SMS Marketing Conversion Rate for Ecommerce Benchmarks
Average ecommerce SMS campaigns convert 0.27% of recipients and automated flows convert 1.9% (Klaviyo, 2026). Here's how those figures break down by message type, compare with email, and how to judge your own program.
SMS marketing conversion rate (ecommerce)
The share of SMS recipients who place an order after a text: 0.27% for average campaigns and 1.9% for flows (Klaviyo, 2026).
SMS conversion rate, which Klaviyo calls the placed-order rate, is the number of recipients who place an attributed order divided by the number of recipients who got the text. Most ecommerce platforms count recipients rather than clicks in the denominator. That's why the figures look small next to on-site conversion rates.
The number swings widely by message type. Behaviour-triggered flows such as abandoned checkout, browse abandonment and back-in-stock convert at roughly 7x the rate of one-off broadcast campaigns. When you benchmark, always compare campaigns with campaigns and flows with flows, and check how your platform defines the attribution window.
Klaviyo's 2026 SMS benchmarks cover more than 183,000 customers. The average ecommerce SMS campaign gets a 5.6% click rate and a 0.27% placed-order rate. Automated SMS flows average a 9.65% click rate and a 1.9% placed-order rate.
The top 10% of brands get much more out of the same channel: 10.44% click and 0.61% conversion on campaigns, and 16.6% click and 3.92% conversion on flows. The table below puts these next to Omnisend's 2023-data report and email campaign results from both platforms.
Ecommerce SMS benchmarks: campaigns vs automated flows vs email campaigns
| Metric | SMS campaigns | SMS flows (automated) | Email campaigns |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average click rate — Klaviyo 2026 | 5.6% | 9.65% | 1.69% |
| Top-10% click rate — Klaviyo 2026 | 10.44% | 16.6% | — |
| Average placed-order rate — Klaviyo 2026 | 0.27% | 1.9% | 0.16% |
| Top-10% placed-order rate — Klaviyo 2026 | 0.61% | 3.92% | — |
| Click rate — Omnisend, 2023 data | 7.6% | — | 1.5% |
| Conversion rate — Omnisend, 2023 data | 0.13% | — | 0.07% |
Two sources, two calendar years, the same pattern. An average SMS campaign converts roughly 1.7x as well as an average email campaign: 0.27% vs 0.16% at Klaviyo and 0.13% vs 0.07% at Omnisend. The much bigger gap is campaigns vs flows. Klaviyo's flow placed-order rate is about seven times its campaign rate.
Placed-order rate per recipient: email vs SMS campaigns vs SMS flows
Here's what that means in orders. Say a Shopify apparel store texts a promo to 40,000 subscribers. At the 0.27% average it gets about 108 orders. At the top-10% rate of 0.61% the same send gets about 244. Better segmentation, timing and offer clarity can roughly double campaign output without adding any subscribers.
Revenue per message and opt-out benchmarks
Flows bring in revenue out of proportion to their volume. Klaviyo reports, as summarised by ClickMinded in 2026, that flows make up 7.6% of SMS sends but 45.2% of SMS revenue, and top-10% SMS flows earn more than $5 revenue per recipient. Omnisend's 2025 study of 230 million texts found automated SMS was 9% of sends and 18% of SMS-driven sales.
Flows also bring in new customers. Klaviyo's 2026 data shows 64.4% of SMS flow revenue comes from new buyers, compared with 20% for campaigns. If you run paid acquisition, that's the figure to watch. Abandoned-checkout and welcome texts are often what turns a paid click into a first order.
Subscribers who join through a keyword do even better. Postscript's 2022 benchmarks put keyword opt-in messages at a 25–38% CTR, a 10–26% conversion rate and $5.09–$14.79 earnings per message in their strongest vertical. Attentive's analysis of 25 billion messages also ranks abandoned cart and checkout journeys highest for CTR, conversion rate and revenue per message.
