Most service businesses obsess over SMS marketing open rates. They check dashboards daily hoping to see that magical 98% number. They panic when open rates drop to 85%. They celebrate when they hit 96%. Meanwhile, they're completely ignoring whether those opened messages actually drive bookings, sales, or any measurable business result.
Open rates tell you almost nothing useful about campaign effectiveness. A text message with 95% open rate that generates zero bookings is objectively worse than a message with 75% open rate that fills your schedule. Yet businesses continue optimizing for opens rather than outcomes.
The metrics that actually matter are response rates and conversion rates. These numbers reveal whether your messages motivate action, not just whether people glanced at them. Response rates show customer engagement and message relevance. Conversion rates connect your SMS spending directly to revenue.
This guide shows you why open rates mislead more than they inform, what response and conversion metrics actually reveal about campaign effectiveness, and how to shift your focus toward the numbers that improve business results. You'll learn which metrics matter for different campaign types and how to build measurement systems that track what actually drives growth.
SMS open rates measure the percentage of delivered messages that recipients open or view. Industry averages typically range from 90-98%, significantly higher than email open rates of 15-25%. This high engagement is why businesses get excited about SMS marketing.
But here's what open rates don't tell you. They don't reveal whether the recipient read your entire message or just glanced at the preview. They don't show whether your message resonated or fell flat. They don't indicate whether the recipient took any action. They definitely don't tell you whether the message generated revenue.
The technical reality makes this worse. SMS open rate tracking is imprecise compared to email. Many SMS platforms estimate opens based on engagement proxies rather than direct measurement. Some platforms can't track opens at all and only measure delivery. When your dashboard shows 94% open rate, that number might be calculated, estimated, or extrapolated rather than actually measured.
Open rates also suffer from context problems. A 95% open rate on appointment reminders sounds great until you realize appointment reminders typically get 92-97% opens regardless of quality. Your excellent open rate is actually average performance. Meanwhile, a promotional campaign with 78% open rate might be performing exceptionally well compared to the 65-75% typical for that message type.
Customer behavior explains why opens matter so little. Most people read text message previews on their lock screen without ever officially "opening" the message. They see your content, process it, and decide whether to respond, all without triggering an open in your analytics. Your actual message reach far exceeds your measured open rate.
Consider what happens when you optimize purely for open rates. You test subject lines, send times, and sender IDs trying to push opens from 91% to 94%. You succeed. Your open rate improves. But bookings don't change because open rates weren't your real problem. You spent time and energy optimizing a metric that doesn't correlate with business outcomes.
An HVAC company tracked open rates religiously and felt good about their consistent 93-96% performance. Then they started tracking response rates and discovered only 11% of recipients actually responded to their promotional messages. That 93% open rate masked that 82% of people who opened messages took no action whatsoever. The open rate looked great while the campaign barely worked.
Response rate measures what percentage of message recipients take any action after receiving your text. This includes replying, clicking links, calling your number, or any other measurable engagement. Response rates typically range from 15-45% depending on message type and industry.
Unlike open rates, response rates directly correlate with business results. When someone responds to your message, they're signaling interest and intent. They're moving through your customer journey rather than passively receiving information. High response rates indicate your message resonated and motivated action.
Response rates also reveal message quality in ways open rates can't. Two campaigns might both achieve 94% open rates. One gets 8% response rate, the other gets 38% response rate. The second message is clearly more effective despite identical open rates. Without tracking responses, you'd think both campaigns performed equally.
Different message types generate predictably different response patterns. Understanding these patterns helps you set realistic expectations and identify actual problems:
Appointment reminders and confirmations typically generate 65-85% response rates. Customers need to confirm or reschedule, creating natural engagement. Response rates below 60% suggest problems with message clarity, timing, or customer relationship quality.
Promotional offers and campaigns usually generate 18-35% response rates for service businesses. Customers see the offer and decide whether it's relevant to current needs. Response rates above 30% indicate strong offer-market fit. Rates below 15% suggest targeting, timing, or offer relevance problems.
Follow-up sequences and nurture campaigns see declining response rates across messages. First message might get 40% response, second message 22%, third message 12%. This pattern is normal as increasingly engaged customers respond early while others need more touchpoints or aren't interested.
