SMS Marketing Statistics 2026: Open, Click & Opt-Out Rates
The most repeated number in SMS marketing, a 98% open rate, has been disowned by the firm that produced it. Mobilesquared published the figure in a 2010 white paper, and in 2022 it wrote that neither the 98% nor its companion stat, 90% read within three minutes, reflects how people use their phones now. Its newer estimate is 55%. Here are the SMS marketing statistics worth knowing in 2026, each sourced inline with the year noted.
The 98% SMS open rate is a 2010 figure its own source retracted
98% of all SMS messages were read, and 90% were read within 3 minutes, according to Mobilesquared’s 2010 white paper “Conversational Advertising” (Mobilesquared, 2022). The firm says the three-minute figure “has become the most used stat in mobile marketing and messaging.”
55% of SMS messages are now read, by Mobilesquared’s later data, though it says 100% are “viewed” as a lock-screen notification (Mobilesquared, 2022). Its founder, Nick Lane, wrote that neither 2010 figure is “an accurate reflection of today’s world of mobile messaging.” His explanation: in 2010, SMS was usually the only thing on a locked screen, and now it competes with WhatsApp and every app’s notifications.
Gartner’s version is the one most articles cite: “various sources report SMS open and response rates as high as 98% and 45%,” against 20% and 6% for email (Gartner, archived copy, 2016). Gartner didn’t measure either number, and the article’s URL now redirects to Gartner’s homepage.
The stat kept mutating. A 2015 Adobe blog post credited a Dynmark report and wrote that “90 percent are read within 3 seconds” (Adobe, 2015). Three minutes had become three seconds.
SMS has no open tracking at all. Omnisend notes that SMS “doesn’t have an equivalent open rate” to email, so click-through rate is the engagement metric platforms can actually measure (Omnisend, 2026). Any SMS open rate you see is an estimate or a survey answer.
Americans exchanged nearly 2.2 trillion texts in 2024
Nearly 2.2 trillion SMS and MMS messages were exchanged in the U.S. in 2024, 42 billion more than the year before and more than in any year except 2020 (CTIA 2025 Annual Survey, 2025). That works out to about 6 billion texts a day.
98% of U.S. adults own a cellphone, and 91% own a smartphone (Pew Research Center, 2025), in a survey of 5,022 adults between February and June 2025. A text needs no app, inbox or account to arrive.
The typical texter sent or received 10 texts a day, while adults 18 to 24 averaged 109.5 in Pew’s last dedicated texting survey (Pew Research Center, 2011). The data is old, but no neutral source has measured personal texting volume since. In the same survey, 31% of texters preferred a text to a call, and 53% preferred a call.
In 2026, 87% of consumers say they see a text within 15 minutes
The modern replacement for the three-minute stat is a survey answer, not a measurement.
32% of U.S. consumers say they check a new text immediately, and another 40% within 5 minutes (EZ Texting 2026 Consumer Texting Behavior Report, 2026). By the 15-minute mark, 87% say they’ve seen it. The survey covered 959 U.S. consumers and was published April 13, 2026.
25% say they reply to a text immediately, and 82% within 15 minutes (EZ Texting, 2026). In 2021, only 23% said they checked texts immediately.
89% of consumers say they have signed up for business texts, up from 66% in 2021 (EZ Texting, 2026). SimpleTexting’s January 2026 survey of 1,000 U.S. consumers put the opted-in share at 85.6% (SimpleTexting, 2026).
24% of consumers receive six or more business texts a day, against 54% who receive six or more business emails (EZ Texting, 2026). Both surveys come from companies that sell texting platforms, so read them with that in mind.
Measured SMS click-through rates run 5% to 12%, while surveys report 20% and up
75.3% of businesses use SMS marketing, in SimpleTexting’s January 2026 survey of 400 U.S. business owners and digital marketing managers (SimpleTexting, 2026). How well it works depends heavily on who is measuring.
12.39% was the average SMS campaign click-through rate across 246 million+ campaign sends from 27,000+ brands in 2025, against 0.74% for email campaigns (Omnisend, 2026). The monthly rate climbed from 3.47% in January to 23.92% in December, so heavy holiday sending pulls the annual figure up. Email benchmarks are in email statistics.
5.6% is a good SMS campaign click rate, and 9.65% a good rate for automated flows, by Klaviyo’s 2026 benchmarks built on data from more than 183,000 customers (Klaviyo, 2026). The top 10% of brands reach 10.44% on campaigns and 16.6% on flows.
66% of businesses say their average SMS click-through rate is above 20%, and the largest group (37%) puts it between 21% and 35% (SimpleTexting, 2026). Those figures are self-reported by the businesses, not measured from sends.
When you cite an SMS click-through rate, name the source, the year, whether it was measured or self-reported, and whether it covers campaigns or automated messages.
Automated texts convert more than six times better than campaigns
Automated SMS converted at 0.78%, against 0.12% for campaign sends, in Omnisend’s 2025 data (Omnisend, 2026). Automations also clicked at 20.34% and earned $0.75 per message, against $0.15 for campaigns.
SMS flows are 7.6% of Klaviyo customers’ sends but drive 45.2% of SMS revenue (Klaviyo, 2026). Flows are texts triggered by something the customer did, such as signing up or abandoning a cart.
The expected SMS order rate is 0.27% for campaigns and 1.9% for flows (Klaviyo, 2026). The top 10% of brands reach 0.61% and 3.92%.
64.4% of SMS flow revenue comes from new buyers, against 20% of campaign revenue (Klaviyo, 2026).
