SMS Marketing ROI Calculator

See how much invalid numbers are costing your campaigns — and how much you could save with clean data.

How This Calculator Works

This calculator uses industry benchmarks to estimate how much you're spending on numbers that will never receive your message:

• Invalid rate — Based on our analysis of millions of numbers, the typical unmaintained contact list has 20-30% invalid or inactive entries.
• Waste calculation — Your cost per message multiplied by the estimated number of invalid sends, scaled to your campaign frequency.
• Savings projection — After cleaning, your invalid rate drops to under 1% (our platform achieves 99.99% accuracy). The savings are the difference.

This doesn't even account for the reputational damage of high bounce rates or the opportunity cost of messages that could have reached real customers.

Industry Benchmarks: How Much Bad Data Costs

List Size	Avg Invalid Rate	Cost/SMS	Wasted/Campaign	Wasted/Year (12x)	Savings with Cleaning
1,000	25%	$0.03	$7.50	$90	$88
10,000	25%	$0.03	$75	$900	$882
50,000	25%	$0.03	$375	$4,500	$4,410
100,000	25%	$0.03	$750	$9,000	$8,820
500,000	25%	$0.03	$3,750	$45,000	$44,100
1,000,000	25%	$0.03	$7,500	$90,000	$88,200

These numbers assume conservative 25% decay. Many lists we analyze exceed 40% invalid rates—especially those older than 6 months or purchased from third parties. See our data decay guide for a deeper analysis.

Who Uses the SMS ROI Calculator

Hidden Costs of Bad Phone Data

The wasted per-message cost is just the tip of the iceberg. Invalid numbers in your list create cascading costs:

• Sender reputation damage — High bounce rates flag your sender ID with carriers. Repeatedly hitting invalid numbers can get your messages throttled or blocked entirely.
• Skewed analytics — If 25% of your sends hit dead air, your open rates, CTR, and conversion metrics are all understated. You're making decisions on bad data.
• Compliance risk — Sending messages to recycled numbers that now belong to someone else can trigger spam complaints and TCPA/GDPR issues.
• Opportunity cost — The slot a bad number occupies in your campaign could have gone to a valid prospect. Every invalid send is a missed opportunity to convert.
• Team time waste — Sales teams following up on undelivered messages to dead numbers wastes hours that could be spent on real prospects.

How List Cleaning Pays for Itself

Let's run the numbers on a typical mid-market scenario:

The ROI is immediate and compounding. Most teams recover their list cleaning costs within the first campaign. See our bulk validator to get started.