The benefits of SMS marketing start with an undeniable fact: when your customer’s phone buzzes, they check it. That engagement guarantees the visibility of your message.
SMS is the perfect delivery format for welcome sequences, promotional messages, shipping confirmations, abandoned cart reminders, birthday messages, customer feedback requests, and more to cover your most important customer touchpoints.
You could even take an omnichannel approach to SMS marketing, using email and push notifications for different messages. For instance, send an SMS alert about an urgent flash sale, then follow up with a detailed email showing the products.
Join us below to discover the most significant SMS marketing benefits and how they can help achieve your business goals.
Make SMS marketing core to your ecommerce strategy with Omnisend
Why SMS marketing? Because it reaches customers instantly without requiring internet connectivity or app installations. It cuts through digital noise that buries other marketing messages and works for simple notifications and marketing sequences.
Here are some use cases:
Retail businesses use location-based SMS to drive store traffic
Online retailers use SMS marketing to recover abandoned carts
Hospitality companies send feedback requests via SMS
Financial services alert customers via SMS about important account activity
Healthcare providers reduce missed appointments with SMS reminders
Let’s take a closer look at the benefits of text message marketing:
When your email lands in a crowded inbox, it’s fighting for attention and could get buried. Meanwhile, your text messages get read almost instantly.
Omnisend’s 2025 report confirms what marketers have noticed — SMS cuts through noise. SMS automation click rates soared 147% higher than campaigns. Your customers aren’t just seeing texts, they’re acting on them.
Check out these metrics, which show the click, conversion, and click-to-conversion rates for yearly SMS campaigns and automations:
As you can see, automated SMS gets the lion’s share of engagement, but SMS campaigns also work exceptionally well.
Why does SMS get such high engagement? It’s simple: we’re addicted to our phones. That buzz in your pocket triggers a response, making text messages almost impossible to ignore.
2. Instant delivery for real-time communication
SMS delivers news in seconds, not minutes or hours. That instant delivery makes text messaging unbeatable for urgent updates that can’t wait.
With this real-time capability, you can time your promotions around peak engagement periods, ensuring customers receive time-sensitive offers when they’re most likely to convert.
3. High ROI and cost-effectiveness
SMS doesn’t require a massive budget. At pennies per message, text marketing delivers value compared to pricier channels like paid social or search advertising.
According to Omnisend’s 2025 report, automated SMS messages drove 18% of orders while making up only 9% of sends. US brands generated over $25 million in SMS sales in 2024 alone.
Bulk messaging can also lower your cost per lead because as campaigns scale up, the cost per conversion typically drops. Since most customers read texts within minutes, you’re not wasting money on messages that never get seen.
4. Personalization and segmentation opportunities
Nobody wants to feel like just another name on a list. SMS lets you speak directly to each customer’s unique interests and needs. You can reference their last purchase, recommend products they’ve been eyeing, or send birthday offers that make them feel remembered.
Here’s a personalized SMS based on browsing activity:
Image via Omnisend
Sorting customers into focused groups, such as first-time buyers and VIP shoppers, lets you craft hyper-relevant messages.
5. Complements other marketing channels
SMS doesn’t replace your other marketing channels — it supports and even enhances them. Text a quick heads-up about that detailed email you just sent, or send a quick abandoned cart reminder with a simple text that gets shoppers to complete their purchases.
Think of SMS as the perfect messenger for “right now” moments, while email marketing carries the weight of detailed content and visuals. Each channel plays its role in the customer journey, creating a conversation that flows naturally across touchpoints.
6. Spam-free, direct communication
Your texts land right where customers will see them — in their main message inbox. Since people have explicitly said “yes” to your SMS messages, they’re waiting to hear from you.
Texting creates a different kind of conversation that’s more immediate and personal than other channels. Remember, with that phone access comes the responsibility of respecting the privilege and timing your messages appropriately.
7. Scalability for businesses of all sizes
A neighborhood shop can use SMS just as effectively as a global retailer. The local bakery that texts “Fresh sourdough ready for pickup” sees the same immediate customer response as a national chain announcing a flash sale.
Add sophistication as you grow. The beauty of SMS marketing is how it expands with your business — today’s simple welcome text can evolve into tomorrow’s multi-step journey that guides customers from first purchase to loyalty program without requiring a complete overhaul.
8. Analytics and optimization
A critical advantage of SMS marketing is that you can track click-throughs, conversions, and revenue from campaigns. Those metrics show what’s working, allowing you to make adjustments to increase engagement.
Since most engagement happens within minutes of text message receipt, you gather insights quickly and can apply them to your next campaign, creating an improvement cycle that increases messaging effectiveness.
9. Builds customer loyalty and trust
Your texts create touchpoints that strengthen customer relationships over time, fostering connections that transform shoppers into advocates. Birthday messages, early access to sales, and exclusive offers make subscribers feel valued beyond their transactions.
Trust builds when you respect the nature of SMS and avoid over-messaging. Your texts should always serve a purpose and not appear spammy.
10. Easy to implement and scale
You can send SMS messages immediately when you have a contact list in Omnisend and SMS credits. There are no complicated setup steps or technical hurdles. Just create your message, select your audience, and set it live.
