Every SMS needs an ROI
💬 Every cyber week text shrinks your sms list a little, so here's how to decide whether the next send is worth it, and more!
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💬 The hidden cost of your eighth cyber week text
SMS revenue spikes during Cyber Week, so the instinct is to text daily. Each send also loses some subscribers, and that loss shows up in January, when nobody's tracking it.
Here's how to put a price on it.
Model the shrink
Take a 50,000-person SMS list where each send loses 1.5% to opt-outs. That rate is illustrative, so use your own.
After eight sends, you have about 44,300 subscribers left. You've lost roughly 5,700, or 11.4% of the list.
Price a subscriber
Divide last year's SMS revenue by average list size. At $150,000 from 50,000 people, each subscriber is worth $3 a year.
Those 5,700 lost subscribers cost about $17,100 in next year's revenue.
Test each extra send
A send earns its place when the margin it makes beats what it costs:
Cost of a send = (opt-outs × subscriber value) + message cost
Take send eight, going to about 45,000 people:
- Opt-outs at 1.5%: 675 × $3 = $2,025
- Message cost at, say, $0.012 each: $540
- Total cost: $2,565
If that send brings $4,000 in revenue at a 50% margin, it earns $2,000. It loses money.
If you're rethinking your SMS setup before peak, Omnisend runs email and SMS on one platform and reports an average of $79 for every $1 spent. Migration is free and takes up to five business days, which still fits before Thanksgiving if you start this month. You can try the BFCM prompts.
Split the list by intent
Frequency doesn't need to be the same for everyone.
- Clicked a text in the last 30 days: gets the full schedule.
- Everyone else: gets three texts, on Black Friday morning, Cyber Monday and the final hours of your sale.
That protects the quieter majority while your most active texters still get every deal.
Watch opt-outs live
Check each send's opt-out rate within an hour. If one runs at more than double your normal rate, cancel the next scheduled text for that segment. That trigger is my judgment.
What to track after the sale
Compare list size on December 15 with November 15, and SMS revenue per subscriber in January against last year. If both held, your frequency was right.
Take last year's final Cyber Week text and plug in its numbers. If it lost money, cut it from this year's calendar.
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🐥 Tweet Worth Saving
🥳 Events
🔥 What to Measure When AI Search Doesn’t Get the Last Click
October 15 | Virtual Event
Matt Hammel, COO of AirOps, joins Zak Prauer, Expert Partner at Bain & Company, to show what citations alone miss, why recommendations matter more when buyers compare options, and how to judge AI search investment without waiting for perfect attribution.
Can't attend the session live? Register anyway, and you’ll get the recordings in 24 hours.
Thanks for being part of the WAW team 💃 We’d love to know if this was helpful so we can continue playing it smart with the right strategies.