SMS Marketing Benchmarks: 18 Reports Show Clicks Are Not Orders

Click Rates: Four Benchmarks, Four Different Numbers

Four benchmark sources report an average SMS click rate, and they do not land close together. Klaviyo's 2026 benchmarks, drawn from more than 183,000 customers, put the average campaign click rate at 5.6%, with the top 10% at 10.44%³. Omnisend's analysis of more than 246 million campaign sends from over 27,000 brands in 2025 found a 12.39% average¹. Klaviyo's separate mid-market and enterprise figure is 14.18%, with the top 10% at 27.5%⁴. Dotdigital's 2026 Global Benchmark Report gives a global SMS click-through rate of 25.7%, and 19.91% on a unique-click basis⁸.

Audience type moves the number as much as the vendor does. Subtext, analyzing 10 billion messages to 28 million subscribers across eight industries in 2025, recorded click-through rates from 1.62% in politics to 40.64% in events⁷. Its podcast audiences clicked at 29.44%⁷. Email sits far below all of these in Omnisend's own comparison, at a 0.74% campaign click rate against 12.39% for SMS¹.

Click rate also swings by season. Omnisend's campaign click rate ran from 3.47% in January to 23.92% in December¹.

From Click to Order

The order rate is where SMS numbers compress. Omnisend's campaign conversion rate is 0.12%, against a 12.39% click rate, so the click rate is about 100 times the conversion rate¹. Klaviyo's all-customer campaign average is a 0.27% order rate³, about 21 times lower than its click rate. For mid-market and enterprise senders the click rate is 14.18% and the placed order rate is 0.09%, a ratio of about 158 to 1⁴. Across four categories in that group, order rates run from 0.05% in home and garden to 0.16% in food and beverage, and revenue per recipient from $0.08 to $0.10⁴.

Postscript's 17,000-store Shopify sample, covering January 1 to December 15, 2025, reports a 25th-to-75th-percentile campaign conversion range of 0.12% to 0.54% and campaign earnings of $0.11 to $0.55 per message⁵. Across all message types its median revenue per message is $0.98, the 75th percentile $2.13 and the 90th $4.54⁵.

The top performers do not close the gap. Klaviyo's top 10% of enterprise senders reach a 27.5% click rate but a 0.44% placed order rate, which it describes as 11 times the average revenue per recipient⁴.

Automated Messages Out-Earn Campaigns

Every dataset that splits triggered messages from one-off sends shows the same direction. In Omnisend's data, automations click at 20.34% against 12.39% for campaigns, convert at 0.78% against 0.12%, and earn $0.75 per message against $0.15¹. Average order value runs the other way, $95.28 for automations against $125.06 for campaigns¹. Automations also deliver less reliably, 92.8% against 96.6%, with an 11.8% bounce rate (6.7% hard, 5.2% soft)¹.

Klaviyo's flows average a 9.65% click rate and a 1.9% order rate, against 5.6% and 0.27% for campaigns³. Flows are 7.6% of SMS sends and 45.2% of SMS revenue, and 64.4% of flow revenue comes from new customers³. By category, across 12 categories the flow-to-campaign revenue-per-recipient multiple runs from 5.4 times in food and beverage ($1.83 against $0.34) to 17.6 times in both automotive ($6.15 against $0.35) and hardware and home improvement ($4.57 against $0.26)³.

Postscript's message-type ranges, each from the 25th to the 75th percentile, point the same way. Campaigns earn $0.11 to $0.55 per message, abandoned-cart messages $3.52 to $10.95, back-in-stock messages $5.92 to $13.34, and popup messages $8.28 to $23.78⁵. Their conversion ranges are 0.12% to 0.54%, 3.97% to 7.84%, 7.18% to 13.80% and 9.55% to 25.56%⁵.

Email still out-earns SMS on automated sends in Omnisend's data, at $3.41 per message against $0.75¹.

Who Is Opted In, and How Fast They Read

The reach is close to universal. Pew Research Center's 2025 survey of 5,022 U.S. adults found 98% own a cellphone and 91% a smartphone, up from 35% for smartphones in 2011¹⁴. Smartphone ownership is 97% for ages 18 to 29 and 78% for ages 65 and over¹⁴.

Opt-in has risen across the surveys. EZ Texting's January 2026 survey of 959 U.S. consumers found 89% had signed up for texts from at least one business, up from 66% five years earlier¹¹. Its November 2024 survey of 1,074 consumers found 86%¹⁰. SimpleTexting's December 2024 survey of 1,000 consumers found 84% opted in, up 35% since 2021⁹. In the 2024 EZ Texting wave, 71% said they subscribe without having made a prior purchase¹⁰.

Reading speed is high in every survey that asked. SimpleTexting found 82% of consumers check a text notification within five minutes, 93% text every day and 45% check texts more than 10 times a day⁹. EZ Texting's 2026 survey found 87% check a new text within 15 minutes and 32% check immediately¹¹. Text Request's 2025 survey of more than 500 professionals found 83% read texts within 30 minutes¹². Subtext reports a 98% open rate and 95% of messages opened within three minutes⁷, and EZ Texting's release states a 98% open rate¹⁰. Both are vendor-reported.