96.6% of SMS campaign messages were delivered in Omnisend’s 2025 dataset (Omnisend, 2026), with no spam folder or promotions tab in the way.
Sending too often is the top reason people text STOP
40% of consumers name too-frequent messages as their main reason for opting out, ahead of irrelevant content (18%) and bad timing (10%) (EZ Texting, 2026).
59% of consumers are open to two or more business texts a day, down from 69% in 2025 (EZ Texting, 2026).
Unsubscribes spike at 9 p.m. ET, in TrueDialog’s analysis of the 1 billion texts sent through its platform, even though that hour is inside legal sending windows (TrueDialog, 2025). Mid-afternoon sends saw the fewest opt-outs.
The average business text runs 153 characters, just under the 160-character limit of a single SMS, and only 2% include an emoji (TrueDialog, 2025).
45% of businesses report an average unsubscribe rate of 2% or lower, and the largest group (30%) reports 1% to 2% (SimpleTexting, 2026). Like the click rates above, these are self-reported.
A marketing text without consent can cost $500 to $1,500 under the TCPA
A text message counts as a “call” under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, as the Supreme Court noted in Campbell-Ewald Co. v. Gomez (Cornell LII, 2016).
$500 per violation is the statutory damage, and a court can triple it to $1,500 when the violation is willful or knowing (47 U.S.C. § 227(b)(3)). At $500 a text, one unconsented send to a 10,000-number list is $5 million of exposure before trebling.
2,810 TCPA lawsuits were filed in 2025, up 0.8% from 2024 (WebRecon, 2026). In December, 68% of new TCPA suits were putative class actions. These counts cover calls and texts together.
Marketing texts can’t go out before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m. at the recipient’s location, because the FCC applies its telephone solicitation rules to texts sent to wireless numbers (47 CFR 64.1200).
Opt-outs must be honored within 10 business days, and a reply of “stop,” “quit,” “end,” “revoke,” “opt out,” “cancel” or “unsubscribe” always counts as revoking consent (47 CFR 64.1200). A reply in other words also counts if a reasonable person would read it as a request to stop. The rule took effect April 11, 2025 (Federal Register, 2024).
10DLC registration costs a few dollars, and carrier fees add up per text
Twilio has blocked unregistered 10DLC messages to U.S. numbers since September 1, 2023 (Twilio, 2023). A business texting from a local 10-digit number has to register a brand and a campaign with The Campaign Registry first.
Registering a brand costs $4.50, each campaign review $15, and a standard marketing campaign $10 a month (Telnyx, 2025). Low-volume mixed campaigns are $1.50 a month, and Telnyx passes these fees through at cost.
Carrier fees run $0.0035 per outbound SMS on AT&T, $0.0045 on T-Mobile and $0.005 on Verizon for long-code messages, per the carrier fee table on Twilio’s U.S. SMS rates page (Twilio, October 2026). That is $500 in Verizon carrier fees for every 100,000 texts, before the platform’s own charge.
T-Mobile can pass through a $10,000 fine per content violation, applied from the third notice about the same content provider (Telnyx, 2025). The content in scope includes spam, phishing and SHAFT-C categories: sex, hate, alcohol, firearms, tobacco and cannabis.
Text was the most-reported scam contact method in 2025
Text messages were the top contact method in 2025 fraud reports that named how the scammer made contact (FTC testimony to the Joint Economic Committee, 2026). Consumers filed 3 million fraud reports in 2025 and reported $15.9 billion in losses across all channels.
$470 million was lost to scams that started with a text in 2024, more than five times the 2020 figure (FTC Data Spotlight, 2025). Fake package delivery problems were the most reported text scam.
47% of consumers say an easy way to unsubscribe makes them trust a business’s texts, followed by already trusting the business (43%) and a promise not to share their number (43%) (EZ Texting, 2026). With scam texts this common, a link from an unfamiliar number gets treated as one.
Answering texts at the speed customers reply
With 82% of consumers saying they reply to a text within 15 minutes (EZ Texting, 2026), the slow side of business texting is usually the business. Carly works on that side. For teams, it texts and places AI voice calls to inbound leads from the business number, so a new lead gets an answer without waiting for someone to free up. Carly also runs over SMS for the person using it: you can text Carly to get something done, and it can text you when an urgent email arrives. Unanswered calls are covered in missed call statistics, and the setup in AI text messaging for business.
FAQ
What is the average SMS open rate? There isn’t a measured one, because SMS has no open tracking (Omnisend, 2026). The famous 98% comes from a 2010 Mobilesquared white paper, and Mobilesquared’s later data puts the read rate at 55% (Mobilesquared, 2022).
What is a good SMS click-through rate? Klaviyo puts a good campaign click rate at 5.6% and a good automated-flow rate at 9.65% (2026). Omnisend’s 2025 campaign average was 12.39%, lifted by holiday sends (2026). Business surveys reporting 20% and up are self-reported (SimpleTexting, 2026).
What is the average SMS response rate? The widely quoted 45% traces to Gartner’s 2016 summary of “various sources,” not to a measurement. In EZ Texting’s 2026 survey, 82% of consumers say they reply to a text within 15 minutes, which describes how fast people reply, not the share of marketing texts that get a reply.
How much is a TCPA violation per text? $500 per violation in statutory damages, up to $1,500 if a court finds it willful or knowing (47 U.S.C. § 227(b)(3)). A text to a cell phone counts as a call under the law (Campbell-Ewald Co. v. Gomez, 2016).
Related: Business Texting · Missed Call Text Back · SMS Appointment Booking · Customer Service Statistics · Ecommerce Statistics · Best AI assistants you can text
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