A text campaign sends one text to many people at once. In Automations ▾ → Campaigns, press New campaign → Text campaign. It works like an email campaign: Audience → Content → Settings → Review & send. Text campaigns are always marketing texts.
Before you start: texting has to be approved
A text campaign goes from one of the business's numbers, and that number needs:
- texting approved (the texting registration the carriers review — see Texting setup);
- a registration that includes Offers and promotions. If yours only covers replies or reminders, add it in Settings → Phone & texting → Texting registration and send it again.
Until then you can write and save the campaign, but Schedule and Send stay off and the campaign says what's missing, with Set up texting. If texting stops being approved while a campaign is sending, it pauses and carries on by itself once it's approved again.
Who gets it
Pick a saved list, tags, people you pick, or everyone, like an email campaign. It reaches only counts people who can get a marketing text; Who's left out lists the rest, with why and See them:
- No texting permission for offers: they haven't agreed to marketing texts (the text-consent box on a form, START, or an import that says they agreed). People who only texted you first can get replies, not offers.
- Opted out: they replied STOP (or asked to stop and it was confirmed).
- No mobile number: no number, a landline, or a number in another country when texts abroad are off.
- Do not contact: someone on your team set Do not text.
- Tagged to leave out / In a list you left out: left out by you.
- Same number as another person: each phone gets it once.
It also shows the sending cost ("about $16.34 — 1,021 people × 2 texts each").
The text
- Write it in the text box; Insert a value adds the person's first name and other details (
{{contact.first_name | there}}). - "Reply STOP to opt out." is added at the end for you when your text doesn't already say how to stop.
- Texts and segments: one text holds 160 characters (or 70 when it has emoji or curly quotes). Longer ones go as 2 or more texts, and each one costs the same. The line under the box says how many texts each person gets and how many characters are left, also with the longest first name on the list filled in, so the cost is never higher than shown.
- Add a picture (JPG, PNG or GIF) to make it a picture message: one message per person whatever the length, priced per message.
- On their phone shows the text exactly as it arrives.
Send me a test sends it to your own mobile number: the first time, enter your number and the 6-digit code we text to it (so tests can only go to you). The test is filled in with the first person on the list, marked as a test (it never counts in the results) and billed like any text. Pictures can be added on the web and in the Business Hub app (JPG, PNG or GIF, up to 1 MB; the phone app shrinks big photos for you).
When
Send now or Schedule (in the business's time zone or each person's own), with batches for big lists, like email campaigns. Whatever you choose, texts only go out between 9:00 AM and 8:00 PM where each person is (or the texting hours set in Settings → Phone & texting). Anyone outside those hours gets it when they open in the morning. Nobody gets more than 3 automated marketing texts in 24 hours; a fourth waits its turn.
While it sends
It pauses by itself when the business's daily texting limit is reached (it carries on the next day), when paid sending is stopped, or when texting isn't approved for the number any more (it carries on once it is). If automated texts are paused for the business (too many failed texts or opt-outs), press Start again in Settings → Phone & texting, then Resume on the campaign. Someone who replies STOP while it's sending doesn't get it. Each person gets it once.
Results
Open Results:
- Delivered, Failed (mostly numbers that can't get texts), Opted out (replied STOP after getting it) and Replied (with how many said YES).
- Replies lists each person's first reply; Open in Conversations to answer them.
- Each number opens its people, with Download CSV, Save as a fixed list and Add to an automation.
- The top line shows the number it went from and what it cost.
Billing
Campaign texts are billed like other texts from the business app (per text segment, or per picture message) — see Texting customers.