• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, May 27, 2025

Email teams may be getting nervous about the competition from SMS. But it’s likely that some will end up being responsible for the channel. And those that are will have to be comfortable with AI, judging by a new study from Decision Telecom.  

Of the companies surveyed, 80.4% are utilizing SMS marketing. The average budget for SMS  is around 18.76% of the total marketing spend. But 41.2% devoted less than 10% of their marketing dollars to SMS, showing that they are using it as a supplementary channel rather than a key marketing strategy, the study notes.  

However, 64.5% are planning to increase their SMS budget in the next year.

Meanwhile, 60.4% are using AI in their SMS campaigns, with 69.8% choosing ChatGPT. And 78.5% planning to invest more in AI integration 

Despite the growing usage, there are several barriers to deploying SMS. For instance, roughly 70% say that they have prioritized other marketing channels. And around 25% have a limited SMS marketing budget. 

Much smaller percentages cite a lack of internal resources, compliance concerns and poor past results. 

How do consumers react to SMS? The average opt-out rate is 3.09%, with 31.7 of firms seeing rates between 1% and 2% and 28.5% seeing rates from 3% to 5%. 

“These are relatively low rates compared to email marketing, showing that when done correctly, with personalized content and appropriate frequency, SMS campaigns could be consumers’ preferred choice of communication,” the study claims. 

(Note: that claim about email is difficult to substantiate with existing statistics. A study by Acoustic earlier this year showed that the mean unsubscribe rate for scheduled sends in North America stands at 0.077% -- compared to 0.182% for automated emails and 0.067% for transactional sends. Other studies show that recipients numbering in the double-digits have recently unsubscribed from emails). 

 Decision Telecom surveyed 546 marketers.