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(The short answer is 30%...)
Perhaps we receive no more common question at FranFunnel than the one posed in the title of this article. While everyone seems to understand that text messaging is currently the way that people prefer to communicate, businesses are incredibly wary about how many of their leads / customers actually want to communicate with them that way.
And no matter how long we’re up here on our soapbox, we understand that there will continue to be business leaders who doubt the efficacy of this new(ish) form of sales.
However, in order to help assuage those fears, we went and grabbed an obscene amount of data from our system to try and give you an idea for what’s actually happening out there as far as text responses.
Of course, the short answer to text message reply rates is of course, it depends. But rather than leave it at this incredibly unsatisfying answer, let’s dig into the two most important in what will determine your company’s text-back rate:
Let’s start with SMS copy. This may be obvious, but if you want people to reply to a text message, you have to ask for a response. Not everyone wants to do that with their SMS strategy. For example, some companies use FranFunnel to send texts like:
Or
Texts like this actually will get some responses, but not that many. These specifically received a 6% and 21% response rate. Meanwhile, many of our other clients will send texts that do seek responses, like:
Or
This copy style, namely ending with an answerable question, leads to significantly higher response rates. These messages received a 46% and 38% response rate respectively.
The second major factor that will determine what type of response you can expect from people you text is how you generate the leads to begin with. (And for the time being, let's confine the universe of clients to those who are seeking a response.)
For the purpose of this analysis, we’ve broken up the franchise universe into two different tranches – franchise websites and third-party lead providers. Across all the texts that’re sent, the numbers look like this:
All Franchise Websites – 32%
All Third-Party Lead Providers – 27%
It’s unsurprising to see that leads that come from a brand’s franchise site have a higher response rate. These leads are not exposed to other brands and are better educated about what your brand is all about. While with third party sites, you’re participating in a competitive sales environment.
This is not the end of the story, as there is also grand variation between each of the websites and lead providers.
The websites first –
While the average is 32%, you can see that the data is quite noisy. Some franchises achieve text back rates of over 50%! That's pretty insane. Others obviously aren't as successful. There are many additional factors that contribute to these numbers, and if you want to learn more, we're happy to speak about it.
Now the lead providers –
Not that different from the website data, you see quite a bit of variation amongst the lead generators. Some lead the pack with rates above 35%, while others are under 15%. If you're interested in learning about how various lead sources compare against each other, then let us know and we can discuss it!
Ok, so the short answer is 30%. On average, the number is about 30%. But we're not happy with that answer, and neither should you.
One of the benefits of working with FranFunnel is a constant check on how your sales efforts are working.
What we always say is that it's not about what you're doing today, it's about doing better tomorrow!
If you're interested in learning more about FranFunnel and how we help companies communicate with leads, then just visit our homepage and sign up for a demo!
Keep on textin' on!
This article was written by Eli Robinson, General Manager of FranFunnel.
