Most email marketing gets opened by a fifth of the people it is sent to, on a good list. A text message gets opened by nearly everyone it is sent to, usually within a few minutes. That is not a small difference in a metric — it is a different channel, with different jobs it is actually good at.
Why the gap is this wide
Email lives in an inbox alongside everything else competing for the same seconds of attention — other marketing, work, spam that got through the filter. A text arrives on the one screen almost everyone checks within minutes of a notification, and it interrupts in a way email no longer does. That is worth exactly nothing if the message is not worth the interruption, which is the part most SMS marketing gets wrong before it gets anything else wrong.
What SMS is actually good for
- Appointment reminders and confirmations — the highest-value use of the channel, because a missed appointment costs real money and a text cuts no-shows more reliably than an email ever will.
- A reply to a question asked minutes ago, not a newsletter. Speed is the entire advantage; using it for something that could wait a day wastes the one thing it does better than email.
- Review requests sent right after a good experience, while the visit is still fresh enough to write about.
- Short, specific promotions — a real offer with a real deadline, not a general update nobody asked for.
Email is where you say something. Text is where you get an answer.
What it looks like done properly
SMS marketing done well runs from a local texting number, not a generic short code — the same area code as your business, so it reads as a real message rather than a mass blast. It sits in the same shared inbox as your other channels, so a reply is a two-way conversation someone on your team actually sees, not a message going into a system nobody reads back.
That shared-inbox part matters more than it sounds. A customer who replies "can you push it to 3pm" to a reminder text is not sending a marketing response — they are trying to reach you, on the channel that felt fastest. If nobody is watching for the reply, the text did the opposite of its job.
What a first message should actually say
- Say who it is from in the first sentence — a text from an unrecognized number with no context gets deleted before it gets read.
- State the one thing the message is for. A reminder, a reply, an offer — pick one and skip the rest, because a text trying to do three jobs does none of them well.
- Give a specific action, not a general one: "reply YES to confirm" outperforms "let us know if you have questions" because it tells the reader exactly what to do with the next ten seconds.
- Write it the length of something a person would actually send. If it would look strange as a text from a friend, it is too long or too formal for this channel.
The part worth being careful about
The same immediacy that makes SMS effective makes it easy to overuse. A number that only ever sends offers gets opted out of fast, and a text sent without clear consent is a compliance problem, not just a marketing mistake. Get explicit opt-in before you start, keep the frequency low enough that a message still feels worth reading, and make opting out genuinely easy — a channel this direct depends on people trusting what shows up on it.
The trust runs out faster on this channel than on email, because a text feels personal in a way a newsletter never does — it arrives on the same screen as messages from actual people. Treat every message as one that has to earn its interruption, and the channel keeps working. Send one too many that does not, and the reply is an opt-out rather than a booking.
Where it sits next to everything else
SMS is not a replacement for email marketing — it is the channel for the message that cannot wait, sitting next to the one built for the message that can. Used for the right five things on the list above, it is usually the highest-return channel a local business runs, precisely because almost everyone actually reads it.
If you are not sure whether SMS belongs in your mix yet, or what to send first, a free growth proposal will tell you — built around your budget and the problem you are actually trying to solve, not a generic list of channels.
Frequently asked questions
- What is a realistic open rate for SMS marketing?
- Around 98% is the commonly cited figure, and it holds up in practice because most people check a text within minutes rather than letting it sit unread the way email often does.
- Do I need a special phone number to send marketing texts?
- A local texting number matched to your area code reads as a real business rather than a mass-market short code, and it is what most local businesses use — it also means replies land somewhere your team is actually watching.
- Is SMS marketing legal to send to anyone on my list?
- No — it requires explicit consent to text that specific number, separate from having someone's email address. Get clear opt-in before sending, and make opting out simple; this is a compliance requirement, not just good practice.
- How often should I actually text customers?
- Less than feels tempting. Appointment reminders and direct replies are effectively unlimited because the customer expects them; promotional texts should be infrequent enough that people do not opt out the first time one arrives.