How to set up an Text Broadcasting Campaign?

Text broadcasting Campaign(SMS Blast or Text Blast) allows you to send messages in bulk to your contacts and set up keywords to respond automatically to incoming messages. You can also personalize your message for each contact using merge tags for your texts. 

 

Step 1: Create SMS Broadcasting Campaign:

From your dashboard, click on the “Create” button under “SMS Broadcast".

 

1.1: Setting up the campaign begins with naming the campaign. 

1.2: Post this you need to add a phonebook that has the list of contacts.

Note: You can add multiple phonebooks while creating the campign.

1.3: Caller ID refers to the phone number that your contacts will see when you send messages.

You have two options while setting up Caller ID, Automatically Rent a Number or Validated and previously rented number.

1. Automatically Rent a Number: With this selection, you can choose the country from which you want to rent the number for sending out messages through your campaign.

2. Validated and previously rented number: You have the option to use existing numbers for your account by choosing the existing number from the dropdown. Note: Please note that if the rented number does not show in the dropdown, it means that you have a campaign running with the same number. You need to stop the campaign first before you can reuse the same number (previously rented number).

1.4: Shortcode is typically a 5-6 digit number just like a telephone number but designed to send and receive text messages. It allows you to send messages at 100 messages per sec and can be used to event invites, donation links to OPT-IN users.

 

 

1.5 Sender ID gives the ability to set an Alphanumeric ID as the Caller ID for the messages you broadcast. You can set your company name or brand as the Sender ID when sending one-way SMS messages.

 

 

Note: By default, Sender ID is available in limited countries. Please contact Support to check if your country supports Sender IDs.

 

Step 2: Adding a script:

You may enter your message and personalize them using merge tags. Personalized messages get higher response rates and engagement. Click on the Merge tag option to find the list of tags available for the campaign. You can know more about merge tags here.

Please note that the Standard SMS contains at most 160 ASCII characters or 70 Unicode characters. If you exceed the limit, you will be charged for 2 SMS.

 

Adding an Opt-out text: You can include opt-out text in your script so that the contacts can send a STOP to be opted out of the campaign. This option is visible for all the users except the US and Canada.

 

 

Step 3: Settings

1. Email Replies: This refers to the email address to which you want the system to send the email notification of all responses you have received in the campaign. Note: you cannot reply to the messages from the email, you need to login to the dashboard to reply.
2. Max Retries: gives you the ability to set up retries per contact for failed/unsent messages. Messages can get failed if the contact is not reachable at the time the message was tried.
3. Time Between Retries: this refers to the time delay in seconds before the message gets retried to the contact.

 

Step 4: Campaign Schedule

In this section, you can set up a schedule for the campaign. Set up the Start and Finish date, the days on which the campaign will be operational and the daily operational hours.

 

Note: You can edit the operational days and operational hours as per your requirement.

Step 5:  Add Auto Replies for Keyword responses:

Auto Replies refers to a response automatically sent based on the keyword. This can be set up from the "Auto Replies" section of your campaign.

 

 

If the keyword is a Yes or a No, a response needs to be set for both the keywords. You can enter the keyword, the auto-reply message and click on "Add". Please refer to the below images.

 

 

 

If the response is a Yes or a No, corresponding replies will be sent to the contact.

 

Hope this article was helpful! If you have any queries apart from this, send us an email to [email protected]