The most reliable SMS marketing statistics for 2026 show that texts get far more clicks than email campaigns (a 5.6% average SMS campaign click rate against 1.69% for email in Klaviyo’s 2026 benchmarks), that automated flows earn several times more per message than one-off blasts, and that text scams are forcing regulators and carriers to tighten sender checks. Every figure below links to its original, dated source, and each is grouped by what it tells you about planning campaigns with SMS marketing tools.
We left out any number we could not trace to a named study with a date, including the widely repeated “98% SMS open rate”. Where a figure comes from a vendor’s own customer data, we say so.
What are the latest SMS engagement and response rates?
- 5.6% is the average click rate for SMS campaigns, and the top 10% of senders reach 10.44% (Klaviyo SMS benchmarks, published January 2026, over 183,000 customers).
- 9.65% is the average click rate for automated SMS flows, such as abandoned-basket or welcome sequences (Klaviyo, January 2026).
- 0.27% vs 1.9%: the average order rate for SMS campaigns compared with automated SMS flows (Klaviyo, January 2026).
- 12.39% is the average click-through rate for SMS campaigns across 246 million+ campaign sends by 27,000+ brands in 2025 (Omnisend SMS Marketing Benchmarks 2026).
- 20.34% is the average click-through rate for automated SMS, with a 0.78% conversion rate against 0.12% for campaigns (Omnisend, 2025 data).
- 96.6% of SMS campaign messages were delivered, compared with 92.8% for automated messages (Omnisend, 2025 data).
- 3.47% to 23.92%: SMS campaign click-through rates ranged from January’s low to December’s peak in 2025, showing how strongly the festive season lifts engagement (Omnisend, 2025 data).
- 57% of consumers expect a business to reply to their text within 15 minutes, and 74% within an hour (EZ Texting 2025 Consumer Texting Behavior Report, 1,074 respondents surveyed November 2024).
Click rates differ between Klaviyo and Omnisend because each platform defines and calculates them differently. Compare your results with one dataset at a time.
Why is there no SMS open rate in this list?
SMS has no read receipt, so no platform can measure how many texts are opened. A delivery report confirms the message reached the handset, not that it was read. Popular figures such as “98% of texts are opened” are usually repeated without a traceable study, so we have excluded them. Measure delivery, clicks and orders instead.
What do consumers say about receiving marketing texts?
- 98% of US adults own a mobile phone and 91% own a smartphone (Pew Research Center mobile fact sheet, June 2025).
- 86% of consumers now opt in to texts from businesses, up 20% since 2021 (EZ Texting, November 2024 survey).
- 79% of consumers say they are more likely to buy from a business if they are subscribed to its texts (EZ Texting, November 2024 survey).
- 55% of UK consumers have bought an item marketed to them by text (Attentive 2025 UK SMS and Email Marketing Report, 2,500 UK shoppers surveyed January and May 2025).
- 43% of UK consumers would share their phone number in exchange for free shipping, and 42% for a free gift (Attentive, 2025).
- 84% of UK consumers are willing to unsubscribe from generic communications, and 16% abandon a brand after a single irrelevant message (Attentive, 2025).
- 50% of UK shoppers have made an impulse purchase after receiving a text (Attentive UK consumer survey, 1,370 respondents, August 2024).
- 81% of consumers are likely to ignore marketing messages that are not relevant to them (Attentive 2025 Consumer Trends Report, 3,300 consumers in the US, UK and Australia, April 2025).
- 71% of consumers abandon experiences that are not relevant, and 61% do not believe brands use their data in their best interest (Twilio 2025 State of Customer Engagement Report, 7,640 consumers in 18 countries, June 2025).
- 90% of UK adults use WhatsApp, making it one of the most widely used apps in the country (Ofcom Online Nation, December 2025).
The pattern is consistent: consumers accept marketing texts in exchange for clear value, and punish irrelevance quickly. Segment and personalise before you increase frequency.
How big is the SMS fraud and spam problem?
- $470 million was reported lost by US consumers to scams that started with a text message in 2024, five times the amount reported in 2020 (US Federal Trade Commission, April 2025).
- Fake package delivery alerts were the most reported text scam in the US in 2024, followed by bogus job offers and fake fraud alerts (FTC, April 2025).
- 40% of UK mobile users received at least one suspicious message in the past three months (Ofcom, July 2026).
- 600 million+ scam messages are blocked by UK mobile providers each year, around 50 million a month on average in January to March 2025 (Ofcom, July 2026).
- 100 million suspicious messages were reported to UK mobile operators through the 7726 service in the year to April 2025 (Ofcom, October 2025).
- 17% of UK authorised push payment fraud cases in 2025 started through telecoms such as calls and texts, but they accounted for 28% of losses (UK Finance Annual Fraud Report, June 2026).
