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Why SMS Must Be Part of your 2025 Marketing Strategy?
Learn why SMS should be heartbeat of your 2025 marketing strategy!
- Samantha Leonie
- November 13, 2024
The use of smartphones today is ubiquitous and most of these phones feature built-in SMS apps. Businesses must utilize SMS marketing to find leads in the same way they use it to connect with them through email marketing. SMS marketing not only has great reach but also high open rates. And these open rates include leads for both B2B and B2C businesses.
Why is the SMS marketing so effective? First and foremost, the number of smartphone subscriptions today exceed4.8 billion , and the majority of these subscribers interact via SMS. It is most common in Canada and the U.S, with 80% of their smartphone subscribers preferring SMS for interactions.
It presents startups and small businesses with a great opportunity to utilize SMS business marketing strategy in 2025 for effective gains. Let’s discuss in detail why SMS must be part of your 2025 marketing strategy.
A Statistical Overview on SMS marketing
The Grand View Research reports that the SMS marketing industry will grow to $12.6 billion by 2025 with a CAGR of 20.3%. This upsurge is due to the sheer number of active mobile phones today—the majority of the world’s popular today owns a smartphone.
Also, 2024 saw a rise in the use of Application-to-Person SMS (A2P), with businesses expected to deliver 2.2 trillion SMS via SMS marketing software in 2025. This number is expected to touch 3.4 trillion by 2028—a growth of 50%, as per Juniper Research.
2024 was a good year for SMS marketing as Forrester reported SMS accounting for 17.4% of the online profits of brands—a noticeable increase from 12.8% just two years earlier.
Furthermore, a Statista study finds that texting is the second most-used type of communication after phone calls. Another encouraging stat is that 81% of clients have signed up to get text messages from trusty brands—a solid willingness to interact via SMS.
Research from Forrester shows that 60% of businesses that use SMS marketing expect their brand value to grow over time. It also finds that 87% of businesses consider SMS as vital to their future client engagement marketing strategies.
12 Solid Reasons SMS Must Be Part of Your 2025 Marketing Strategy
2025 and beyond is a great time for small businesses to embrace marketing strategies that ensure direct, effective, and high-engagement communication with their customers. While social media, email marketing, and digital ads play a crucial role, SMS marketing stands out as one of the most powerful and reliable channels.
With exceptionally high open rates, instant delivery, and the ability to reach customers anytime, SMS offers businesses a unique advantage in cutting through the digital noise. If you’re looking to enhance customer engagement, drive conversions, and build stronger relationships, integrating SMS into your marketing strategy is a must. Here are12 reasons why your business needs an SMS business marketing strategy in 2025 and beyond.
High open rates
You create compelling, persuasive, and interactive promotional messages, but when you share them through digital channels like email marketing, they often go unnoticed—wasting your efforts. An SMS business marketing strategy ensures that your messages get the attention they deserve.
Research shows that SMS boasts an incredible 98% open rate—far higher than other direct marketing methods like phone calls or direct mail. SMS push notifications also achieve 32-45% open rates within just 1-10 minutes, while email open rates lag at around 16.67%.
Why is SMS so effective? First, text messages appear alongside conversations from friends and family, making them feel more personal and familiar. Second, they land in private inboxes—one of the most frequently checked spaces on a smartphone. Studies reveal that 47% of Gen Z checks their text messages at least once every 10-30 minutes. With such high engagement, SMS marketing ensures that your message gets seen, read, and acted upon.
High Volume of client’s demand
Laws like the TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act) in the U.S. and the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) in Europe establish strict rules for SMS marketing to prevent spam and protect consumer privacy. These regulations require businesses to obtain written consent before sending text messages. The good news for your SMS business marketing strategy? The people who opt in for email marketing have willingly shared their contact details in exchange for your messages—meaning they want to hear from you.
To maintain and strengthen this engagement, segment your audience based on their preferences, purchase history, and loyalty levels. Classify them into groups such as leads, first-time customers, loyal customers, and brand advocates. This personalized approach ensures that each customer receives relevant and valuable messages, enhancing their overall experience and increasing your marketing effectiveness.
