SMS Channel Content

Overview: SMS & MMS

The SMS channel allows you to send personalized promotional campaigns to your contacts using SMS text messages or MMS messages. SMS messaging is a highly effective form of communication delivered to your contact's mobile devices via their default or preferred messaging app. MMS message supports text messages with media, such as images, animated GIFs, audio and video. If you have SMS enabled in your account and have also purchased MMS from Cordial, you can send MMS messages. The same short code will be used for both SMS and MMS. 

To enable the SMS or MMS 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. If there's only one short code in your account, it will auto-populate.

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.

SMS Summary Performance

The SMS summary performance report provides the following KPIs:

• Sent
  • Total messages sent
• Clicked
  • Unique
  • Total
  • Click Rate
• Total Revenue
  • Average Order Value
  • Number of purchases

Create a New MMS Message

When creating your MMS message, open a new SMS message and click the edit button. Select the MMS radio button. 

Add text to the body input and add an image from the image library. You can also add your hosted image to the image input field. Note: Carriers mandate that image media size in a MMS message should not exceed 1MB for static images and animated GIFs.

Using Smarty for images, video and audio

Media can also be added to the message body using the smarty utility, setMmsMedia. This utility can be used for images, video and audio. Note: When the utility is added to the body text, it will override images that were added to the image input field.

Image example

{$utils->setMmsMedia("https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61IkrxQ9p8L._AC_SL1500_.jpg", "image")}

Video example

{$utils->setMmsMedia("https://cordialdev-testclient.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/johanna/SampleVideo_1280x720_1mb.mp4", "video")}

Audio example

{$utils->setMmsMedia("https://cordialdev-testclient.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/johanna/HappyFace.mp3", "audio")}

MMS Contact Cards

A Contact Card (also sometimes known as a vCard) is a great way for your MMS contacts to instantly recognize your logo and brand name when you send MMS messages. Your contact can easily add your brand’s information to their mobile address book. 

How Contact Cards work

When the contact receives and clicks on the contact card, an option to “Create New Contact” displays on the mobile device. Once saved as a contact in the mobile address book, all subsequent messages will display as the brand name.

Using the Smarty utility to create a Contact Card

A Smarty utility is required to construct the parameters of the Contact Card. The addVcard utility inserts the parameters and media into an MMS Contact Card, such as your company name, logo, phone number, address, email, address, and note. All parameters are optional but at least one is required to send the Contact Card. Supported parameters are:

• Parameters
• Smarty
• Rendered
• Contact Card

Parameter	Description	Required	Expected
photo	Thumbnail image (90x90)	optional	URL
first	First name	optional	String
last	Last name	optional	String
title	Title	optional	String
company	Company name	optional	Object
phone	Phone number	optional	String
url	website URL or support URL	optional	String
street	Street address	optional	String
city	City	optional	String
state	State	optional	String
postal	postal code	optional	String
country	Country	optional	String
note	Additional text	optional	String

{$utils->addVcard([
    'photo' => 'https://images.cordial.com/1003/96x96/CordialThreads_favicon_96x.png',
    'first' => 'Cordial', 
    'last' => 'Threads', 
    'phone' => '+18885551212', 
    'title' => 'Best ESP',
    'url' => 'https://www.cordial.com/',
    'company' => 'Cordial Inc',
    'street' => '123 Main Street',
    'city' => 'San Diego',
    'state' => 'CA',
    'postal' => '92109',
    'country' => 'USA'
])}        

Setting up the Contact Card

A Contact Card can be sent with an MMS message or on its own. We recommend adding your contact card with a Welcome series.

Creating your welcome MMS message with a contact card

When creating your MMS message, open a new SMS message and click the edit button. Select the MMS radio button.

Add the content for your Welcome message within the body of the message and add your image, either in the media input field or using Smarty. See Create a MMS section for more details.

Within the body of the message, add the addVcard utility with any of the parameters that you want shown in the Contact Card. I.e.,

{$utils->addVcard([
    'photo' => 'https://images.cordial.com/1003/96x96/CordialThreads_favicon_96x.png',
    'first' => 'Cordial', 
    'last' => 'Threads', 
    'phone' => '+18885551212', 
    'title' => 'Best ESP',
    'url' => 'https://www.cordial.com/',
    'company' => 'Cordial Inc',
    'street' => '123 Main Street',
    'city' => 'San Diego',
    'state' => 'CA',
    'postal' => '92109',
    'country' => 'USA'
])}        

How the Contact Card will appear on a mobile device

Devices will render contact cards differently depending on the device type and operating system version.

Welcome Message with Contact card	Contact Card on a mobile device

Best Practices for MMS media

Static Images

• Recommended size is 1MB
• Optimal image size across all devices has an aspect ratio of 9:16
  • 640px by 1138px
  • 1080px by 1920px
• Image files in a .jpg format tend to render faster and are supported on more devices than .png files.
• Do not use transparency in your image file. Transparent sections of an image may be rendered, white, black or in the message bubble color. There is no consistency behavior between device client versions.
• 480px by 720px: Avoid placing content of interest in the 39px at the top, right, and bottom of the gif. Also avoid the adding such content in the 44px on the left side of the gif.
• 480px by 640px: Avoid placing content of interest in the 65px at the top, and the 58px at the bottom of the gif. Also avoid the 39px to each side of the gif.
• 640px by 640px: Avoid placing content of interest in the 52px at the top, right, and bottom of the gif. Also avoid the adding content in the 58px on the left side of the gif.
• 480px by 480px: Avoid placing content of interest in the 39px at the top, right, and bottom of the gif. Also avoid the adding such content in the 43x on the left side of the gif.

Animated GIFs

• Recommended size is 1MB
• Do not include any transparent aspects in your file. Transparency will be filled in with another color by the phone.
• Recommended Dimensions (Portrait/Vertical)
  • 480px wide by 720px tall (a little animation)
  • 480px wide by 640px tall (a lot of animation)
• Recommended Dimensions (Square)
  • 640px wide by 640px tall (a little animation)
  • 480px wide by 480px tall (a lot of animation)

Video

• Recommend MMS video files under 740Kb.
• Video source files are best in .mp4 formats.
• Recommended Video Dimensions for MMS Videos
  • Landscape video format (Horizontal) - 1280px by 720px
  • Portrait Video Format (Vertical) - 640px by 1138px
• Maximum duration for HD quality video: 20 seconds.

Audio

• about 410KB of data or around 30 seconds