Measure SMS revenue from one deduplicated source of truth, your store orders attributed once across every channel, instead of adding up what your SMS, email and ad platforms each report. Every one of those tools credits itself for overlapping orders, so their totals usually add up to more revenue than you took in.
Why does my SMS platform report so much revenue?
SMS platforms typically credit an order to a message when the customer clicked a link and bought within a set window. Some also credit orders placed within a window after a message was simply delivered, with no click at all. Since most people on an SMS list are already customers who buy regularly, a lot of those orders would have happened anyway. Check your platform’s attribution settings so you know which rule it uses. Email has the same issue, which I covered in email revenue overcounting and what Klaviyo counts as email revenue.
How does SMS overlap with email and paid ads?
The same customer often gets an email, a text and a retargeting ad in the same 48 hours before a sale. When they buy, Klaviyo, your SMS platform and Meta can all claim the order. Each report looks reasonable on its own. Add them together and you might show $180,000 in channel revenue for a week that brought in $110,000. Meta and Google double counting is the paid-media version of the same problem.
How do I get a deduplicated SMS number?
Use a tool that starts from your store orders and assigns each order across the channels that touched it, so the total matches what you really sold. ThoughtMetric works this way, reading SMS traffic from the UTM parameters on your links alongside email, paid and organic traffic. (Disclosure: ThoughtMetric sponsors this site.) Its integrations page lists Klaviyo for email, and SMS is picked up through UTMs, so consistent tagging is what makes it work. Any multi-touch attribution tool built on store orders should give you a comparable view. Other options are in attribution tools that work with Klaviyo.
What UTM setup works for SMS?
Tag every link in every campaign and flow. A simple, consistent structure is enough. Set utm_source to the platform name, utm_medium to sms and utm_campaign to the campaign or flow name. Most SMS platforms can add these automatically, but confirm that flows and automated messages are tagged, not just one-off campaigns. Shortened links should keep the parameters after redirect, which is worth testing on your own phone.
Is SMS revenue incremental?
Only a holdout test will tell you. Pick a random slice of your list, around 10 percent, and exclude it from a campaign or a flow for a few weeks. Compare revenue per subscriber between the group that got messages and the group that did not. The difference is what SMS added. Brands are often surprised in both directions, as some flows drive real lift while some daily promotional texts mostly shift purchases that were coming anyway.
How do I compare SMS and email fairly?
Use revenue per subscriber per month from your deduplicated view, not total revenue. SMS lists are usually smaller and more engaged than email lists, so SMS often looks more efficient per subscriber and smaller in total. Include the cost side as well. SMS carries per-message fees that email does not, and a channel that brings in more revenue per subscriber can still lose on margin once those fees are counted.
Which SMS messages should I test first?
Start with the messages that send most often and claim the most revenue. Daily or near-daily promotional sends are the usual suspects, because frequent texts to people who buy regularly will always look strong on a platform dashboard. Abandoned cart and browse abandonment flows are the next place to test. They tend to show real lift, but the size of that lift varies a lot by brand and is worth knowing before you add more steps.
Run one test at a time and leave it long enough to cover at least one full purchase cycle for your typical customer. A two-week test on a product people reorder every 45 days will not tell you much.
Write down what you tested and what you found. SMS programs change constantly, with new flows, new offers and new send times, and a holdout result from last spring may not describe the program you run today. Retest the biggest revenue claimers at least twice a year, and before you raise send frequency.
What should I report each month?
- SMS revenue from your deduplicated attribution view, not the SMS platform’s dashboard.
- SMS platform-reported revenue next to it, so you can watch the gap.
- Results from the most recent holdout test, with the date it ran.
- Unsubscribe rate per send, since list fatigue shows up there first.
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