Most franchise brands are slower than they think.
A lot slower.
We submitted 500+ inbound lead inquiries across 14 franchise categories and measured exactly how fast brands responded — by email and by text. The results are harder to ignore than most teams want to admit.
Based on 500+ inbound tests · 14 industries · Q1 2025 · FranFunnel
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What we did
Submitted real web inquiry forms to 500+ franchise brands — the same form a prospective franchisee would fill out.
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What we measured
Time-to-first-response for both email and SMS, from submission to first real contact attempt.
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What we tracked
Whether the first response was a real outreach message or just an automated marketing email.
The headline numbers
0%
of franchise brands never responded at all
0%
responded by email or SMS within 5 minutes
0 hrs
average email response time across all brands
0 hrs
average SMS response time — for brands that used it
0%
of brands never sent a single text message
Why this matters
Leads don't wait. Your pipeline pays for every hour of delay.
The franchise development sales process is long. Discovery calls, FDDs, validation, territory reviews — there's a lot of ground to cover. But none of it matters if you don't make first contact.
The decision window for a prospective franchisee is shortest right after they submit a form. They're curious, they're motivated, and in most cases they've submitted inquiries to more than one brand. The first rep to have a real conversation wins a disproportionate share of the pipeline.
Research from the Harvard Business Review on lead response found that brands responding within 5 minutes are 8x more likely to convert a lead into a conversation than those that wait 30 minutes or longer. Conversion probability doesn't plateau after 30 minutes — it flatlines.
8.8 hrs
Average email response time across all brands tested.
The average brand that used SMS waited 20.7 hours. And 35% of brands never responded at all.
FranFunnel Franchise Lead Response Time Study, Q1 2025 · 500+ brands · 14 franchise categories, Q1 2025
These aren't outliers. They're the norm.
Channel breakdown
Email is slow. SMS is almost nonexistent.
Most franchise development teams think they have a follow-up process. What they actually have is a CRM workflow that sends emails on a delay — sometimes minutes after a form fill, sometimes hours.
- →37% of brands responded by email within 5 minutes
- →The remaining 63% took anywhere from 30 minutes to never
- →Average across all brands: 8.8 hours to first email
- →Many "fast" responses were automated marketing emails, not real outreach
SMS
- →11% of brands responded by SMS within 5 minutes
- →73% of brands never sent a text at all — in any timeframe
- →Average SMS response time (for brands that used it): 20.7 hours
- →SMS was underused in every single vertical, including the highest-performing ones
The gap between email and SMS isn't just a channel preference issue. SMS has dramatically higher open rates and response rates than email — but nearly three-quarters of franchise brands aren't using it at all. The brands that do use both channels have a meaningful first-mover advantage that most of their competitors aren't even aware they're giving up.
Results by vertical
How your industry stacks up
Response rates by franchise category — email or SMS, and SMS specifically. Click a column header to sort.
| Franchise Vertical | Responded (Any Channel) ↓ | Used Text Messaging ↕ |
|---|---|---|
| Health Care | 94% | 76% |
| Children's Services | 88% | 44% |
| Other | 86% | 34% |
| Travel & Hospitality | 85% | 10% |
| Pet Services | 83% | 58% |
| Education & Training | 79% | 29% |
| Health & Wellness | 73% | 27% |
| Home Services | 72% | 33% |
| Dining, Food & Beverage | 68% | 17% |
| Real Estate & Finance | 58% | 25% |
| B2B Services | 58% | 12% |
| Automotive | 53% | 6% |
| Retail & Consumer | 45% | 18% |
Even the best-performing verticals have a massive SMS gap. Health Care leads on overall response at 94% — but even there, 1 in 4 brands never sent a single text. Travel & Hospitality responded 85% of the time but used SMS only 10% of the time. The pattern is consistent across every category: email response has improved, SMS adoption hasn't.
The cost of waiting
After 5 minutes, the window closes fast.
The relationship between response time and conversion isn't linear — it's a cliff. Based on lead response research, here's how conversion likelihood drops as response time increases:
Conversion drops off sharply in the first 5 minutes and approaches zero by 30 minutes.
Source: Harvard Business Review, Lead Response Management Study
What this means in practice: a lead who filled out a form at 11am and didn't hear back until 5pm isn't just a cold lead. They've likely already talked to a competitor, mentally moved on, or both.
The math is straightforward. If your team responds to 100 leads per month and your average response time is 8 hours, you're not just losing engagement — you're losing deals that your pipeline already counted.
What the fast brands do differently
The top 26% don't have better leads. They have faster systems.
The brands that responded within 5 minutes in our study weren't necessarily the biggest names or the best-resourced teams. What separated them was process — specifically, automated first contact that fires the moment a lead comes in, regardless of time zone, day of week, or whether a rep is at their desk.
They didn't rely on a rep to trigger outreach.
Manual follow-up fails at scale. When a rep is on a call, in a meeting, or just having lunch, leads wait. The brands that responded fastest had systems that contacted leads automatically — not hours later as a reminder, but immediately.
They used SMS alongside email.
Every top-performing brand in our study that maintained sub-5-minute response times used both channels for first contact. SMS gets read. Email gets buried. Leading with both increases the chance of an actual conversation.
They treated weekends and evenings the same as business hours.
A significant portion of franchise inquiry forms are submitted outside of 9–5. Top performers didn't have business-hours-only follow-up. Their systems ran continuously — which meant they were often the only brand a lead heard from before Monday morning.
Their first message was specific, not generic.
We tracked whether first responses were real outreach or automated marketing emails. The brands with the highest engagement rates sent messages that referenced the specific inquiry — not just a "Thanks for your interest!" drip email.
The channel nobody's using
73% of franchise brands never texted a lead. That's the opportunity.
Email inboxes are crowded. The average person receives 120+ emails per day. SMS inboxes are not. Text messages have an open rate of roughly 98% — most within 3 minutes of receipt. Response rates on SMS outreach are consistently 3–5x higher than email across industries.
Franchise development teams know this intuitively. Most of them text candidates personally once a relationship is established. But almost none of them text at the moment of first contact — which is when the channel advantage matters most.
The math from our study
- →37% of brands emailed within 5 minutes
- →11% of brands texted within 5 minutes
- →In the most responsive vertical (Health Care), 24% of brands still never texted at all
- →In Automotive, 94% of brands never texted a lead
The competitive advantage here is real and it's available right now. Most of your competitors aren't texting. The ones who are, are having more first conversations.
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