by the rapid rise of SMS, communication channels are evolving quickly. At this rate, businesses can expect to be using SMS differently within the next few years:

• SMS will move from a nice-to-have campaign feature to a core communication channel alongside email.
• SMS won’t just be alerts or confirmations—it will be fully integrated into sales cadences, marketing nurture flows, recruiting processes, and customer engagement strategies. (We've already seen great success, both internally and with our clients!)
• Thanks to deeper personalization fueled by AI features and CRM integrations, every message will feel tailored, not blasted.
• SMS will increasingly be judged on how much it accelerates deal cycles and decision timelines.

And lastly, as younger decision makers move into leadership roles, texting will take over as their preferred business communication channel. Thus, B2B teams will lean into SMS because it matches buyer expectations.

"Over the next five years, Performance SMS will become an integral part of the mainstream omnichannel marketing mix and will encompass ubiquitous brand visibility, near-perfect spam filtering, and rich interactive messages that are tailored by AI for specific audiences." 
–Martin Payne, CEO of TextUs

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See how we’ve helped our clients make a measurable impact with Performance SMS.

• Hamilton-Ryker Increases Response Rates to Over 60%, Grows Associate Pool, and Boosts Referrals Using Business-Class Text Messaging
• Managed Services Company Sought State-of-the-Art Communication Method to Improve Candidate Recruitment Efforts
• UNLV’s Executive MBA Program Increases Prospective Student Engagement, Webinar Registrations, and Response Rates with TextUs

How is Performance SMS different from traditional SMS? 

While standard SMS just sends texts, Performance SMS optimizes delivery, content, and timing by taking into account the behaviors and preferences of your target audience. A Performance SMS platform will leverage these data points to maximize deliverability and reach, ensuring your messages resonate and convert.

How can I improve SMS delivery rates and avoid carrier filtering?

In general, it helps to use a reliable texting tool, avoid spammy language (e.g., all caps), and exclude excessive links. TextUs has content filters in place to alert you as you craft a message if it may affect your deliverability.

What is SMS latency, and why does response time matter in business texting?

Latency is the delay between sending and receiving a text. Ideally, you want to update and communicate with your customers as quickly as possible—not only to keep them informed but often to assist them in a timely manner. Considering most people check their texts more often than their email, SMS typically suggests a faster delivery and, therefore, faster conversion.

What causes a high SMS failure ratio, and how do I fix it? 

Invalid numbers, carrier filtering, or poor routing can result in a high failure ratio. Real-time number validation is a viable solution—TextUs has this feature built in and can tell you if a contact’s number is reachable via text or not.

What’s a good SMS response rate for B2B campaigns? 

Across all verticals, text message response rate averages 45 percent. However, this metric tends to vary widely by industry. For example, TextUs data reveals that recruiting text messages show an average response rate upward of 60 percent. Educational institutions, however, see an average response rate of around 44 percent.

How can CRM integrations, such as with Salesforce or HubSpot, improve SMS performance?

Integrations with popular platforms, such as Salesforce or HubSpot, regularly sync contact information with your system. This enables your SMS campaigns to leverage contact data for personalization, automation, and conversation tracking, boosting the impact of your messages. 

How does Performance SMS support sales teams compared to email or phone?

TextUs survey respondents in marketing and sales roles stated they use SMS texting just as much, if not more, than email to perform their regular job duties. Additionally, top-performing SMS campaigns can produce a 2-3 times higher response rate compared to generic email follow-ups. And although phone calls offer truly real-time interactions, texting is more efficient and convenient because recipients can respond on their own accord—likely why most customers today prefer texting to phone calls. 

What industries benefit most from Performance SMS?

Virtually all modern industries can benefit from implementing a Performance SMS platform, such as TextUs. SMS was traditionally used primarily for recruitment and sales outreach, but as texting gained popularity among consumers, more and more businesses found feasible applications for this method of communication.

Here are just a few examples of how various verticals use texting:

• SaaS companies use SMS to accelerate trial-to-paid conversions, drive timely onboarding, and elevate user engagement across the funnel. 
• Financial and lending institutions use SMS to follow up with clients, share documents, and nurture relationships.
• Educational institutions use SMS to simplify campus-wide communication and reach staff members and students more quickly.
• Sports and entertainment venues use SMS to get ahold of ticket holders, fan groups, boosters, and more.
• Manufacturing firms use SMS to provide a fast, easy, and reliable way for companies to communicate with stakeholders throughout the supply chain.
• Marketing agencies use SMS to communicate exclusive offerings, engage audiences in one-to-one communication, and expand their service offering.