As your business grows, your SMS strategy can evolve alongside it. You can add SMS automation workflows for abandoned carts, welcome sequences, and shipping confirmations. Plus, you can combine SMS with email for an omnichannel approach.
The benefits of bulk SMS marketing for businesses
Bulk SMS marketing campaigns can help you instantly reach many people and collect engagement data to segment and improve the quality of your lists. But that isn’t all they offer:
Massive audience reach: Send bulk text messages to thousands of devices to promote sales, discounts, and events. The only limitation is the size of your opted-in list.
Segmentation enabler: You can set up automatic segmentation filters to group customers when they click and interact with your texts, which will allow for targeted messaging later
Predictable costs: SMS costs $0.015 per message in the United States with Omnisend, so you’ll always know exactly how much your campaign will cost
Immediate impact: A bulk SMS campaign sent to thousands of customer devices can generate significant website traffic and sales within minutes
Easy to track: Among the key benefits of bulk SMS marketing is complete data visibility. When thousands of customers receive the same message, you generate click-throughs and shopping sessions that establish clear performance baselines.
How SMS marketing supports business goals
Why use SMS marketing? Because it’s a fast-track way to achieve your business goals. It can generate leads and traffic, build brand authority, refine your customer experience, and cover the stages in your customer journey that other channels miss.
Here’s how it can support your goals:
Enhancing customer experience
Customers who opt into SMS understand the channel’s immediacy. They’re signaling a willingness to receive information that requires immediate action, such as limited-time offers. Deliver them to provide the experience your customers expect.
Customer relationship building
Timely order and shopping updates (such as back-in-stock alerts) can transform customer relationships. Order tracking, flash sales, and critical alerts create a sense of insider access, making your customers feel connected to your brand.
Amplifying other marketing channels
Multi-channel integration spreads your reach. SMS works brilliantly alongside email, excelling at time-sensitive and shorter messages that don’t require in-depth information.
Boosting traffic and sales
A well-timed text message can trigger website visits and direct purchases. It can even encourage email engagement, plugging communication gaps and maintaining momentum in your marketing to drive even better results.
Watch this video to learn how to boost sales with SMS marketing:
Why choose Omnisend for SMS marketing?
Omnisend provides all SMS ecommerce marketing tools in its free and lowest-tier paid plan — just add SMS credits to start sending. You can also combine SMS, email, and push notifications for an omnichannel approach to your marketing strategy.
Here’s how Omnisend helps you realize all SMS marketing benefits:
Automation workflows
Trigger SMS messages across welcome sequences, abandoned cart recovery, order confirmations, shipping updates, product recommendations, customer reactivation campaigns, and more to cover your entire customer journey.
Image via Omnisend
Online wig retailer Divatress collected 70,000 SMS subscribers in eight months with Omnisend. Automation workflows, mainly abandoned cart sequences, generated 54% of platform revenue. Just three months of SMS sales covered its annual Omnisend subscription.
Segment contacts with granular filters across multiple customer dimensions. Collect phone numbers through signup forms, checkout processes, and preference centers. Support international formatting and TCPA compliance for US customers.
Image via Omnisend
Vape Superstore, a UK-based vaping supplier, switched from Klaviyo to Omnisend. It implemented multi-step forms, increasing signup rates from 18% to 32%, and integrated SMS with existing email campaigns to reach customers more effectively.
Send personalized messages with dynamic links that enhance customer engagement across different touchpoints. Customize sender names and create targeted campaigns that speak directly to your audience’s needs and behaviors.
Image via Omnisend
Clear credit and pricing structure
Get bonus SMS credits on the Pro plan, equivalent to the price of your monthly plan. Additional credits are conveniently purchasable SMS pricing differs per sending destination. For instance, US messages are $0.015, and UK messages are $0.065.
Here’s a pricing example for 15,000 SMS to US subscribers:
Monitor sent SMS cost, sending volume, click rates, generated sales, and more from your Omnisend dashboard. Compare your SMS performance against email analytics to see which channels generate the best results.
Image via Omnisend
Wrap up
SMS marketing works because it demands attention. Start today with automated workflows like welcome sequences and abandoned cart reminders — they outperform regular campaigns by nearly 150%.
Once you’ve established these foundations, experiment with targeted campaigns for sales opportunities. In both approaches, keep messages brief, personalized, and purposeful.
Remember that each text interrupts someone’s day, so use SMS for your most crucial messages and deliver genuine value every time.
Harness the power of SMS and email marketing with Omnisend
Your texts reach customers where they live – on their phones. People check messages within minutes, making SMS perfect for flash sales or urgent updates. Plus, it works alongside email to target customers at optimal moments.
How successful is SMS marketing?
SMS is one of the best channels for driving immediate action, whether your goal is to capture sales or get customers to enter a competition. Automated texts grab 147% more clicks than regular campaigns, proving their selling power.
What is the advantage of bulk SMS marketing?
Mass texting lets you whisper in thousands of ears simultaneously. One message, countless customers, instant impact! You can collect metrics from these blasts to refine your campaigns and segment customers for personalized future messaging.
Richard is a Content Marketing Manager at Omnisend. An avid writer, he's said to have been born holding a pencil. Fascinated by all things handmade, if he's not reading or writing he can often be found practicing leathercraft.
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