Using SMS replies to segment contacts – Dotdigital Help Centre

Overview

You can segment SMS replies based on how contacts interact with your SMS in one of two ways:

If a contact replies to an SMS.
If a contact replies with specific content.
As segmentation can be used in programs, the real power of this segmentation tool is that you can enrol with an SMS reply or drive a decision by it. This segmentation feature not only lets you enable intelligent auto-responses, but it also improves your campaign marketing since you can target subsets of contacts across other channels, based on your marketing needs and intentions, of course.

You can only segment SMS replies sent by email contacts, not contacts who've replied using a broadcast SMS.

Before you start

Things you need to know:

To learn about segmentation, check out the Segmentation section
To learn about SMS campaigns, check out the SMS section.

Create an SMS Replies segment

To create a segment based on your SMS replies:

Go to Contacts > Segments and click New segment
The 'Choose a template' area will appear where you will select the 'Blank template' under the 'Get started' heading; click Select
The 'Give your segment a name' modal will appear; name the segment and select its location, then click Continue
You will be redirected to the segmentation builder. Under the 'Behaviours' section on the left side menu, locate the 'SMS Replies' block.
Drag the block onto the canvas under the 'Include contacts that match all the rules in this group' area
In the block, click Replied to any SMS
The 'Options for 'replies'' modal will appear. In this modal, you can select two options from the dropdown: 'Replied to any SMS they were sent' or 'Replied with specific content'; specifics for each option can be found by reading below.
Select OK after you have specified how you want to segment the contacts
Select Save; the segment will now appear in your segmented contacts

Segment if a contact replies to an SMS

When you select this option from the dropdown, a second dropdown, labelled as 'Date', appears in the bottom left corner.

This dropdown allows you to segment contacts who replied to any SMS campaign by a specific time frame, such as:

any time
today
in the last
on the date
on or after the date
date range

Segment if a contact replies with specific content

Not only can you segment contacts who replied to your SMS campaign by a specific time frame, but you can also go further, and segment based on the content contained in an SMS reply. The same time frame options apply, as mentioned under 'Segmenting by 'Replied to any SMS they were sent', however, this segmentation option is more specific; you can segment contacts whose replies contain specific words, and they can be filtered as:

Equal to
Not equal to
Contains
Does not contain
Starts with
Ends with
Does not begin with
Does not end with

Depending on what you want to get out of your SMS campaign, you will enter a word into the text field that appears next to the 'Reply' drop-down.

For example, if you want to create a segment based on contacts that replied 'YES' to your SMS campaign, perhaps to gauge which contacts to follow up with that want to receive marketing materials and promotions, select 'Contains' and enter 'YES' in the text field. After clicking Save, you will then generate a segment of all contacts that have replied 'YES' via the SMS campaign and will give you only the contacts within the specified time frame.

To learn more about segmentation rules, check out the article Types of segmentation rules.