Most businesses hope and pray that recipients will open their emails. And for all that work and worry, only about 18% of marketing emails get opened. In comparison, 98% of texts get read, most within 3 minutes of being received. (Remind us again why businesses still want to use email?)
But if you don’t have to worry about open rates or read rates, what should you care about when it comes to business texting stats? Action. You want people to read your text and then do something.
Action-Based Business Texting Stats
Yes, someone reading a text is an action. But it’s a passive one. Response rates and link clicks, on the other hand, represent more substantial action and effort. They represent interest and consideration for what your business offers.
Response rates
Promotional and marketing emails require no response from the recipients. When businesses send those emails, they simply want us to click through and buy something. Texts, however, give businesses the chance to interact and build a relationship with their contacts, even when they send marketing-related messages.
Business texting done right means having a conversation. According to Agility, 85% of consumers want to not only receive messages from a business but also respond to such messages. This makes long code all the more appealing.
Though not every text you send needs to result in a long chain of messages, businesses obviously benefit more when their messages elicit responses.
Link clicks
Yes, click-through rates still occur in texting. Considering how much time we spend on our phones and how much mobile web browsing we do, inviting people to click on a link in a text is a logical plan for businesses.
Send links for people to:
- schedule appointments
- RSVP to events
- read product/service information
- watch a demo video
- share a post to social media
- fill out a survey
- provide a review
Texting gives you a lot of freedom to share links, more so than you get with email. And the link destination certainly gives you a good starting point for initiating a conversation.
How to Improve Business Texting Stats
Prioritize and improve these stats by focusing on aspects of these six actions of your own.
Write a clear call to action
Action: That’s what this is all about, right? So give people something to do. This is especially important when you want people to click on a link. Tell them exactly what’s going to happen when they click on a link. Ask them a personalized question. Request specific feedback.
A clear call to action makes it even easier for someone to respond because they know exactly why you contacted them. A clever message may catch someone’s attention, but without a clear call to action, it won’t lead them to do anything.
Vary message length
No one wants to read a novel of a text. People will stop reading well before you get to the point. Ultra short messages that have no point also won’t help you engage.
Send messages with intention and vary the length. If it looks and feels like all your messages are the exact same, they won’t feel personalized – because they aren’t. Automated messages in particular don’t have to be robotic!
Send images, videos, etc.
Make your messages interesting. Draw people’s attention. Give them a reason to respond. Whether that’s through photos, GIFs, or videos is up to you and what fits with your brand, voice, and target audience.
Change up frequency and timing
If you don’t get as many responses as you’d like, don’t send as many messages. Or maybe you realize your contacts want more outreach than you’re currently doing. If you aren’t getting responses when you send messages in the morning, try in the evening.
Your target audience will dictate both frequency and timing, so don’t hesitate to test out different timing with different groups of people.
Clean up your address book
Response rates and link clicks sometimes suffer because you send your messages to the wrong people. You will hardly ever — if ever — need to send a message to every single one of your contacts. Instead, create groups to ensure specific people get specific message types. Move people in and out of groups as necessary.
And don’t be afraid to delete the information of people who are simply not a fit for your business. After all, there’s a difference between a cold lead that just needs some warming up and someone who isn’t part of your target audience.
Personalize the messages
Ask the right questions and then respond promptly when people reply. Generic messages work great for short code. But if you use long code and care about responses, you need to send personal messages worth responding to. That might mean pulling in information from your CRM or keeping diligent customer notes.
Business texting doesn’t have to be a mystery, especially when it comes to stats. With Skipio you get analytics and texting stats for all messages you send within a campaign so you can see exactly how many people replied. We also help you track link clicks, and based on that action you can even set rules to trigger different messages to send.