Transactional messages (booking confirmations, payment receipts, service updates) generate 25-45% response rates when recipients need to take action, lower when messages are purely informational. High response rates indicate customers find the information actionable or have questions.
Response rate analysis also reveals segmentation opportunities. A pest control company tracked responses by customer type and discovered residential customers responded at 31% while commercial customers only responded at 14%. This insight led them to create separate message strategies for each segment, improving overall campaign effectiveness.
Time-to-response patterns provide additional insights. When do customers actually engage with your messages? A dental practice found that while open rates were consistent throughout the day, response rates for appointment scheduling messages peaked between 6-8pm when people were home and could check their calendar. They shifted send times accordingly and saw response rates improve from 28% to 39%.
Response rates help you identify your best customers. People who consistently respond to messages are more engaged with your business. They book more frequently, spend more per transaction, and refer others more often. One cleaning service segmented customers by response history and found that high-responders (50%+ response rate across messages) had 2.4x higher lifetime value than low-responders despite similar initial purchase behavior.
The gap between open rates and response rates reveals wasted opportunity. If 95% of recipients open your message but only 18% respond, you're reaching people but failing to motivate action. That's where optimization efforts should focus. Testing different calls to action, offers, or message timing can dramatically improve response rates while open rates barely move.
Conversion rate measures what percentage of message recipients complete your desired business action. For service businesses, this typically means booking appointments, making purchases, confirming attendance, or requesting quotes. Conversion rates directly tie SMS marketing to revenue.
Strong conversion rates vary dramatically by message purpose and business type. Appointment reminders to existing customers might convert at 75-85% because customers already committed to the appointment. Your text simply facilitates confirmation. Promotional messages to cold prospects might convert at 4-12% because you're creating new demand rather than fulfilling existing intent.
The conversion rate reveals campaign ROI in ways that open and response rates can't. Calculate revenue per message by dividing total revenue generated by messages sent. A restaurant sends 1,000 reservation confirmations at $30 messaging cost. Those confirmations prevent 60 no-shows worth $4,200 in lost revenue. Revenue per message is $4.20, making the ROI obvious despite the campaign not trying to drive new sales.
Compare this to relying on open rates for success measurement. The restaurant sees 96% open rate on confirmations and 93% open rate on promotional texts. Both look excellent. But confirmations generate $4.20 per message while promotions generate $0.18 per message. Open rates suggested similar performance. Conversion rates revealed a 23x difference in business value.
Track conversion by message type separately because different campaigns serve different purposes:
These benchmarks help you understand whether your SMS marketing effectiveness meets reasonable standards or needs improvement. More importantly, they shift focus toward business outcomes rather than engagement metrics.
Attribution challenges make conversion tracking more complex than measuring opens or responses. Customers might receive your text Monday, think about it Tuesday, call Wednesday, and book Thursday. Your SMS platform attributes the conversion to the Monday message, but how do you know the text caused the booking versus other factors?
The solution is testing and comparison. Send messages to one customer segment and don't message a similar segment. Compare booking rates between groups. The difference represents your SMS impact. A plumbing company tested this with quote follow-up. Quoted customers who received follow-up texts booked at 31% rate. Quoted customers without follow-up booked at 19% rate. The text messages drove a 12 percentage point improvement worth significant revenue.
Multi-touch attribution becomes important as your SMS strategy matures. Customers might receive appointment reminders, promotional offers, review requests, and service updates across months. Which messages contributed to their loyalty and repeat business? Single-message conversion tracking misses this cumulative impact.
Track customer lifetime value by SMS engagement level to understand long-term effects. An accounting firm analyzed three years of client data and found that clients who engaged with SMS campaigns (measured by response and conversion rates) had 40% higher retention and booked 2.3x more services annually. Their SMS program contributed to client quality beyond individual campaign conversions.
The businesses that succeed with SMS focus on conversion metrics tied to specific business goals. If your goal is filling your schedule, track appointment booking and confirmation rates. If you're driving sales, track purchase conversion and average order value. If you're building relationships, track engagement patterns and retention metrics. Open rates simply don't connect to any of these actual business objectives.
Different campaign types require different success metrics. Using open rates to judge promotional campaign success is like using delivery rate to judge conversion effectiveness. Each metric serves specific purposes and reveals different insights.
