Before you start
Things you need to know:
SMS messages are made up of segments, which must be a maximum of 160 characters, or 70 characters if you're using a non-Latin alphabet/character set. If you use more characters, your message takes a second SMS segment, as shown at the bottom right of the message editing window.
Adding elements like personalisation can vastly increase your character count.
You can set a max number of segments to use per message to help protect your SMS spend.
Create an SMS campaign
1. Set up your SMS
Go to Campaigns and select the quick-create icon for SMS.
Enter a campaign name in the field at the top of the editor, then select the tick icon.
For Message type, select SMS.
Under Campaign details expand the Sender drop-down menu and select the From name or number you want to send the SMS from.
Expand the Max SMS segments drop-down menu to select the maximum number of segments per message you want to set.
Messages exceeding this number of segments are not sent. Learn more in Set max SMS segments.Select CAMPAIGN OPTIONS to:
Choose your Send type from BROADCAST or TRIGGERED.
Broadcast campaigns are sent either immediately or at a scheduled time to one or more lists, segments or marketing preferences, and allow split testing.
Triggered campaigns are used for SMS auto-responders or sends through automated programs and don't allow split testing.
If you choose to send a Broadcast SMS, then for Split test, you can toggle the switch to On or Off to choose whether you want to split test the campaign or not.
If you choose to send a triggered SMS, this option is greyed out. Learn more about split testing in Create a split test SMS campaign.
For Links, select Shorten or Do not shorten.
Link shortening saves character counts and allows us to track SMS interaction. Learn more in Use link shortening and tracking in an SMS campaign.
When you’ve finished selecting your campaign options, select SAVE in the side panel.
2. Create your message
In the Message field, enter your SMS message text.
To add personalisation to an SMS campaign, select the personalisation icon in the bottom left of the Message field.
Learn more in Personalisation for SMS and MMS.
To insert a link to a survey, page or form into your SMS campaign, select the link icon in the bottom left of the Message field. In the side panel, select the survey, page, or form you want to link to.
When you’re happy with your campaign, select SAVE & CONTINUE or SAVE.
Test your SMS campaign
You can access the test send function for SMS in two places:
The SMS campaign editing screen
On the SMS campaigns screen, in the Test send column.
To perform a test send:
Select Test send.
In the Test send side panel, select SELECT TEST NUMBER to choose contacts from your Test list (hold Ctrl to select multiple addresses), or select NEW TEST NUMBER to add a new contact to the Test list.
You can't add suppressed mobile numbers to your Test list. If you see an Errors found message when trying to add a new number, this is likely to be the reason why.Select TEST SEND to confirm the send.
When you're finished with testing and ready to send, select SAVE & CONTINUE.
If you’re not ready to send, you can select SAVE then exit the SMS editor, and return to your campaign later.
Edit an SMS campaign
If you’ve worked on an SMS campaign that you weren’t ready to send at that time, you can return later to make additional changes.
To do this:
Go to Campaigns > SMS.
Select the SMS campaign you want to edit.
Make any changes you want to your campaign.
Select SAVE & CONTINUE.
Next steps