Measuring return on investment is essential for any business endeavor, whether it's a new technology or mobile text marketing. And while there might be an uptick of sales or increased traffic on an online store, companies need hard numbers to base their decisions on.

Once an SMS marketing strategy is implemented, firms need to assess their numbers, analyzing them against pre-campaign operations, and consider three specific factors:

Conversion – Increased user traffic to your website after implementing a mobile strategy is a clear benefit, but you also need to assess what those visitors are doing, what pages they view and exactly where that traffic came from, down to the specific message. Text messages have the highest click-through rate of any channel, so this should translate into a higher conversion rate as well, so make sure you're accurately assessing this metric.

Delivery – Assessing delivery rate is another important factor. Any messages that bounce back count against overall returns, so it is important to manage your subscription list carefully and clean up any phone numbers that are undeliverable. With nearly 100 percent of text messages being opened and read, ensuring that 100 percent of your messages are delivered is key.

Opt-outs – Tracking the number of opt-outs of the campaign is also critical for gaining a clear picture of ROI. Opt-outs are unavoidable, but discovering why a user opts out will be critical for minimizing this number in the future. Opt-outs can also heavily influence click-through and conversion rates as well.

With mobile text messages leading the fray in marketing efforts, businesses need to implement a strategy sooner, rather than later. The right tools will help ensure delivery and management is easy. Invest in the appropriate SMS gateway solution and ensure your mobile channel is optimized.