Measure success easily
You can easily track the performance of your SMS business marketing strategy using key metrics such as:
- Click-Through Rate (CTR): The percentage of recipients who click on a link in your message.
- Open Rate: The number of recipients who read your text message.
- Delivery Rate: The percentage of messages successfully delivered to recipients.
- Unsubscribe Rate: The number of people who opt out of receiving further messages.
Thanks to UTM parameters and link shortening, you can measure how many people click on your links and take the desired action.
UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) parameters work by adding special tags to the end of a URL. When someone clicks a link in your SMS, these tags send data to analytics tools like Google Analytics, helping you track where the traffic is coming from and how users interact with your content.
Link shortening makes long URLs more compact and easier to share—crucial for SMS marketing, where character limits matter. Tools like Bitly transform lengthy links into short, trackable URLs, making messages cleaner and more user-friendly while still providing valuable tracking insights.
Reach anyone in seconds
You can reach a much larger customer base with an SMS business marketing strategy—comparable to email marketing but with a key advantage: instant delivery to mobile devices. Unlike emails, which require an internet connection to access, SMS messages are delivered directly to recipients’ phones, even without Wi-Fi. This gives your business a wider reach and more direct engagement with customers on a daily basis than email marketing.
A single text message can be delivered within five seconds of being sent, and 98% of SMS messages are read within three minutes of receipt.
This real-time communication is perfect for flash sales, time-sensitive deals, and one-time promotions, ensuring your audience sees your message when it matters most. Imagine being able to update appointments, send reminders, and reconnect with no-show clients—all within seconds. SMS marketing streamlines these processes, guaranteeing that your messages land directly in your customers’ inboxes immediately, keeping your business communication fast, effective, and highly engaging.
No coding or designing needed
An SMS business marketing strategy requires no development or design work, making it one of the simplest and most efficient digital marketing tools. In contrast, email marketing demands carefully crafted templates that must perform well across multiple emails—a time-consuming task that often yields inconsistent results.
With SMS, you don’t need to be a graphic designer, IT expert, or coding specialist. Crafting a message is as easy as texting a friend or updating your mom about your plans. No complex formatting, no HTML compatibility issues, and no worries about image quality.
SMS marketing thrives on brevity and clarity. Messages are short, direct, and straight to the point, ensuring your audience receives the information without distractions. It eliminates the hassle of over-designing, allowing you to focus on what matters most—effective communication and immediate engagement.
Lower spam Chances
According to recent research, up to 85% of emails end up in spam folders, significantly reducing their visibility and effectiveness. This is one of the reasons why governments have implemented strict regulations on SMS marketing—to ensure transparency and protect consumers.
Unlike emails, SMS messages don’t have spam folders, making them a reliable and direct communication channel. When customers give explicit consent, you can confidently send messages without worrying about them getting lost in a cluttered inbox.
However, it’s important to follow compliance guidelines. Regulations allow recipients to report spam if they receive messages without their consent. The good news? As long as you operate within the legal framework, SMS marketing remains a trusted, effective, and high-engagement tool for reaching your audience.
Instant conversations
People today are more engaged with text messages than ever, with 80% of recipients viewing their messages within five minutes of receiving them. This means that as soon as you send an SMS, the majority of your audience will have read it within 30 minutes—making it an ideal channel for promotional offers, flash sales, and time-sensitive campaigns.
Not only are open rates high, but response times are exceptionally fast. Research shows that 45% of recipients reply within 4-10 minutes, while 32% respond within just 1-2 minutes. This makes SMS marketing the perfect tool when you need instant feedback, customer details, or appointment confirmations, ensuring fast and effective communication with your audience.
Cost-effective
Compared to other digital marketing channels that require significant effort, high costs, and continuous monitoring, an SMS business marketing strategy demands minimal investment and effort while delivering high-impact results. You can send messages to your entire target audience instantly, without worrying about wasted resources, since SMS marketing involves little to no upfront investment.
As previously discussed, an SMS business marketing strategy is both personalized and highly targeted. You can segment your audience based on customer preferences, loyalty levels, and past purchases, ensuring that each message is relevant and valuable.