Opt-out guardrails and vendor grading bands
Klaviyo's US campaign guidance (updated October 2025) grades SMS click rates of 8.9–14.5% as good and 14.6% or higher as great. Placed-order rates of 1.0–2.0% are good and 2.1% or higher is great. Keep opt-outs under about 1.4% per send. Under 0.5% is excellent, and 2% or higher means your frequency or targeting is off. These US-only bands sit well above Klaviyo's global 2026 averages, so check which dataset you're comparing against before you call a campaign weak.
How to read your own SMS conversion rate
Check the denominator and the attribution window first. Klaviyo divides orders by recipients and leaves bot clicks out of its benchmark data. Some tools divide by clicks, which gives a click-to-order rate in double digits. A '12% SMS conversion rate' from an agency deck is often clicks-to-orders, not recipients-to-orders.
Next, check whether SMS created the order or just took credit for it. Texts often go out within hours of a Meta or Google click. If they share a 5-day attribution window, your paid channels and SMS can both claim the same checkout. To protect ROAS, compare against a holdout group, or watch blended revenue when you pause a flow.
Finally, compare SMS with what happens on the landing page. A 10% click rate that lands on a slow product page loses most of its value on mobile. If SMS clicks convert worse on-site than your average mobile session, the problem is your page, not your message. That's an ecommerce CRO fix, not a copywriting one.
SMS marketing conversion rate: frequently asked questions
By Klaviyo's 2026 benchmarks, the average is 0.27% of recipients for campaigns and 1.9% for automated flows. The top 10% of brands reach 0.61% on campaigns and 3.92% on flows. If your campaigns beat 0.5% and your flows beat 2%, you're well above the median.
Klaviyo's 2026 data puts the average SMS campaign click rate at 5.6% and flow click rate at 9.65%. Top-10% brands reach 10.44% and 16.6%. Omnisend's report on 2023 data found a 7.6% click rate for SMS campaigns.
Per recipient, yes. Average SMS campaigns convert 0.27% vs 0.16% for email campaigns at Klaviyo (2026), and 0.13% vs 0.07% at Omnisend (2023 data). SMS costs more per send, though, so compare revenue per recipient against message cost, not conversion rate alone.
Flows fire on intent, such as a cart left behind, a product viewed or an item back in stock, so the recipient is already mid-purchase. Klaviyo's flow placed-order rate is about seven times its campaign rate. Campaigns go to the whole list whether people are ready to buy or not.
Klaviyo's US guidance treats under about 1.4% per campaign as healthy, under 0.5% as excellent and 2% or higher as a warning sign. Flash sales tolerate higher opt-outs than welcome flows, so benchmark each message type separately.
Top-10% SMS flows earn more than $5 per recipient, per Klaviyo data cited by ClickMinded in 2026. Postscript's 2022 report showed keyword opt-in messages earning $5.09–$14.79 per message. Broadcast campaigns sit well below flows, so use flow RPR as the ceiling, not the target, for promos.
Abandoned cart and abandoned checkout journeys lead on CTR, conversion and revenue per message in Attentive's 25-billion-message study. Keyword opt-in confirmations also convert strongly, at 10–26% in Postscript's 2022 data, because the subscriber has just shown intent.
Most platforms divide attributed orders by recipients delivered, then multiply by 100. Some tools divide orders by clicks instead, which gives a much higher click-to-order rate. Check the definition and attribution window before comparing yourself with any published benchmark.
It can. If a customer clicks a Meta ad and then buys from an abandoned-cart text, both channels may claim the order within their attribution windows. Use a holdout group or blended revenue to measure SMS's true incremental lift and protect your ROAS reporting.
Move volume from broadcasts into triggered flows, segment campaigns by recent engagement and purchase history, and send each click to a fast, mobile-first landing page. Then A/B test offer framing and timing as part of a wider ecommerce CRO program. Gains on the landing page often beat gains in the message copy.
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