26 Stats That Show The Power of SMS and WhatsApp Marketing

Often thought of as a way to communicate with friends and family, SMS messaging is quite an effective avenue for businesses and brands who want to communicate with their customers in a way that they are incredibly familiar with.

In an era of web 3.0, and talk of AI, machine learning, and SEO, businesses can get caught up in trying to crack the latest marketing advancement, it can be easy to forget that there are already lots of effective, under-used ways of strengthening customer-brand connections. Sometimes the old ways are the best and in this blog, we’ll be breaking down 26 reasons why this SMS, Whatsapp, and other messaging platforms are so effective when communicating and selling to existing customers.

26 Reasons Why SMS Marketing Should Be Part of Your Marketing Mix

1. Starting off with mobile devices themselves, it was reported that back in 2019 that over 55.5 million people in the UK owned a smartphone.
2. Nearly 100% of people open their messages, whether that’s via SMS or WhatsApp, meaning you’re more likely to reach more people than via the more traditional email marketing channels.
3. 90% of messages are read within three minutes.
4. WhatsApp has more than 2 billion users on a monthly basis meaning there’s a huge audience to target from a marketing strategy perspective.
5. Over 52% of UK customers said they would sign up for a text mailing list either after the first purchase or after a few purchases.
6. There are over 100 billion messages sent via the platform each day and since the launch of WhatsApp Business, a lot of these messages are now between businesses and their customers.
7. WhatsApp is available in over 170 different countries and covers 20 different languages.
8. A third of UK shoppers would be motivated to sign up for a text mailing list just for regular text-only offers.
9. According to a blog written by Meetanshi, WhatsApp Business, customers can boost sales by 127%.
10. As of 2019, there are more than 50 million WhatsApp Business app users around the world.
11. According to one of Whatsapp Business’ success stories, by linking WhatsApp to their Facebook and Instagram accounts, Omay Foods saw a 5x increase in sales compared to the previous year (2020 vs 2021) and a 3x increase in returning customers.
12. According to AISensy, 54% of users prefer to use WhatsApp to track orders and receive delivery updates whilst 23% of users receive promotional offers and content via WhatsApp.
13. Here in the UK, a whopping 71.3% of people use WhatsApp.
14. Nearly four out of every 10 UK shoppers engage more with brands via SMS than they did two years ago.
15. In 2020, it was reported that Chatbot support within WhatsApp was used by 67% of people for customer care meaning that businesses communicate with customers quickly and efficiently,
16. It has also been reported that by this year (2023), businesses will save 2.5 billion hours by using WhatsApp Chatbot to respond to and support their customers, either via their websites or their social media channels.
17. The average click-through rate for text messaging is between 20-35%, astonishing when you consider a good CTR for a social media ad is less than 5%.
18. More than 44 million British people received a marketing text in 2018.
19. 75% of UK shoppers have bought a product that they were made aware of via a text messaging programme… within a month of receiving that text!
20. As referred to in this survey by Sanuker, 76% of WhatsApp users wanted to contact businesses through a messaging platform such as WhatsApp.
21. 45% of consumers find it one of the most useful channels for receiving information from brands.
22. Thinking about the best time to contact your customers? In the same survey, 67% of people confirmed that they check their phones within the first five minutes of the day!
23. They also confirmed that 68% of users who took part in the survey said that WhatsApp is the easiest way to contact a business.
24. 64% of UK shoppers think that brands should use SMS services more than they do.
25. Did you know that you can share product and business catalogues via WhatsApp Business? Well, according to Meta, more than 40 million people view a catalogue on WhatsApp every month!
26. Of the 83% of customers that use Whatsapp Business to speak to businesses about their services and products, we understand that 75% of them convert and either sign-up or purchase.

What are your thoughts on SMS Marketing? Is it something you would ever consider trialling for your business? Or do you prefer a more traditional form and marketing and customer support?

If it is something you are able to manage internally, we would recommend trialling this as a customer services option and seeing what increases you can achieve as a business! If you’re interested in broader digital marketing services, not just SMS and MMS messaging, please get in touch with us by phone at 0161 327 2635 or email at [email protected].