Most agency owners I talk to can quote their SMS markup from memory. "I pay two cents, I bill six, easy 3x." Fine. But almost none of them can tell me their blended margin across text and calls, because the two products get priced in separate meetings, by separate logic, and never get added back together.
That's the gap. SMS markup is fat and visible. Dialer minutes are thin and boring, and they quietly drag the whole account's margin down toward something you'd be embarrassed to defend if a client ever ran the math. This post builds the combined model so you can see the real number.
Full disclosure: I work for Ready. We sell both SMS and a Power Dialer, so I have a stake in you bundling them. I'm going to show you the actual arithmetic anyway, including the parts that make the dialer look less exciting than the text line.
Why the SMS line looks so good in isolation
On Ready's Standard tier, a segment costs you $0.02 plus a $0.0045 carrier pass-through — $0.0245 all-in. Rebill that at $0.06 and you keep $0.0355 per segment. That is a real 2.4x on your cost, and on a client sending 20,000 segments a month it's $710 of margin from one line item.
The reason it feels fat is the unit is tiny. Nobody audits a six-cent text. But that same smallness is exactly why the dialer sneaks up on you — voice minutes are also small units, they just add up in the opposite direction.
If you want the deeper version of the SMS-only markup story — including where clients start auditing the line — The Markup Ceiling covers it. And if you've never separated the carrier pass-through from your cost, read this first, because it changes the SMS number above by more than you'd guess.
The dialer line has a different shape
SMS margin is per-message and predictable. Dialer margin is per-minute and variable, because you don't control how long a connected call runs.
Ready's Power Dialer minutes, billed in 6-second increments:
| Plan | Per agent/mo | Included min | Overage/min |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 500 | $0.06 |
| Pro | $29 (up to 3 agents) | — | $0.05 |
| Team | $69 (unlimited agents) | — | $0.0375 |
There are no per-seat CRM fees layered on top — the dialer, inbox, pipeline, and SMS all sit in one platform. That matters for blended margin because a per-seat tool would eat your spread before a single call connects. (Here's that breakeven math if you're currently paying per seat somewhere.)
Say you're on Team at $0.0375/min. A typical outbound cadence isn't all talk time — it's dials that ring out, hit voicemail, or connect. But you get billed for connected minutes. If your client's list produces an average of 2.5 billed minutes per contact reached across the month (some 20-second no-answers, some 4-minute conversations), your cost per reached contact is about $0.094.
Now rebill dialer minutes at, say, 2x — $0.075/min. On 2.5 minutes that's a client charge of $0.1875 and a cost of $0.094, so you keep about $0.094 per reached contact. Feels okay. Watch what happens when we blend it.
The blended model: one client, one mixed cadence
Let's build a real month for one client running a text-then-call outbound sequence — the standard "speed-to-lead" shape where every new lead gets an instant text and a follow-up dial.
Volume assumptions for the month:
- 3,000 new leads
- Each lead gets 4 SMS segments across the sequence = 12,000 segments
- 60% of leads get dialed at least once (the rest reply to text and get routed) = 1,800 dialed leads
- Average 3.2 billed minutes per dialed lead = 5,760 minutes
Your costs (Ready):
| Item | Units | Rate | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| SMS segments | 12,000 | $0.0245 | $294.00 |
| Dialer minutes | 5,760 | $0.0375 | $216.00 |
| Team seat (1 agent) | 1 | $69.00 | $69.00 |
| Total cost | $579.00 |
Your rebill to the client:
| Item | Units | Rate | Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|
| SMS segments | 12,000 | $0.06 | $720.00 |
| Dialer minutes | 5,760 | $0.075 | $432.00 |
| Total revenue | $1,152.00 |
Blended margin: $573 on $1,152 in revenue = 49.7%.
Here's the punchline. Your SMS line alone was running at a 59% margin ($426 kept on $720). Your blended margin is ten points lower than the number you had in your head, because the dialer — even rebilled at 2x — carries a thinner spread and drags the average down. The client sees a healthy-looking SMS markup and never notices the dialer is where your real cost concentrates.
Where to actually set each rebill rate
The mistake is applying the same multiplier to both products. SMS can carry a fat multiplier because the absolute number stays invisible. Dialer minutes can't, because clients do scrutinize call costs — a $432 voice line item on an invoice gets read.
My rule of thumb:
- SMS: markup on the multiple, cap on the absolute. 2.5–3x is defensible while a segment stays under a dime. Past $0.06–$0.08 per text, clients start comparing to what they think SMS "should" cost.
- Dialer: markup on the margin dollars, not the multiple. Don't chase 3x on minutes — you'll price yourself above what the client can source elsewhere. Aim for a consistent margin-per-reached-contact and let the multiple float. In the model above, 2x on minutes still delivered $216 of dialer margin.
- Bundle the seat, don't line-item it. The $69 Team seat is your cost, not the client's line. Bury it in the blended retainer so the client isn't paying $69 to maybe have agents idle. (The utilization math on idle agents is the other half of this — thin dialer margin plus low utilization is how you go underwater.)
The lever most agencies ignore: the SMS volume tier
Here's the thing that quietly rescues blended margin. Ready's per-segment cost drops automatically from $0.02 to $0.016 once an account crosses 50,000 segments in a calendar month. You don't pick a plan; it just applies.
If you're a multi-client agency pooling volume, that crossover is real money. Say your book totals 60,000 segments a month. The first 50,000 bill at $0.02, the next 10,000 at $0.016. If your rebill rate stays at $0.06, every segment past 50K now keeps you an extra $0.004 — and you never told the client, so the whole gain is yours.
That's the part that offsets the dialer drag. Your voice margin is thin and fixed; your SMS margin widens as you scale. Blended, they trend toward each other. The tier-crossover math is worth planning around if you're anywhere near 50K, and this post walks the exact breakpoint.
Sanity-check your model against reality
Two variables will wreck any blended projection if you assume them wrong:
- Billed minutes per dialed lead. I used 3.2. Your real number depends on connect rate and talk time. Pull last month's actual dialer minutes divided by leads dialed. If it's 4.5, your dialer cost jumps 40% and your blended margin drops accordingly.
- Text-to-dial ratio. I assumed 60% of leads need a call. If your text sequence converts replies well, fewer leads hit the dialer and your blended margin rises, because you're leaning on the fatter SMS line. The text-then-dial ordering directly moves this ratio.
Run your own numbers with real dispositions before you quote a retainer. A model built on optimistic connect rates looks great in a sales deck and loses money in month two.
The practical takeaway
SMS markup is the part of your P&L that looks healthiest and matters least to your risk. Dialer minutes are the part nobody quotes from memory and the part that decides whether your account is actually at 50% or accidentally at 35%.
Build the blended model once, per client, with your real disposition data. Set the SMS rate on the multiple and the dialer rate on the margin dollars. Let the automatic volume tier do the quiet work of widening the spread as you grow, and keep the seat cost inside the retainer instead of on the invoice.
If you want to price a bundle out, the SMS and dialer rates are all on one page, and both products live under one login with no per-seat CRM tax — which is the whole reason the blended math works at all. Start with your own last-30-days numbers, not mine; that's the only model that survives a heavy month.