Measuring Text Marketing ROI

Most local marketing cannot be measured, and everyone knows it. You run a newspaper ad or boost a Facebook post and hope. You never really learn what it made. Text marketing is different. You can tie a specific message to specific money, often the same day you send it.

That is because texting is direct and trackable. Texts get opened at about a 98% rate, most within a few minutes, so you know the message was seen. Then you count what came back: how many people showed the text at the register or clicked the link. Sent, seen, redeemed, earned. You can follow the whole chain.

This guide shows you exactly which numbers to track and how to turn them into one honest sentence: "that campaign made $X and cost $Y." No vanity metrics, no guessing.

The metrics that matter

Ignore the numbers that look impressive and mean nothing. Five metrics tell you everything about a text program.

• List size. How many opted-in contacts you can reach. This is your audience, and it should grow every week at the counter.
• Send rate. How many messages actually went out on a campaign. Your reach for that send.
• Redemptions. How many people acted, counted at the register or through a link. The number that matters most.
• Unsubscribe rate. How many opted out after a send. Your early warning that something is off.
• Revenue per campaign. Redemptions times your average ticket. The bottom line.

Notice what is not on the list: open rate as a headline metric. Texts get seen at about 98% no matter what, so it tells you little. What separates a good campaign from a weak one is redemptions, not opens.

Every number here is one you can get honestly, from the register or the platform's reports. None of them require you to trust a benchmark someone invented. That is the point: your own redemptions are the only proof you need.

This is the quiet advantage of texting over almost everything else a local business spends on. You are never guessing whether it worked. You are counting.