For example, if you own a clothing store, you can send exclusive winter coat promotions to customers who have previously purchased winter apparel through ecommerce SMS marketing. This approach saves time, reduces wasted efforts, and maximizes your marketing budget by focusing only on the right audience—those most likely to convert.
Versatile
SMS marketing is simple, yet incredibly versatile. Businesses can leverage text messaging for a wide range of purposes, including customer support queries, two-factor authentication (2FA), loyalty program updates, event invitations and reminders, order and delivery notifications, and promotional campaigns.
A recent study found that:
- 53.8% of businesses use SMS marketing for customer service.
- 12.5% use it for contests and sweepstakes.
- 29.8% utilize it for new announcements and product launches.
- 39.5% send billing reminders.
- 57% use SMS to request reviews and customer satisfaction surveys.
- 25.8% leverage it for sales alerts, promotions, and special offers.
- 50% use it for reservation and appointment reminders.
With so many applications, SMS business marketing strategy offers limitless opportunities to enhance your campaigns, generate more leads, build customer loyalty, and drive higher sales—all with a direct, cost-effective approach.
Include text and images
An A/B test comparing text-only SMS vs. SMS with multimedia (MMS) revealed that messages containing images, videos, GIFs, or audio files generate significantly more clicks.
Additionally, a 2024 Consumer Behavior Texting Report found that promotional texts with images increase the likelihood of a customer clicking or making a purchase by 61%. This highlights the growing impact of visual content in mobile marketing.
The introduction of MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) marketing has made SMS marketing platforms more powerful than ever, allowing businesses to send messages with rich media alongside up to 1,600 characters of text. MMS is an enhanced version of SMS, designed specifically for delivering highly engaging multimedia content, making it a game-changer for modern marketing strategies.
No updating algorithm
SEO is notorious for its frequent algorithm changes, constantly keeping brands on edge. The same applies to social media platforms, where shifting trends and updates can make it difficult to maintain consistent visibility. However, SMS marketing is immune to these fluctuations.
Marketing teams often pour significant time and effort into SEO and social media management, only to see their hard work become ineffective overnight due to algorithm updates. If you don’t adapt quickly, competitors will—leaving you behind.
Fortunately, SMS marketing frees you from this uncertainty. No algorithms. No unpredictable changes. Your text messages will always land at the top of your customers’ chat inbox—guaranteeing direct visibility and engagement when you implement a smart SMS business marketing strategy.
Loyalty building
When a conversation is meaningful via text messages, the outcomes can be loyalty building. A personalized SMS message with a unique detail like of the subscriber’s name, age, gender, past history and more can help you customize the content for each client proves you value them.
For example: Rather than sending a common message like: “Hi! Check out our latest offers!” A personalized SMS could say: “Hi Sarah! Thanks for purchasing the cozy sweater last month. Here’s a 15% discount on matching scarves, just for you!” Such SMS touch their feelings shows that the brand remembers and values each customer personally.
FAQs
The statistics and insights discussed above clearly demonstrate why SMS marketing remains one of the most effective strategies in 2025. With high open rates, instant delivery, and direct customer engagement, SMS continues to outperform many other marketing channels.
Two-way SMS communication delivers real-time messages directly to customers’ smartphones. When you send a text to the right person at the right time, with a personalized touch—such as referencing their past purchases, age, or demographics—they feel valued and connected, strengthening their engagement with your brand.
Absolutely! SMS marketing can be seamlessly integrated with other channels such as social media, email, mobile apps, and websites, creating a cohesive and effective multi-channel marketing strategy
Yes! SMS marketing is significantly more cost-effective than other digital marketing methods, making it an ideal solution for small businesses looking to maximize their reach without breaking the budget.
Conclusion
The rise of SMS marketing in 2025 presents an incredible opportunity for businesses of all sizes to leverage powerful SMS marketing platforms that deliver exceptional ROI. With smartphone usage at an all-time high, SMS marketing provides a direct and effective path to generate leads, convert prospects into loyal customers, and drive long-term retention.
At IT Verticals, we offer high-ROI digital marketing services for startups and SMEs. Our expert SMS marketing services can help you build a strategic, results-driven SMS campaign tailored to your business goals.
Ready to take your marketing to the next level? Contact us today and let’s craft a winning SMS strategy for 2025!
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