Setup a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Texting Campaign

Want your team to text supporters one-on-one and reply to them in real time? P2P Texting lets your agents/ volunteers send personalized text messages to your contacts, then have real, one to one, two-way conversations and record responses as they go. 

Relatable use cases for P2P - GOTV reminders, fundraising appeals and thank donors, keep supporters informed with updates they can reply to, advocacy campaigns, recruit and coordinate volunteers.

⚠ This setup is for Campaign Managers/Admins. 

As every reply comes back to a live agent, you can expect higher response and completion rates than one-way broadcasts, cleaner data from built-in survey questions, and a record of every conversation for follow-up.

⚠ U.S. senders need a registered 10DLC number. Texts sent from the U.S. require 10DLC registration to comply with carrier rules. Without it, your messages will be blocked. Some other countries also restrict rented texting numbers. Reach out to Support to verify your identity and rent numbers where required.

Go to the Dashboard → Select the Peer-to-Peer campaign tile → click Create.

Script:

Compose your initial message and any survey questions. To personalize a message, click Personalise while editing to see the available merge tags (for example, a contact's first name), then insert the ones you want. When the message and questions look right, click Save Question.

ⓘ NOTE — how texts are counted. A standard SMS is 160 ASCII characters or 70 Unicode characters. Longer messages are split and billed as multiple SMS. You can use bold, italics, styled fonts, and emojis. Incoming replies are billed at regular SMS/MMS rates.

✓ TIP — send long or styled messages as one MMS. If your message would split into several SMS, check Convert message to MMS so it sends as a single MMS instead.

To capture data from your conversations, add survey questions to the script. You can add Multi-Choice, Multi-Select, Text, or numeric questions, and agents record the answers as they talk with contacts.

Choose how messages are sent:

Pick a sending mode for the campaign: Manual (agents send each message individually), Auto (messages queue for agents automatically), or Broadcast (send to many contacts at once). Learn more in Compliance message in the initial texts

ⓘ Not sure which mode? See Broadcast Mode in P2P Texting to decide whether Broadcast fits your campaign.

ⓘ P2P calling lets agents phone a contact and move a conversation forward faster, enable Let agents call contacts.

Saved Replies:

To speed up common responses, add Saved replies your agents can pick from and send.

Targeting - Contact Lists and DNC setup

Choose a contact list or segment for the campaign. You can add more than one list, and you can come back and edit the campaign to add another list or a segment later.

Caller IDs 

Caller IDs are the 10-digit number that is displayed to the contact when you send them a text from your campaign. 

While 10DLC is mandatory in the United States, you can choose a standard local 10-digit number for other countries.*

Agents - Choosing agents for the campaign

Decide who runs the campaign: Assign All Agents, Select Agents to pick specific people, or Assign agents later to skip this for now.

ⓘ NOTE — "Assign All Agents" includes future agents. This option automatically adds any newly created agents to the campaign. If you haven't set up agent accounts yet, this is the simplest choice.

You can set the Notes to mandatory so the agents can include any additional information from their conversation in this section. Also, by enabling Email notifications , agents will get notified about any incoming messages they receive from the conversations they have sent messages to. 

Elevate - AI capability for Agents 

Enable Elevate to add AI assistance for your agents. It can suggest saved replies, categorize conversations, tag campaign goals, detect opt-out requests, and flag profane messages, so agents respond faster while staying in control.

See what Elevate can do. Read Elevate for Peer-to-Peer Texting Campaigns before you launch.

Campaign Schedule:

You need to set the START and FINISH date for your campaign, select Daily Operational hours, and can also choose to run a campaign on weekdays or weekends, or certain days of the week.

Choose to run the campaign in a specific timezone or the contact's timezone. For more details, click here. 

After launch, the Campaign Overview statistics looks like an image as below. 

FAQs

Why is my message being counted as more than one SMS? 

A standard SMS holds 160 ASCII or 70 Unicode characters. Longer messages, or messages with certain styled characters and emojis, split into multiple SMS. Check Convert message to MMS to send it as a single MMS instead.

Can I add contacts after the campaign starts? 

Yes. You can edit the campaign to add another contact list or segment at any time.

Do I need a 10DLC number? 

In the United States, yes — 10DLC registration is required to send texts. Some other countries allow an unverified 10-digit number. Contact Support if you're unsure or need to rent a number.

What happens to landline and VoIP numbers in my list? 

CallHub detects and filters them automatically after launch so you don't text numbers that can't receive messages. You can view and export them from the Overview section.