This is Part 6 of a 7-part series. Check out the full series below.
- Part 1: Why Text Marketing
- Part 2: List Growth Strategies & Consent
- Part 3: Segmentation Strategies
- Part 4: Campaigns & Automations
- Part 5: Composing Great Messages
- Part 6: Measuring & Improving Results (You are here)
- Part 7: Now What?
Congrats for making it this far.
We’ve covered a lot of ground and I hope you’ve gained a lot of insight from it.
And speaking of insights, today we’re digging into measurement and how to improve the results of your text marketing.
The truth is, you’re not going to get amazing results right away after this course.
If anything, this is a foundation. A starting point of best practices that will help you launch well.
But best practices aren’t enough. They are the average of what everyone is doing.
You want to be above average. You want to be distinctive. A high performer.
That’s why we need to talk about measurement and optimization. It’s where you go to really dial in your performance.
What do I mean by optimization?
I see this term thrown around a lot and I wanted to spend a moment explaining what exactly we’re optimizing for.
The fact is, every brand has an audience makeup that is a little different from others in their niche.
Other brands may be larger or smaller, serve a particular use, or help people get a very specific result.
The most important thing for you to take away from this is that optimization is like getting a dress or a suit tailored.
Optimization is about making your marketing fit so well that it feels incredibly personal when they receive it.
You can use courses like this to build a foundation on best practices. From there, you can adjust your text marketing program until it’s fully tailored to your specific audience.
So where do I start?
The first place to start with text message optimization are the metrics that you want to pay attention to and why. Here are the key figures we like to look at.
List Growth
It’s important to keep an eye on your list growth. You want to be adding more subscribers at a faster rate than you are losing them. Healthy overall list growth should look like a growing number of opt-ins and a declining number of opt-outs resulting in a growing net-increase every month.
Opt-in source
By tracking this metric, you can see which channels are driving the most new subscribers. This can help you identify other potential opt-in locations as well as tell you which locations might be a waste of effort.
Click rate
This is the percentage of recipients who took an action based on your message. This can indicate the effectiveness of both your segmentation and your message copy. It shows that you moved them enough to take the step of exploring the product or offer you shared. Here’s a quick example of what impacts your click rate.
High Relevance/High Motivation = Click Rate
Conversion
This indicates the % of recipients who ultimately purchased from your message. The better your segmentation and messaging, the better your conversion rate will usually be. Here’s a quick example of what impacts your conversion rate.
High Relevance + High Motivation = Conversion Rate
Opt-out rate
This metric is essentially the opposite of your click rate. It indicates how much of your recipients are disengaged. Your opt-out rate can be driven higher by poor fit messaging or poor segmentation.
Irrelevance + Low Motivation = High Opt-Out Rate
Revenue Per Message
Finally, the last number you want to keep an eye on is your revenue per message. This will give you an idea of how much work your text marketing is doing for you.
How to think about improving these results?
It can be pretty overwhelming to see all these figures and wonder where to start. The best way I recommend thinking about improving these results is to use your baseline numbers as your benchmarks and aim for steady improvement.
These metrics can help you see where you might need work, but it’s only through improving and testing new copy, new offers, and getting creative with your segmentation that you’ll understand what works best for your particular audience.
Use this data to understand your customers. The better you understand them, the better chance you have of improving these results.
Now what?
That’s all for today, but tomorrow I’m going be wrapping up with a few things. I’ll be doing some myth busting as well as give you some ideas for next steps from here.