HOMEAn SMS campaign is a text-only message sent to the phone numbers stored in your contact lists. The campaigns are typically used to notify your subscribers of events such as flash sales, product launches, or other communications.
As an add-on to your account, you can send SMS campaigns to your audience. Then once enabled, when you go to the Campaigns tab in your account, you’ll find an SMS section in the left-hand menu.
How to create an SMS campaign
- Click Campaigns
- Click Create a campaign
- Enter a name for the new SMS campaign and select SMS
- Click Continue
The SMS editor will be presented along with a preview image of how your campaign will look on mobile.
SMS campaign content
To write the message content, click Add message and write your message in the text field. As you type it will automatically appear in the mobile preview on the right.
Message & character count
Each SMS campaign will be sent using the SMS credits in your account. SMS messages can be quite long (up to 1,600 characters in total) and longer messages will be split across two or more message segments, which require extra SMS credits to send.
To help you control costs and keep message length down, you will find the character count and the SMS segments needed to send each message shown just below the bottom right corner of the message box. As a general rule, messages using standard characters can contain up to 160 characters before they will need extra segments to send.
Emojis use more characters
You can use emojis in your SMS campaigns, however, be aware of two important things. First, emojis tend to use more characters than you might think. Second, SMS campaigns containing emojis (or other special characters) can only contain 70 characters before they start to require additional message segments and thus more credits to send.
Tracking and shortening links
To further save characters in your message, you can check the box for Shorten and track links. Any URLs found in the body of the message will be replaced with a short link, and the sent campaign will include a report on click engagement. The preview will give a sample of what the short link will look like, although every recipient will receive their own unique link.
You can also contact our support team for assistance on setting up a custom short domain specific to your brand for your SMS needs.
Customize SMS with personalization
The person icon found below the message box allows you to further customize your SMS campaign by inserting a personalization tag. Click the icon and select from First name, Last name, Full name, or Email.
The SMS personalization options here work in the same manner as when you add personalization to an email campaign and thus support all of the same fallback terms.
Pro Tip: You can also use other custom fields to personalize your SMS campaign, but they’ll need to be inputted manually as opposed to using the menu options from the person icon.
Include an unsubscribe option
Click the mobile icon below the message box to add an automated ‘Reply STOP to unsubscribe’ message. Just be aware that the added characters will increase the total character count of your SMS campaign. You can customize the unsubscribe wording by using one of the other supported alternative keywords to STOP. The additional options are STOPALL, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, and QUIT.
Pro Tip: Variations on these keywords — including any other spellings or multiple-word variations — are not supported and will not work as intended.
Additionally, if you are interested in having the automated unsubscribe option featured in another language for your SMS campaigns, contact our support team for assistance.
Saving & selecting recipients
- When you are satisfied with how your SMS campaign looks in the preview, click Save. A green check will appear in the box for Message, signaling that the step has been completed.
- Click Select recipients.
- In the pop-up window that appears, all of your available contact lists that contain at least one phone number will be shown as options, as well as segments within those lists, which you can select or exclude as you would for an email campaign. Under Subscribers, you’ll see the number of contacts in each list that contain a viable phone number to send an SMS campaign to, which is helpful to know before you send. Check the box next to the contact list(s) or segment(s) that you would like to send the SMS campaign to.
- Click Continue.
Sending your campaign
A green check will appear in the three boxes for Message, From, and To; signaling that all of the steps have been completed.
- Review the campaign and if all looks good, click Prepare to send.
- In the pop-up window that appears, choose Immediately or Schedule for later, then click Continue.
- A final pop-up window will confirm your selections, showing how many SMS credits will be used for the campaign and the number of recipients it will send to.
- Click Send now.
Frequently asked questions
How do recipients unsubscribe from SMS campaigns?
By replying to the option to unsubscribe from the SMS campaign and doing so as directed with a configured keyword.
When a recipient responds to an SMS campaign with any of the configured unsubscribe keywords (“STOP”, “STOPALL”, “UNSUBSCRIBE”, “CANCEL”, “END”, or “QUIT”), they will be added to your mobile suppression list and filtered from all future SMS campaigns. They will also receive this automated SMS reply and will be removed from the contact list.
Can recipients resubscribe after opting out?
For toll free numbers, in the event that a subscriber replies to a default reply text with START, then they will be removed from your mobile suppression list and can continue to receive SMS from your account.
In the case of alphanumeric sender IDs, for subscribers to re-subscribe you’ll need to contact our support team for assistance.
What if someone replies to my campaign?
Replies other than the configured unsubscribe and resubscribe keywords will be ignored by the system.
How do I make sure my SMS campaigns are only sent to valid mobile phone numbers?
In the event that a message is undeliverable because the receiving number is not a valid mobile phone, the message will bounce and the number will be added to your mobile suppression list, which means the contact will then be filtered from all future SMS campaign sends.
I have been sending SMS through a different provider. Can I bring my sending phone number across?
Yes. In many cases you can bring your sending number with you when you migrate onto the platform, you’ll just need to contact our support team for assistance.
How are SMS credits calculated?
The calculation of how the SMS credits are used is based on multiple aspects including the type of message, its length, destination, and the type of characters used.