You can improve your SMS and MMS campaigns by including personalisation markers which can contain data fields and Liquid markup.
You can use this to add specific information relating to each contact who receives your campaigns, making them more personalised and improving engagement.
Before you start
Things you need to know:
Make sure link shortening is turned on in your SMS/MMS campaign options when using personalised links.
Learn more in Link shortening and tracking for SMS.
You must have Dynamic personalisation enabled on your account. Contact your Customer Success representative if you need help with this.
Personalisation and SMS cost
Adding personalisation markers that contain data fields or Liquid markup to your SMS messages is a great way to communicate directly with your customers – in fact, due to the personal nature of SMS, most users expect a higher level of personalisation than they would for other types of communication.
It’s important to know that data fields and Liquid markup inside personalisation markers are not accounted for in the character and SMS segment counts that display in the editor. This is because each contact has different values for any personalised fields. When your SMS message is sent, the output of the personalisation is added on top of the character count below the SMS message text box.
Also, personalisation markers may output results that contain Unicode characters, for example, names with Latin characters. This can create additional SMS segments and might increase the cost of your SMS campaign send.
Learn more in SMS message length and Unicode.
Before using your personalisation markers, it's essential to be aware of how personalisation can increase the overall message length and cost of your SMS sends.
How personalisation affects cost
One SMS message segment has a maximum character count of 160 characters. Every time the character count of the SMS message is more than 160 characters, it is sent and charged as two SMS message segments – these segments are combined and appear as one message on your customer’s phone, but they are still billed individually.
To help you manage the costs of sending personalised SMS messages, you can set a maximum number of segments per message.
Learn more in Set max SMS segments.
Example
Example
You've written a 155-character SMS message to send to your contacts. You've started the message with some personalisation by adding the FIRSTNAME data field. On the message preview; it looks like this:
Hey, @FIRSTNAME@.
At this point, we can't give you an accurate character count for your message, because the character count is different for every contact depending on the length of their first name.
To keep things simple, imagine you only have two contacts in your list: Amar and Charlotte.
Because Charlotte has over double the number of characters in her name, the SMS message to her has more characters. The breakdown below demonstrates how the character count, message count, and overall billing cost is affected by the personalisation added to these two SMS messages.
SMS to Amar | SMS to Charlotte | |
Message length: | 159 | 164 |
Maximum characters per message: | 160 | 160 |
Calculation: | Original message (155) + Amar (4) | Original message (155) + Charlotte (9) |
Total messages sent: | 1 | 2 |
Total messages billed: | 1 | 2 |
Don't avoid using personalisation, but be aware of the possible additional cost when adding personalisation markers.
If you do use personalisation, try to keep messages short and know the maximum length of the data fields or Liquid markup you're adding. If you can't keep it short, you can be happy that although it may cost more, adding the personal touch can make your message more effective.
Add data fields to your campaign
You can add data fields to your SMS campaign to help personalise them for your contacts.
Learn more about data fields in Create, delete, and edit custom data fields.
Create a new SMS campaign or edit an existing one.
Learn how in the SMS campaigns section of the Help Centre.Select Personalize at the bottom of the Message box.
This is the person icon.From the Insert personalization side panel, select Data fields.
Expand the Data field drop-down menu and choose a data field.
Select INSERT.
To edit your data field, select the pink personalisation marker inside the Message box.
Add Liquid markup to your campaign
Before you start
We support an extensive subset of the Liquid markup language. However, not all elements are supported.
Learn more about Liquid markup in Liquid personalisation: overview.
We don’t currently support the use of dynamic images through Liquid markup in MMS.
You can add Liquid markup to your SMS or MMS campaign:
Create a new SMS or MMS campaign or edit an existing one.
Learn how in SMS Campaigns and Create and send MMS campaigns.Select Personalize at the bottom of the Message box.
This is the person icon.From the Insert personalization side panel, select Liquid markup.
Enter your Liquid markup in the Liquid markup text box.
Select INSERT.
To edit your Liquid markup, select the personalisation marker inside the Message box that contains your Liquid markup.
Line breaks in Liquid markup
Unlike using Liquid markup in EasyEditor, where line breaks are not reflected in your emails, surveys, pages, and forms, each new line of Liquid markup prints a new line in your SMS and MMS message, even if the Liquid markup doesn’t output any text.
To remove any unwanted line breaks of white space, you can use hyphens in your Liquid markup. We advise you use the PREVIEW AS feature to double check that your Liquid markup has formatted correctly.
Preview as a contact
If you want to check your personalisation markers are working the way you want, you can preview your message as one of your contacts.
When you don’t select a contact, the preview uses your user profile contact as default.
Learn more in Manage your user profile.
To do this:
Above your message preview on the right of the page, select the PREVIEW AS search field.
Enter your contact’s email address, or mobile number to search for them.
Select your contact.
If you want to select a different contact, select the X icon next to the contact’s name and search again.
This now displays your message in the exact way your contact will see it.