Why SMS Marketing Should Be in Every eCommerce Brand’s Toolkit

SMS is a channel that’s been around for years, but the advantages of SMS marketing have only recently received true recognition from eCommerce retailers. 

With SMS, you can reach your shoppers directly with mobile-friendly marketing messages that are almost guaranteed to deliver high engagement. So it’s no wonder that so many marketers use SMS as an essential part of their strategies in 2025.

As SMS marketing is still growing in popularity among online retailers, incorporating it into your strategy now will help you stay one step ahead of your competitors. If you’re still not persuaded, keep reading as we delve deeper into the advantages of SMS for your business and explore why the channel is so unique.

How SMS can support business growth

More commonly known as text messages, SMS are often sent on a small scale, from one device to another. However, with the creation of SMS marketing platforms like Salesfire, the channel has been opened up to business use.

With the right tool, eCommerce retailers can now use SMS to deliver their message to hundreds or even thousands of devices at once. They can also personalise these messages to each recipient and automate their sending.

Standing for Short Message Service, SMS is a communication service native to mobile devices that is text-based and limited to messages of 160 characters.

As SMS are so short, they can be best used by your eCommerce brand to send simple or time-sensitive messages, such as:

• Order updates: Let your shoppers know when their order is on the way or about to be delivered.
• Limited-time discount codes: Remind shoppers to use a discount code before it runs out.
• Flash sales: Inform shoppers of a sale that will only last for a short while.

The strengths of SMS as a marketing channel mean that campaigns like these can be highly effective at driving engagement and conversions. Keep reading to discover the full range of advantages of using SMS within your business.

Further reading: To learn more about what SMS is and how it works, check out our article ‘Beginner’s Guide to SMS Marketing: What Online Retailers Need to Know’.

Top advantages of SMS marketing for eCommerce

As a marketer, it can seem like every week there’s a new channel you need to get up to speed on, only for it to fizzle out a few months later. SMS is different.

It’s the standard communication channel of every mobile phone, meaning it’s been around for a long time and will be here to stay. 

However, it’s only recently that SMS has been recognised for its marketing potential, and getting started with an unfamiliar channel can feel risky. To help you feel more confident, we’ve pulled together a list of the top benefits of using SMS within your business.

Here are the main reasons why businesses use SMS.

1. Unmatched open rates

SMS is a great channel for customer engagement in business due to its extremely high open rates. 

On average, 98% of SMS sent are opened and read by the recipients.¹ For context, a good email open rate is considered to be between 20-35%.²

These figures demonstrate the value of SMS in your digital marketing strategy, as you can reach many more shoppers with a multi-channel email and SMS campaign than you would using email alone. And we’ll explore exactly how SMS can support a multi-channel marketing strategy later on.

Although there are many benefits of SMS campaigns, high open rates are where the channel really shines and the main reason why marketers use SMS. For a user to act on your marketing message, they first need to read it, and sending it via an SMS can help to ensure they do.

2. Direct communication

Another of the top advantages of SMS in business is the direct nature of the channel. 

A 2025 study revealed that 70.7% of the world’s population currently uses a mobile phone.³ Additionally, the average mobile user checks their phone 58 times a day.⁴

By developing an SMS strategy, you’re opening up the door for your brand to reach millions of people on the device they use multiple times a day. You simply need to capture their mobile number, which many shoppers are willing to provide alongside their email address. With Salesfire’s data capture technology, Leader Online was able to capture mobile numbers from 66% of shoppers who opted in to email marketing.

The frequency with which users check their mobile phones is also why SMS marketing works best for time-sensitive messages. As shoppers are already on their mobile phones so often, the devices on which SMS is native, they are more likely to notice your message sooner. Messages like flash sale announcements or personalised abandoned cart reminders can be highly effective as SMS, as they can be simple yet attention-grabbing.

Being limited to short, text-based messages means sending marketing campaigns with SMS can be quicker than with other channels, which have more components to consider. SMS are easy to personalise, so you can send highly focused messages on a large scale without the need for large budgets or investing extensive time.

3. Part of a multi-channel approach

The real power of SMS in marketing comes from its ability to support your existing strategy. 

Rather than replacing the campaigns you’ve already spent time building across channels like your website, email, or paid search, SMS can enhance them. You also don’t have to start from scratch, as you can use the messaging you already know is effective as building blocks for your SMS campaigns.

For example, you may already have an abandoned basket email that triggers when a shopper leaves your site with items left in their cart. However, you can drive even more conversions by following this up with an abandoned cart reminder through SMS, too.

Using this multi-channel approach can help to:

• Reinforce your message: Sending a message through more than one channel can help to make it more memorable to the shopper and more likely to inspire action.

• Ensure your campaign gets seen: If a shopper misses your message on one channel, sending it on another channel increases the chance of them seeing it.

• Reach your shoppers where they’re at: Each shopper is likely to have a preferred or most-used channel, and by covering all bases, you can ensure you reach them where they are most likely to be.

• Create a seamless shopping experience: By reaching your shoppers with the same message across multiple channels, you can easily guide shoppers to where you want them to go.

Top tip: For a smoother setup of your cross-channel campaigns, consider using a comprehensive eCommerce tool like Salesfire that offers both email and SMS functionality.

4. Easy integration and automation

SMS is one of the easiest marketing channels for your brand’s marketing strategy. 

This is primarily due to the availability of SMS marketing tools, which allow you to easily send SMS campaigns to your shoppers on a large scale. These tools can be integrated with your website and existing marketing tools to automatically deploy SMS based on certain triggers. For example, the tool can automatically send out a welcome discount code via SMS every time a shopper opts into your SMS marketing.

However, SMS automation isn’t limited to just welcome emails. There are now SMS solutions available that offer advanced automation and personalisation functionalities. Salesfire analyses shopper activity on your site to automatically enrol shoppers in hyper-personalised email and SMS flows based on their latest behaviour. 

By automating your SMS marketing, you can deliver relevant SMS campaigns to your shoppers at the optimal moment, without manual intervention. This can boost the effectiveness of your SMS campaigns while reducing the time and effort required by your team.

With an SMS marketing tool, you could consider setting up campaigns like:

• Save my basket reminders: Let shoppers know you’ve saved their basket and it’s waiting for them when they are ready to purchase. This SMS campaign was highly effective for fashion brand, Stuarts London, which saw a 25% click-through rate on their Save My Basket SMS with Salesfire.

• Back-in-stock notifications: Inform shoppers immediately when an item they’re interested in comes back in stock so they can secure it before it sells out.

• Re-engagement incentives: Draw unengaged shoppers back to your site by sending them a time-limited exclusive discount code.

Top tip: Choose an SMS marketing tool that offers pre-set campaign flows, like Salesfire, to make setting up the above campaigns quick and easy.

Why you should get started with SMS today

SMS is an ideal channel if you’re looking to send high-impact messages with low effort. 

It’s one of the easiest channels to get started with, with its ease of automation and ability to support your already active marketing campaigns. SMS allows you to deliver messages directly to the palm of your shoppers’ hands, increasing the likelihood of them viewing and acting on your message.

These clear advantages of SMS for businesses are increasingly leading to online retailers opting for a multi-channel marketing strategy that incorporates SMS. However, with still fewer users than other channels like email, now is the perfect time to establish your brand on the platform and use it to strengthen your customer relationships.

1 10 Reasons Brands Should Use Text Message Marketing | business.com

2 Good Email Open Rates: Key Things to Know | DesignRush

3 Digital Around the World | Datareportal

4 Screen time stats 2019: Here’s how much you use your phone during the workday | RescueTimeBlog