SMS Benchmarks
for Ecommerce Marketing
2025 EDITION
Our annual report is in. See how you stack up against over 18k Shopify stores across all industries. Share this guide with your team and use our strategies for performance improvement in the coming year.
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Benchmarks Methodology
Eligible Shops are those that installed Postscript 90 days prior to Black Friday (2024-11-29) and spent at least $300 on Postscript Marketing in Q3 2024
SLTV + ARMR Benchmarks are averages at a merchant level across 2024, to account for seasonality (YTD until 12/10)
About our Popup stats:
Same Eligible Shop criteria as above
Excluded any merchant with less than 1,000 impressions on our new Popup Editor or our legacy Popup Editor
Popup email + phone CVR are defined as conversions/total impressions, which differs from some competitor reporting
SLTV + ARMR Benchmarks
Messaging Benchmarks
Key Improvement Strategies:
Acquisition rates for the 90th percentile almost doubled YOY, largely due to industry-changing features like Onsite Opt-in and our new Popup Editor.
We’ve seen huge improvements in CTR across most automations, most notably Abandoned Cart and Welcome Series—two crucial pieces of your SMS marketing strategy to get right. If you haven’t refreshed your brand’s automations, doing so is an important part of seeing improvements in this area. Test different lengths, different incentives, and set up personalized messaging based on different products. Our Infinity Testing automations not only makes this easier, it helps continually optimize your automations moving forward.
Unsubscribe rates improved across nearly every message type. Taking the time to segment and personalize, regardless of message type, helps keep your unsubs low and your subscribers more engaged. Higher engagement and a lower unsubscibe rate will improve your entire SMS program.
Popup Benchmarks
We’ve broken out overall popup benchmarks between our older Popup Editor V1 and the new Popup Editor V2 (released 9/24) given the increased CVR from our latest version.
Popup Editor Benchmarks
Legacy Popup Benchmarks
Key Improvement Strategies:
Popup formatting can make a meaningful impact on engagement rates. Try A/B testing a partial-screen variant vs. a full-screen variant to see which version has higher engagement and opt-in rates. Run this test on mobile and desktop to find the highest converting popup format for each device type. Start with a desktop version and run a full screen popup for two weeks. If you see a significant lift, keep it on and then run that same test on mobile.
Based on Postscript Plus customers, we’ve seen a 3-7 second delay perform best, but it’s hard to come up with an industry-wide standard, since much of this can depend on your customer and visitor experience on-site. Look at your visitors’ average time on site and set up the popup to show at about 50% – 60% of the average time on page. This is easy enough to find in your store’s Google Analytics. Run that window of time against your current time delay to see if there’s a lift in subscribers.
Benchmarks by Product Personas
Purchase Frequency is calculated based on subscribers with multiple purchases
Brand Persona
Source
The variables below are used to group similar merchants into peer groups that interact with their subscribers in a similar manner.
*Purchase Frequency is calculated by the average time between a customer’s first and second purchase during 2024.
One-Time Luxuries
Defined As:
AOV: <$100
Repurchase Rate: >25%
Purchase Frequency: >45 days between purchases
One Time Luxuries ARMR Metrics
One Time Luxuries Message Metrics
Key Improvement Strategies:
The Subscriber Lifetime Value for this persona increased significantly YOY for those in the 90th percentile. Even though repurchase rate is less frequent for brands in this persona, the overall value of subscribers continue to trend upwards.
You can’t afford to have a basic Abandoned Cart automation for this persona. We saw an increase of 59% in EPM here for the 75th percentile—a huge YOY lift! Make sure you come up with a personalized and unique automation here in order to capitalize on conversions.
Our Popup Editor may be new to our report this year, but the acquisition numbers don’t lie when you compare Postscript’s Popup Editor conversion rate/EPM to that of Keyword opt-ins.
Small Subscription Spends
Defined As:
AOV: <$100
Repurchase Rate: >25%
Purchase Frequency: <45 days between purchases
Small Subscription Spends ARMR Metrics
Small Subscription Spends Message Metrics
Key Improvement Strategies:
Creative automations are even more critical for the Small Subscription category of brands. We saw a big lift in EPM for both Post Purchase and Welcome Series automations here. Make sure you’re testing these every quarter to see how you can optimize them. Try adding additional messages to your Welcome Series to see if your subscriber base appreciates a shorter or longer welcome journey. For your Post Purchase automation, make sure you’re including messages with instructions, upsell opportunities, and asking for reviews in exchange for deals on their next purchase.
Acquisition rates have improved year over year and there are a few strategies you can implement to make sure you’re a part of that improvement. Consider a QR code insert for prompting customers to opt-in to your SMS list. And make sure your ‘Thanks for your order’ email confirmations encourage them to sign up for SMS, too.
Single-Stop Gifts ARMR Metrics
Small Subscription Spends Message Metrics
Key Improvement Strategies:
CTRs are up, but conversion rates are steady for Welcome Series across this category. Here’s where testing can be crucial. To move the conversion rate needle, test different incentives to get new subscribers to convert. Consider adding more messages that address different potential objections proactively. Look to your website’s FAQ page for inspiration on what points to address.
Occasional Orders
Defined As:
AOV: <$100
Repurchase Rate: >25%
Purchase Frequency: >45 days between purchases
Occasional Orders ARMR Metrics
Occasional Orders Message Metrics
Key Improvement Strategies:
It’s getting easier and easier to acquire new subscribers for this brand persona. Capture them at every turn: the combination of Postscript’s Onsite Opt-in and new Popup Editor is the most impactful way to keep your list growing each month.
Automations are your friend—especially in the Abandoned Cart and Browse Abandonment categories, which have notably high EPM compared to other message types. Infinity Testing your automations will help these numbers soar—so turn Infinity Testing on and watch the magic happen.
Recurring Splurges ARMR Metrics
Recurring Splurges Message Metrics
Key Improvement Strategies:
With some of the highest retention and revenue rates across all personas, don’t be afraid to keep send volume high to these subscribers, as they are eager to purchase from you more than just once. Infinity Testing for Campaigns will help make sure every send to your list is fully optimized to drive even more EPM.
The EPM for Popup-originated messages for this persona is through the roof. Subsequently, you truly can’t underestimate the power of Onsite Opt-in and our new Popup Editor to capture and convert more visitors.
BFCM Benchmarks
The time period for our BFCM benchmarks is defined as 11/26/2024 through 12/05/2024.
Campaign CTR by day during BFCM
Key Improvement Strategies:
Do not assume your SMS performance will peak on Black Friday or Cyber Monday anymore. Focus on big sends on the days surrounding the big Cyber holidays and your CTRs will soar.
Campaign EPM by day during BFCM
Key Improvement Strategies:
If you your industry isn’t as sought after for gifts during BFCM, consider setting up your big sale after the BFCM window has passed. Once customers are done doing their gifting, they may be more likely to stock up on items for themselves, which could be one factor as to why we EPM spiked for a category like pet supplies two days after Cyber Monday.
Most industries saw their highest EPM on the days leading up to Black Friday, so if you think it’s worth saving your biggest messages for that day—think again. Consider scheduling your sends earlier in 2025.
Benchmarks by Industry
Take a look at industry-specific benchmarks across acquisition rate, revenue per message and more. We’ll email you a PDF of the 2025 data along with best practices specific to your industry in areas you need to improve.