Technology

Patrons who opt-in to text marketing spend more

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October 22, 2021

Text message marketing subscribers visit restaurants 44% more frequently than non-subscribers, and once a consumer joins a restaurant's text messaging program, the spend increases 23%.

A text subscriber can be valued at $12.15 on average in incremental revenue, measured over six months, and brands with incremental text subscriber had revenue as high as $16.59.

Those are top findings from Mobivity Holding Corp.'s 2021 Restaurant Text Marketing Benchmarks Report, according to a press release.

The company analyzed it network data of 15 million subscribers and 500 million transactions from 2018 to 2021.

"Restaurants of every kind were particularly hit hard at the onset of the pandemic and continue to experience staffing, supply chain and traffic issues. The No. 1 takeaway they've learned is that building an efficient, direct to consumer owned media channel is critical — and text messaging enables that," Dennis Becker, Mobivity chairman and CEO, said in the release. "With text messaging open rates five to 20 times better — and often with higher adoption rates — than other owned media channels this lifeline helps restaurants connect with guests and offer them valuable offers that drive traffic and spend."

Additional findings include:

• Guests who join text marketing programs stick with it. An astounding 96% of subscribers remain in a text program after 90 days, and 90% are still in the program after two years, outpacing app and email subscriber retention by a factor of 2 times and 3 times respectively.
• The timing of offers matters. Mobivity's benchmark data showed that 60% of redemptions occur within the first 24 hours, and 39% of redemptions happen on the same day the subscriber receives them. Further highlighting the immediacy of text messages, more than 30% of redemptions occur within the first three hours after receipt, and nearly half of those are within the first.