When is the best day to send SMS campaigns?

With consumer expectations at an all-time-high, timing matters when it comes to customer-facing communications. 

SMS is no exception. 

In fact, with its exceptionally high open rate of 98%, the success of your SMS messages often relies on being sent at the right time to the right person than other channels.

With that in mind, how do you know when exactly is the right time to send? And how can you keep aware of what the industry around you is doing?

We’ve taken a deep dive into our own 2023 data to uncover some key insights for you to use when looking at the timings of your SMS campaigns and to provide you with a greater understanding of what the SMS world around you looks like. Read through our industry-by-industry breakdown of the data below and see if you’re in sync with the rest of your sector.

Healthcare – Weekdays

The healthcare industry uses SMS messaging for both internal and external communications, with millions of SMS messages sent each year. 

Healthcare industry has a lot of stability when it comes to usage patterns with 18% of message volume going out everyday between Mondays – Thursday whilst we see a drop towards the end of the week with Friday 15% of all sends in Healthcare.

A notable, and consistent, theme we come across several times throughout the data is that weekdays are significantly busier than the weekend. In fact, between Saturday and Sunday, only 15% of the healthcare sector’s SMS messages were sent. Our most popular use case in the Healthcare sector are below:

1. Appointment reminders
2. Roster management
3. Staff communications

Use case can dictate message volume

By far the most common use case for SMS within this niche is one-way notifications, typically to notify customers of their medical appointments which is followed by internal staff communications.

Retail – Friday

With retail, we see our first particularly diverse industry. The effect of this is a far greater mix of use cases and a much less varied data set. Fridays account for the highest number of message volume sends which is close to half the message volume only going out on Friday by 43%. Fridays are followed by Thursday with 23% of message volume and the rest of week averages between 5% to 9% of SMS volume. The most common Retail use case is flash sales, click & collect and upsells.

Another interesting observation is that SMS volume spike up at the end of the month and Week 4 accounts for 42% of monthly SMS volume in retail sector for our AU customers. Our understanding is that major peak season days always fall at the end of month like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Boxing Day, Christmas offers, etc. which reflects on our data and makes Week 4 our most popular week of the month for monthly campaigns send.

Software Houses – Tuesday & Wednesday

By far the most common use of SMS in the Software Houses is appointment reminders, job management and renewal notifications. Another very stable industry in terms of message volume during the week. We see this illustrated in the data above by the relative consistency of volume across the working week, despite a slight uptick on Tuesdays and Wednesdays by 19% followed by Mondays and Thursdays accounting for 17% and 18% respectively. 

Unsurprisingly, this culminates in a dramatic downturn over the weekend which is a standard observation across industries. A very stable usage all around the month with similar usage trends on each week of the month.

Logistics & Warehousing – Tuesday

Whilst the start of the week as a whole contributes to the bulk of SMS sends for the Logistics & Warehouse industry, Tuesday edges out ahead of the rest to hold 20% of the volume.

The main use cases tend to vary between:

• Delivery Notifications
• Job Management
• Roster Management

We do see message volume trail off towards the end of the week after the midweek peak.

The unrivalled flexibility of SMS enables a seamless customer experience, regardless of industry.

Overall, it appears that weekdays are the most popular days to send SMS messages. This is perhaps largely due to the fact that people are busier at weekends. As they’re less likely to engage with their phones, messages are more likely to be missed. For maximum impact, your SMS messages should be sent on a week day.

Though, this may also depend on the type of message you send. Did you notice that our data mainly covered one-way notifications and alerts? If you wanted to make the most of conversational messaging, weekends may be more effective as your customers will have more time to process the message and engage with it.

The potential of SMS is nearly limitless. Discover how the unparalleled flexibility that SMS as a channel provides can enable you to provide the best experience for your customers, from top-of-funnel leads, to conversion, and long after. Start your free trial or talk to an expert today.

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