- $8.5 billion was the estimated global cost to enterprises of artificially inflated traffic, also called SMS pumping, in 2023, when it made up 18% of international A2P SMS traffic (Juniper Research, March 2024).
For legitimate senders, this matters in two ways. Regulators are tightening checks: Ofcom’s July 2026 rules require UK mobile providers to run Know Your Customer checks on business senders and to stop fake alphanumeric sender names. And consumers are more suspicious, so consistent sender IDs and recognisable links protect your response rates.
How big is the A2P messaging market?
- 2.2 trillion SMS and MMS messages were exchanged in the US in 2024, nearly 42 billion more than the year before (CTIA 2025 Annual Survey Highlights, September 2025).
- 2 trillion business messages were forecast for 2025 across SMS, RCS and OTT apps, growing to nearly 3 trillion by 2030 (Juniper Research, September 2025).
- 45% to 32%: SMS’s share of global mobile messaging revenue is forecast to fall from 45% in 2024 to 32% by 2029 as RCS and OTT grow (Juniper Research, October 2024).
- 189 trillion mobile messages were sent globally in 2024, forecast to reach 280 trillion in 2029 (Juniper Research, October 2024).
- $73.1 billion was the size of the global A2P messaging market in 2024, forecast to reach $84.8 billion by 2029, a 3.0% annual growth rate (MarketsandMarkets, June 2025).
In short, A2P SMS volumes are still large and stable, but revenue growth is shifting towards richer channels. For most businesses that means SMS as the universal fallback, with RCS, Viber or WhatsApp added where audiences use them.
How does SMS fit into the marketing channel mix?
- 27 billion emails, 321 million SMS and 458 million push notifications were sent by brands on Omnisend in 2025, showing SMS is still a small, targeted share of send volume (Omnisend 2026 Ecommerce Marketing Report).
- 40% growth in SMS volume on Omnisend in 2025, after 31% growth the previous year (Omnisend, 2026 report).
- $0.74 vs $0.15: average revenue per automated SMS compared with a campaign SMS in 2025 (Omnisend, 2026 report).
- 7.6% of SMS sends are automated flows, yet they drive 45.2% of SMS revenue (Klaviyo, January 2026).
- $3.41 vs $0.75: revenue per automated email compared with automated SMS, while email campaigns averaged a 0.74% click-through rate against 12.39% for SMS campaigns (Omnisend SMS benchmarks, 2025 data).
- 31% is the average email campaign open rate and 1.69% the average email click rate, for comparison with SMS (Klaviyo 2026 email benchmarks, over 205,000 brands).
- 35.63% is the average email open rate across Mailchimp users, though Mailchimp warns Apple Mail Privacy Protection affects open-rate accuracy (Mailchimp benchmarks, data last updated December 2023).
- 97% of UK SMS subscribers also engaged with brand emails in 2025 (Attentive, 2025).
- 70.22% is the documented average online cart abandonment rate across 50 studies, the gap that abandoned-basket texts aim to close (Baymard Institute, updated September 2025).
SMS and email are complements, not rivals. Our SMS vs email marketing comparison covers when to use each, and SMS marketing for ecommerce shows how to build the automated flows that drive most of the revenue.
How should you use these statistics?
- Check who collected the data. Klaviyo, Omnisend and Attentive report on their own customers, mostly ecommerce brands in North America and Europe. Your sector and markets may differ.
- Check the date. Engagement benchmarks change every year. We have noted the data period for each figure.
- Benchmark against yourself. Your own click, order and opt-out rates over time are more useful than any industry average.
How SMS.to helps you measure your own numbers
Industry averages are a starting point. The SMS.to platform features let you produce your own: tracked short links record clicks and click-through rate per campaign and support A/B tests, delivery reports show what reached each handset, and one-click opt-out links keep your list clean. You can send to many countries from one account, pay per message from $0.023 per SMS depending on destination, and compare results by market.
FAQs
What is the average SMS marketing click rate?
Klaviyo’s 2026 benchmarks put it at 5.6% for campaigns and 9.65% for automated flows. Omnisend reports higher figures using a different calculation, so compare within one source.
What is the SMS open rate?
It cannot be measured, because SMS has no read receipt. Delivery reports confirm arrival on the handset, and link clicks show engagement.
Is SMS marketing growing?
Yes. Omnisend reported 40% growth in SMS volume in 2025, and CTIA recorded 2.2 trillion SMS and MMS messages in the US in 2024. Revenue is shifting towards RCS and OTT channels over time.
How many consumers opt in to business texts?
EZ Texting’s consumer survey in November 2024 found 86% opt in to texts from businesses.
Want to benchmark SMS in your own markets? Talk to our sales team about routes, sender IDs and pricing for the countries you send to.
