SMS Marketing Performance Report 2021
4 Stores, Average of 12.5% SMS Revenue, 26% monthly growth in ROI, and more:
Introduction
Gone are the days when SMS meant sending a mass campaign to millions of purchased numbers at once, with no personalization, context or relevance. Today’s SMS marketing revolves around Zero Party Data, Opt-in and hyper personalized messages that are useful, not spammy.
Thanks to end-to-end SMS integration platforms like Yotpo SMS that integrate effortlessly with ecommerce platforms like Shopify, setting up SMS marketing has never been easier or more defined than now. SMS marketing in combination with email marketing bolsters Lifecycle Marketing for an ecommerce store by turning casual browsers into customers and then retaining them with timely and relevant messages, at a device that’s always with them.
In this report, we will focus on the results from SMS marketing for 4 ecommerce stores that started their SMS marketing journey with us at Hustler Marketing in early 2021. For the purpose of this report, we will consider 6 key factors to measure and analyse the performance of SMS marketing for the studied stores:
SMS Revenue Share of overall store revenue and growth rate
ROI of SMS and growth rate
Performance of flows
Subscriber Acquisition Channels
Campaign Performance
Black Friday performance
P.S: All SMS messages sent out from the store accounts are GDPR, TDPA and CTIA compliant.
1. Average SMS revenue share
For the 4 stores studied, over a period of 6 months, the SMS revenue share of total store revenue has been 8%,22%, 15%, and 12.5% respectively. The average SMS revenue share of total store revenue thus was at 12.5%.
2. SMS ROI for the stores
For the 4 stores studied, the ROI from SMS has been consistently positive and growing month on month. Amongst the 4 stores, the ROI has been an average of 20x or 2000% that is for every $ spent by the store, they earned an average of $20 from SMS marketing alone!
3. SMS Flows performance
At least these 3 flows were set up for all the 4 stores analysed:
1. Welcome SMS flow
Arguably the most important flow in an SMS journey is the welcome flow which starts the owned messaging journey of a customer when they enter their phone number into a welcome pop-up or give their number at the time of making a purchase. If the former, this flow triggers one or multiple SMSes encouraging the customer to make their first purchase usually using a discount code.
Performance wise, Welcome Flow netted the highest share of SMS revenue at 66%, 46%, 65% and 35% of the overall SMS revenue respectively for each store.
Period last 365 days
2. Cart abandon SMS flow
This flow reminds signed-in users about the items left abandoned in their carts and pushes them towards checking out. Sometimes this includes a discount code or another motivation to complete the purchase.
The abandoned cart flow garnered anywhere between 7% to 12% of the overall SMS revenue, but an ROI of an average of 400x for each store.
The conversion rates for the 4 stores from the Cart Abandon flow were 14%, 6%, 14.7% and 11.5% respectively.
(Conversion rate = number of orders placed/ Number of messages sent *100)
Cart Abandon Flow metrics for a custom art store for 7 months at an ROI of 380 x or 3800%.
Period June 21 - Dec 21
3. Post purchase SMS flow
This flow usually involves a two-step process: 1) Pre-delivery and post delivery. A pre-delivery message includes a thank you message after an order has been placed and post-delivery messages can involve other following messages like a request for feedback, upsells, crossells, and/or product instructions. The idea is to cover the entire customer lifecycle journey from their entry into the store until after their order. We want to first thank them and be grateful for having them, building a real relationship with them. Then we want to show them we are checking them out by sending questions how they like the products once received, and, of course, we want to create brand loyalty by sending exclusive offers their way while they are still getting to love their product(s).
Other flows and segments
1. Browse abandoned flow
The browse abandon flow is an advanced flow that when set up sends SMS similar to the cart abandon SMS but to those logged- in users who were browsing a particular product page but left the site without adding it to cart/checking out. On the 2 stores, we have implemented this flow, the average Conversion Rate is 5% and the average ROI is 116x and 76x respectively.
Browse Abandon metrics for an Adult Body Part Enhancing Product store for 8 months at an ROI of 116x and a Conversion Rate of 5.16%
Period June 21 - Dec 21
2. Floating button welcome flow
The floating button has been a huge source of subscriber growth and as well as revenue from a flow. The floating button is a piece of subscription form that remains static on the site with a pull message for signing up. On entering one’s phone, the form triggers a welcome flow. Any revenue attributed to the floating button stems from the welcome message that the subscriber gets after entering their details on a floating button.
The average revenue from the “Floating Button” Welcome flow for 6 stores was x. For one luxury apparel ecommerce store, the floating button gave a Conversion Rate of 22% within just a month of setup.
SMS Welcome Flow Analytics for a Streetwear Apparel Store
Period Dec 21
4. Subscriber source and growth
This section throws light on the source of acquisition of SMS subscribers for the 4 stores studied for this report. The subscription form remains the biggest acquisition source for most of the stores and includes the welcome popup, the floating button and any other push forms.
Note: Subscribe keyword is different from a popup form and it is a feature used for mobile opt-ins via the pop-up. When users click on “tap to subscribe” on their mobile phones, the system automatically generates a message code for them to send to a number which subscribes them to the SMS list.
5. Campaign performance
Other than flow setup for the above clients, we have taken on campaign SMS marketing for these 4 and 21 other stores across various time periods during the last year. Most clients were on a 1 or 2 campaign per month package and netted a total of $585k from SMS at an average of 1.4% of the total store revenue.
For the 4 stores studied for this report, the results from campaigns were as followed: (Data for SMS campaigns from June 1 – Dec 31, 2021.)
6. Black Friday performance
The BFCM (Black Friday Cyber Monday) was a special period where we launched special flows, campaigns for over 15 stores and generated above-average revenue from SMS, in line with the above-average store and email revenue. A few highlights from the BFCM promotions included
- Managed over 337k subscribers over BlackFriday and generated a total of 5,
- 882 orders;
- During November, we helped generate $1.99mn for our SMS clients (both on SMS and email) and over $0.5mn of that came from SMS. This is a total of 39.5% of all their stores’ revenue just from our services with almost 12% only from SMS.
- During BFCM days we brought more than $1.15M for our clients (42% of their store revenue) from our combined email and SMS services. Over $300k were attributed to SMS only.
Conclusion:
In 2021 our focus was to use our extensive email marketing knowledge and extend it into our SMS service. On this front, we are proud to say that on an our average, our SMS clients see an ROI of 14.3x and 12.6% of their average revenue generated through SMS in just 3 months since starting our service. SMS as an integral part of lifecycle marketing continues to grow and we at Hustler Marketing have just got started.
