Business text messages achieve open rates of around 95%, which explains why SMS is a reliable channel for operations. That level of visibility creates an opportunity to engage your audience, but a message delivered at the wrong time is unwelcome.
While you may benefit from the speed and responsiveness associated with SMS, you also need to respect recipients’ work schedules and attention patterns. Poor timing leads to disengagement and opt-outs, even when the message is relevant. Finding the right balance allows you to scale across regions and use cases.
Discover the best times and days to send business text messages for higher responses, timing strategies and frequency best practices.
Best Time to Send SMS Messages
The best time to send SMS messages is during business hours. During these times, attention shifts between tasks, so people may be receptive to brief interruptions and are mentally prepared to process actionable information.
Although people checked their phones about 186 times a day in 2025, the frequency of these interactions may vary by intent. A quick glance between meetings or tasks may carry a different mindset than an alert received during personal downtime, so engagement can depend on context and purpose at the moment of delivery.
Text Message Timing for High Response Rates
Text message responses occur within roughly 90 seconds if they are met with intent. Urgent communications, including safety notifications or time-sensitive updates, may reasonably follow different timing considerations. Their relevance comes from immediacy, so recipients typically understand that distinction.
Promotional and sales-oriented messages are best sent when recipients are receptive and expecting engagement.
Response patterns may also vary by role and business settings. For example:
- Catering and event management: Early afternoon supports coordination before setup and service windows begin.
- Healthcare: Late morning and early afternoon work well for appointment reminders and confirmations.
- Retail stores: Midday and early morning align with store traffic patterns and customer availability.
- HR and staffing: Late morning to early afternoon aligns well with employee availability between work periods.
Best Day to Send SMS Marketing Campaigns
While there is no set day to send marketing campaigns, patterns typically remain consistent for various audiences:
- Tuesdays to Thursdays deliver the strongest engagement. Recipients have established workflows and attention levels remain steady.
- Mondays are well-suited for planning, orientation and operational communication as teams organize for the week ahead.
- Fridays are effective for reminders and time-sensitive updates, with engagement tapering as attention shifts toward personal time.
- Weekends generally underperform for business messaging unless the audience has explicitly opted in to receive weekend communications.
Best Time of Day for SMS Campaigns
SMS performance typically follows repeatable engagement windows based on daily routines. Each window depends on attention levels and task flow:
- Morning window: Late morning—between 9 a.m. and 12 p.m.—may support engagement for informational and utility messages. At this point, people have settled into their day and are organizing their priorities. Messages such as appointment reminders, schedule confirmations, shift updates, system notices and service alerts align well with this time frame.
- Afternoon window: Between 1 p.m. and 5 p.m., attention typically fluctuates, while brief phone interactions increase. This makes the afternoon effective for follow-ups, confirmations and simple calls to action. Messages perform best when they are concise and direct, because recipients may be juggling multiple tasks or transitioning between responsibilities.
- Commute window: Sending text messages between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. requires more discretion. Consumer-focused messages may perform well as people shift into personal time and casual browsing. For B2B and operations messaging, engagement often declines as workdays conclude.
SMS Marketing Timing Strategies
Once you understand the best days and hours to send messages, the next step is consistency. When sending SMS at scale, consider having systems that help you align with best practices across audiences, locations and message types. Here are three strategies for SMS marketing timing:
1. Be Mindful of Time Zones
Time zones introduce complexity that grows quickly as audiences expand. Manually calculating delivery times across regions works for small lists, but it becomes inefficient and prone to error as the volume increases. A message scheduled for 10 a.m. should arrive 10 a.m. local time for the recipient, whether that person is in New York, Perth or anywhere in between.
An SMS gateway application programming interface (API) allows you to schedule messages and rely on the system to deliver the message automatically. This approach saves time and keeps messaging aligned with recipient expectations.
2. Consider Message Urgency
Timing decisions also depend on the urgency of the message. Operational alerts or system notifications carry a sense of immediacy, so recipients may understand that these messages arrive when information is most important.
Reminders or promotion messages may perform best when they arrive during established engagement windows and follow consistent timing patterns.
Separating urgent and planned messages can help you apply the right timing logic to each category.
3. Factor in Audience Preferences
Audience segmentation aligns delivery with the distinct operational styles of different groups. For example:
- Customers’ preferences vary, but engagement may improve when messages align with service usage. Appointment reminders typically perform well earlier in the day, while service updates may see stronger engagement around midday.
- Partners and vendors typically prefer messages delivered during core business hours. Midweek and midday deliveries fit naturally into professional workflows.
Segmenting by role or engagement behavior allows you to schedule messages in ways that feel natural to each group. Engagement data can help refine these segments further, allowing you to make more precise timing decisions.
Ideal Frequency for Sending SMS
Timing and frequency work in tandem. Well-timed messages lose effectiveness when volume exceeds audience expectations.
Here’s how often to send SMS marketing campaigns:
- Promotional messages perform best when spaced in predictable patterns. For example, a reasonable range for business campaigns is two to six promotional texts per month for retail and e-commerce. This spacing preserves audience attention while reinforcing relevance.
- Transactional messages include confirmations, reminders, account alerts and status updates. Send each message when its trigger occurs. For example, you can send an order confirmation at the time of purchase and appointment reminders closer to the scheduled time.
- Feedback loops include open rates, response rates and opt-out messages. If a segment shows a steady decline in open rate over consecutive sends, consider spacing out messages for that group until performance improves. If they opt out, that’s your cue to stop sending them SMS messages.
Achieve Optimal Business Text Message Response Rates With CompleteSMS
CompleteSMS has over 20 years of experience helping businesses send text messaging through automated solutions. You can send SMS messages from your computer or mobile device and receive replies from your customers in your email inbox or phone.
Our solution supports bulk messaging and integrates with tools you already use, including Outlook, Gmail and spreadsheets like Excel and customer relationship management (CRM) systems.
We also support global address books and personalization. Features such as blacklist management, delivery traceability, dedicated numbers, area code selection and call forwarding help you manage communication seamlessly. Our team assists with delivery support as needs evolve.
Request a demo to get started.
