SMS Channel Content

Overview

The SMS channel allows you to send personalized promotional campaigns to your contacts using text messages. SMS messaging is a highly effective form of communication delivered to your contact's mobile devices via their default or preferred messaging app.

When fully enabled and configured, you will see options for the SMS channel throughout the platform, including batch and automated messages, building audiences and creating reports.

To enable the SMS channel in your account, please contact your Cordial Client Success Manager.

Create a New SMS Message

Once the SMS channel is enabled in your account, you can begin sending batch and automated text messages.

Start by creating a batch or automated message and choose SMS from the channels dropdown menu.

• Message name - Give your message a name. This is an internal message title and not visible to your contacts.
• Message key - Unique identifier used to reference this SMS message in API calls. The key will auto-populate but the value can be edited. Not available for batch SMS messages.
• Tag this message - Tags are useful for grouping messages together (similar to folders). This field accepts new and existing tag names.
  Note: Tags are case sensitive. For example, promo and Promo are considered two unique tags.
• Classification - By default, SMS messages are classified as promotional and are intended to promote your products and services. Promotional SMS messages can be sent to contacts who have given prior written consent by explicitly opting-in to your promotional SMS program.
• Short code - Select the account short code to be used for sending the SMS message.

SMS Settings at a Glance

From the message settings page, begin by clicking Edit to expand the SMS message settings interface.

SMS Schedule and Audience

The steps for scheduling and choosing your audience are similar for batch and automated SMS messages. However, there are several noteworthy differences, mainly due to automated messages supporting three sending methods, with additional settings for each method.

Batch:

When you create a batch SMS message, the options to edit the schedule and choose your audience will be on the message settings page. Batch SMS messages can be sent immediately, scheduled for a future date and throttled.

Automated:

Automated SMS messages support three sending methods: API, Event Triggered, and Recurring. Links to settings for each sending method are located in the left navigation bar of the automated message settings page.

Time Zone Sending

You can schedule SMS messages to send at a specific time based on your contact's own time zone. Since SMS messages are a highly personal mode of communication, it is best practice to time your sending to coincide with reasonable hours of the day and avoid sending messages early in the morning or late at night. You can also use this practice to send timely messages regarding limited promotions such as those that will occur during certain hours of the day.

Prerequisite

Sending messages according to contact's time zone becomes available when one of the contact attributes is set as the primary time zone. This is typically the address attribute. Once the primary time zone attribute is set, you will have the option to send based on contact's time zone across all messaging channels.

Edit SMS Content

You can create SMS messages quickly and easily using the SMS message editor. The message editor supports plain text and Smarty template language for dynamic personalization. Learn more about using Smarty in message content.

• SMS message character limit - A single SMS message is restricted to 160 characters. If the character limit is exceeded, the message will be divided and sent as multiple messages. This could result in additional wireless carrier messaging and data charges. Messages that exceed the character limit can be delivered to the contact's device as one concatenated message. However, the wireless carrier will likely count each message in a concatenation separately.
  Note: Messages encoded in UTF-16 are limited to 70 characters instead of 160. The use of emojis 🙂 in SMS changes character encoding to UTF-16 and reduces the message character limit to 70.
• Using Smarty - Personalized content generated by Smarty could cause some of your messages to exceed 160 characters. For example, when using {$contact.first} to display a contact's first name, the length of a rendered message will be different for each contact depending on the length of their first name combined with the rest of your SMS message content.
• Shorten your web links - The SMS link shortener can be used to reduce the length of your web links and give you the most value out of the 160 character limit.

Preview and Test

Use the Preview as and Send Test tools to visualize your SMS message before sending the campaign to your contacts. We recommend using these features extensively to help you compose impactful SMS messages.

Preview from the UI

You can preview your SMS message without leaving the settings page. Select a contact profile from the Preview as menu and click Preview. This is a great way to quickly check that your personalization rules are curating content as you envisioned based on any number of data points such as contact's gender, purchase or browse history, brand preferences, location, and more. 

Your shortened links will also render in preview if SMS link shortener is used in the message.

Send test

Your SMS message looks great in preview but how would it display on a real device? To find out, send a live test to your device, or to more than one contact, preferably profiles you created for testing purposes only.

The send test modal allows you to search for test contact profiles in one of two ways.

Enter contacts: Type or paste one or more contact identifiers separated by commas. Convenient for sending test messages to frequently used test profiles.

Search and select contacts: Search for contacts by contact identifier, partial or whole. Useful for retrieving a list of contacts that match your search criteria such as those that use a specific domain for their email address (@yourdomain.com). Select one or more contacts as they come up in your search and they will be added as SMS message test recipients.

Content Versioning

Automated SMS messages support content versioning, used for auditing content changes over time, comparing previous versions and rolling back to a specific version of a message.