Stated intent to buy is lower than stated reach. In EZ Texting's 2026 wave 67% say they are more likely to purchase from a business whose texts they subscribe to¹¹. The 2025 wave reported 79%¹⁰. Neither release explains the 12-point difference. Text Request found 72% of people want to receive messages from businesses and organizations¹², and Dotdigital found 13% of consumers name SMS as a favorite way to interact with a brand⁸.

On the sending side, SimpleTexting found 66% of businesses use SMS marketing software, 82% agree SMS is an effective way to drive revenue, and 81% say AI has improved their SMS results, with most saving 4 to 6 hours a week⁹. Text Request found 76% of businesses that text use it for customer service and 59% name text their most effective response channel¹². 97% of businesses that text would recommend it¹².

What Moves the Result: Content, Relevance and Frequency

Attentive's analysis of 25 billion messages across 13 industries used propensity score matching to control for more than 50 confounding factors⁶. Message content elements moved conversion by as much as +19% for the best and -24% for the worst, and click-through by up to +10% and -10%⁶. Scarcity or urgency language lifted conversion 12% in offer campaigns, stock mentions lifted it 19% in non-offer campaigns, and humor cut it 11.4% in offer campaigns⁶. Messages over 240 characters converted 8.5% lower than those of 160 to 240 characters⁶.

Trigger-based messages click far higher than campaigns. Postscript's back-in-stock messages show a click range of 36.71% to 58.70%, against 2.87% to 8.01% for campaigns⁵. Attentive's February 2026 survey of 1,050 opted-in shoppers in the U.S., U.K. and Australia found 81% point to back-in-stock notifications and 85% are more likely to purchase when they receive sales or price drops on desired items¹³. The same survey found 64% say brand messages are too generic, 80% are likely to ignore irrelevant messages, and 65% are open to more frequent messages if they are relevant¹³. Its sample was limited to people already opted in to email or SMS¹³.

Frequency is the most-cited reason to leave. 40% of EZ Texting's 2026 respondents named message frequency as the top reason to opt out¹¹. Measured unsubscribe rates are low: 0.43% globally in Dotdigital's data⁸, under 1% churn in Subtext's⁷, and 0.80% to 1.03% across four categories in Klaviyo's enterprise data⁴. Images help engagement: 64% of EZ Texting's respondents are more likely to engage with promotional texts that include one¹¹.

Volume and Channel Mix

SMS volume keeps growing. Omnisend's SMS volume rose 40% in 2025 after 31% growth in 2024². Dotdigital's SMS sends rose 57.2% year on year⁸. Infobip's analysis of 628 billion interactions in 2025 found SMS still carries 62% of traffic, while RCS traffic grew 3 times globally and 70 times in North America¹⁵. Single-channel traffic fell from 73% ten years earlier to 2.3% in 2025, and 98% of interactions now span multiple channels¹⁵.

The Consent Litigation Record

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) covers marketing texts as well as calls, and the trackers do not separate the two. WebRecon counted 2,810 TCPA lawsuits in 2025, up 0.8% on 2024, and 68% of December 2025 filings were putative class actions¹⁶. ActiveProspect reports class actions rose from 239 in the first quarter of 2024 to 507 in the first quarter of 2025, an increase of 112%¹⁷. Bradley Arant Boult Cummings reports the same 507 figure and the same increase¹⁸.

Class actions are about 80% of TCPA lawsuits, against 2% to 5% of other consumer statutes such as the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and the Fair Credit Reporting Act¹⁷,¹⁸. In March 2025 a single South Florida firm filed more than 100 suits over messages sent before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m. local time, many involving text messages¹⁸.

The sources disagree on the year's direction. ActiveProspect counts 2,128 lawsuits through September 2025, more than 50% above the same period of 2024¹⁷. WebRecon's full-year total is 2,810, up 0.8%¹⁶. If the two counts were on the same basis, that would leave 682 filings for the last three months of 2025. The sources do not say whether their methods match.

Why the Numbers Disagree

The sources differ in ways that move the figures. The click-rate denominator varies: Dotdigital reports both an all-click and a unique-click figure, 25.7% and 19.91%⁸. The populations vary: Postscript's sample is Shopify stores that installed the product 90 days before Black Friday and spent at least $100 in the third quarter⁵, Subtext's is events, media and politics audiences⁷, and Klaviyo's enterprise page is mid-market and enterprise senders with no stated sample size or date range⁴. The same company can publish different figures for different groups: Klaviyo's all-customer campaign average order rate is 0.27% and its enterprise figure is 0.09%³,⁴. Omnisend's July page restates its automation conversion as 0.77% and revenue per message as $0.74, where its June benchmark page says 0.78% and $0.75².

Fourteen of the 18 sources are published by companies that sell messaging or marketing software, including every platform benchmark in this review. The 18 sources come from 14 organizations: Omnisend, Klaviyo, Attentive and EZ Texting each appear twice. Pew Research Center is the one nonprofit survey, and WebRecon, ActiveProspect and Bradley Arant Boult Cummings supply the litigation figures.

The figures that agree across the most sources are the direction of the gaps. Automated messages earn more than campaigns, order rates are a small fraction of click rates, reach is near universal, and opt-in has risen. The specific click, order and revenue figure any one sender sees depends on which benchmark it is compared against.