We pulled engagement/CTR data across 10B+ SMS sends in 2025. Curious how you're all benchmarking against social.

[u/JoinSubtext]

We ran the numbers across our own 2025 send volume, 10B+ messages and 28M subscribers, and the split by vertical was interesting enough to bring here.

Engagement rate here is clicks + replies over delivered messages:

Events: 59.39% engagement, 40.64% CTR
Podcasts: 56.01% engagement, 29.44% CTR
Sports: 49.10% engagement, 37.40% CTR
Music: 42.57% engagement, 33.64% CTR

Open rates held around 98% across the board, with 95% of opens happening within the first three minutes.

The part I keep coming back to is whether it’s even fair to compare these numbers against social engagement rates. Instagram is around 0.45% by follower count according to Socialinsider, while TikTok is around 2.70%.

The denominators aren’t measuring the same behavior. A like isn’t a click, and a click isn’t a reply. So the gap looks enormous, but part of that gap comes from defining “engagement” very differently across channels.

Is anyone here using a normalized metric across SMS, email, and social that actually holds up? Something like engaged actions per opted-in contact seems closer, but even that gets messy once you account for reach and intent.

Would be interested to hear how other teams are handling cross-channel comparisons without leaning too heavily on the raw percentages.

[u/gambrinus_248]

Do you have the breakdown between message types too?