Use delivery rates when diagnosing reach and technical problems. If delivery drops below 95%, you have carrier filtering, list quality issues, or sender reputation problems. Fix delivery before worrying about any other metrics because undelivered messages can't generate business results.
Monitor open rates only for dramatic changes that might indicate delivery or recognition problems. If opens suddenly drop from 92% to 67%, investigate whether messages are reaching spam folders, sender ID changed, or carrier filtering increased. Gradual open rate variation of 5-10 percentage points rarely indicates meaningful problems and doesn't warrant action.
Track response rates for engagement and message relevance assessment. Response rates reveal whether your message motivated action and whether your audience finds your content valuable. Test message variations and measure response rate changes to optimize effectiveness. For conversational SMS marketing, response rates indicate whether your conversation starters actually start conversations.
Focus on conversion rates for ROI and business outcome measurement. Conversion rates connect your SMS spending to revenue, bookings, or other business goals. This is the metric that justifies continued investment and guides budget allocation decisions. When reporting SMS program results to management or ownership, lead with conversion metrics and revenue impact.
For appointment-based businesses, the essential metrics are:
These metrics directly tie to your business model and revenue. Open rates tell you nothing about whether your schedule stays full.
For product-based or transactional businesses, prioritize:
Again, these metrics connect to actual business performance rather than engagement proxies.
Build your reporting dashboard around the metrics that drive decisions. Most businesses need 5-7 key metrics maximum. Include one delivery metric (to catch technical problems), one or two response metrics (to gauge engagement), and 2-4 conversion metrics tied to your specific business goals. Drop open rates entirely or relegate them to secondary status you check occasionally.
A medical practice simplified their SMS reporting from 15 metrics to 5 core measurements: delivery rate, appointment confirmation rate, no-show rate, new patient booking rate from campaigns, and patient lifetime value by SMS engagement. They reviewed these monthly and made strategic decisions based on the data. Their previous dashboard with open rates, click rates, and dozen other metrics generated reports nobody actually used for decisions.
The transition from tracking opens to tracking conversions requires both technical and mindset changes. Start by connecting your SMS platform to your booking system, CRM, or sales tools. You need to track which text message recipients actually complete business actions, not just which ones opened messages.
Most modern SMS platforms including Sakari offer integration with common business systems. These integrations automatically attribute bookings, sales, or other conversions to specific campaigns. Without integration, you're manually correlating message sends with business outcomes, which becomes impossible as volume grows.
Set up proper conversion tracking even if it takes technical work. The insights you gain from understanding which campaigns actually drive revenue far exceed the implementation effort. Businesses often discover their assumptions about campaign effectiveness were completely wrong once they track actual conversions.
Change your testing methodology to focus on conversion optimization rather than open rate improvement. Instead of testing subject line variations trying to improve opens from 93% to 95%, test offer variations, call-to-action wording, and message timing to improve conversion from 12% to 18%. The conversion improvement generates dramatically more business value.
Train your team to think in terms of business outcomes rather than engagement metrics. When reviewing campaign performance, ask "how many bookings did this generate?" not "what was our open rate?" This mindset shift cascades through every campaign decision from message content to send timing to audience targeting.
Maintain reasonable expectations about what SMS can accomplish. Not every campaign will generate direct conversions. Brand awareness campaigns, relationship maintenance messages, and educational content serve important purposes without driving immediate sales. For these campaigns, track softer metrics like engagement trends, brand recall surveys, or long-term customer value rather than immediate conversion.
Document your metric definitions so everyone understands what you're measuring. "Conversion" means different things for different campaigns. For appointment reminders, conversion equals confirmation. For promotional campaigns, conversion equals booking. For review requests, conversion equals submitted review. Clear definitions prevent confusion and misalignment.
Understanding your SMS marketing metrics helps you focus on what actually drives results. The businesses that succeed with text messaging measure what matters for their specific situation rather than chasing generic benchmarks about open rates that provide limited insight into campaign effectiveness or business impact.
Ready to track the SMS metrics that actually matter for your business? Start your free trial with Sakari and access the analytics and conversion tracking that connect your text campaigns to real revenue results.