SMS campaigns

SMS campaigns

SMS based marketing can help your business reach customers at just the right moment, on the right device. This interactive guide is designed to help you build an SMS message that's tailored to your business.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to integrate Zoho MarketingHub with SMS gateways (Twilio, MessageMedia, Clickatell, MessageBird, SMSMagic and, BulkSMS), teach you how to create an SMS, provide you with instructions to help you send SMS messages, and show you how to analyze the reports based on performance.

Getting started

To create and send SMS messages to your recipients, you need to have an account with any one of these SMS gateways; Twilio, MessageMedia, Clickatell, MessageBird, SMSMagic and, BulkSMS. Sign up with at least one of these gateways, buy credits, and start sending SMS messages.



Integrating with SMS gateways

Once you have signed up with any of these gateways, you will need to integrate them with Zoho MarketingHub to send large volumes of SMS messages.

To integrate Clickatell with Zoho MarketingHub:  

  1. Sign up with Clickatell and buy SMS credits. Copy the AuthToken/Access Key and the test phone number given to you during the process.
  2. From the Navigation toolbar of Zoho MarketingHub, select Settings and choose Apps under Integration.
  3. Mouse over Clickatell and click Connect.
  4. In the popup that follows, click Continue.
  5. Fill in the following information: 
    1. Clickatell Authorization key/credential 
    2. Clickatell account type


      6. Click Save. 
 
 Your Clickatell account is now integrated with Zoho MarketingHub. 
 

To integrate Twilio with Zoho MarketingHub:       

  1. Sign up with Twilio and buy SMS credits. Copy the AuthToken, SID, and phone number given to you during the process.
  2. From the Navigation toolbar of Zoho MarketingHub, select Settings and choose Apps under Integration.
  3. Mouse over Twilio and click Connect. 
  4. In the popup that follows, click Continue.
  5. Fill in the following information: 
    1. Twilio AuthToken
    2. Twilio SID
      6. Twilio phone number field will be fetched automatically. If you've multiple phone numbers you can choose the required number from the dropdown.
      7.  Click Save. 
Your Twilio account is now integrated with Zoho MarketingHub.


 

 To Integrate MessageMedia with Zoho MarketingHub:  

  1. Sign up with MessageMedia and buy SMS credits. 
  2. From the Navigation toolbar of Zoho MarketingHub, select Settings and choose Apps under Integration.
  3. Mouse over MessageMedia and click Connect. 
  4. In the popup that follows, click Continue.
  5. Choose from one of the account types,
* The SMS Specialist
* Business Messaging
      6. Based on the account, enter relevant credentials,
  1. For The SMS Specialist, enter your MessageMedia username and password.
  2. For Business Messaging, enter the required data (API_KEY and API_SECRET_CODE)
       7. Click Integrate. 
 
Your MessageMedia account is now integrated with Zoho MarketingHub. 


 

To integrate MessageBird with Zoho MarketingHub:  

  1. Sign up with MessageBird and buy SMS credits. Copy the AccessKey provided under API access (Rest) available under Developers of MessageBird.
  2. From the Navigation toolbar of Zoho MarketingHub, select Settings and choose Apps under Integrations.
  3. Mouse over MessageBird and click Connect.
  4. In the popup that follows, click Continue.
  5. Fill in the following information: 
    1. MessageBird AccessKey
      6.  Click Save. 
 

 To integrate SMSMagic with Zoho MarketingHub:   

  1. Sign up with SMSMagic and buy SMS credits. Copy the AccessKey provided by SMS
  2. From the Navigation toolbar of Zoho MarketingHub, select Settings and choose Apps under Integrations.
  3. Mouse over SMSMagic and click Connect.
  4. In the popup that follows, click Continue.
  5. Fill in the following information: 
    1. SMSMagic AccessKey
    2. SMSMagic Brandname (You can enter your registered SMS brand name)
      6. Click Save.
 
 

To integrate BulkSMS with Zoho MarketingHub:   

  1. Sign up with BulkSMS. 
  2. From the Navigation toolbar of Zoho MarketingHub, select Settings and choose Apps under Integrations.
  3. Mouse over BulkSMS and click Connect.
  4. In the popup that follows, click Continue.
  5. Fill in the following information: 
    1. BulkSMS username
    2. BulkSMS password
       6. Click Save.
 

 

To integrate MiSMS with Zoho MarketingHub:

  1. Sign up with MiSMS.
  2. From the Navigation toolbar of Zoho MarketingHub.
  3. Select Settings and choose Apps under Integrations.
  4. Mouse over MiSMS and click Connect.
  5. In the popup that follows, click Continue.
  6. Fill in the following information: 
    1. MiSMS username 
    2. MiSMS password
    3. MiSMS Brandname - Provide your product brand name so that users can easily identify your product or organization.
      7. Click Save.

Create an SMS campaign

Add basic details and SMS content 

  1. From the Navigation toolbar, choose Engagement and select SMS campaigns.
  2. Click Create campaign in the top-right corner of the screen. 
  3. Fill in the following information:
    1. Name - Name your SMS for future reference.
    2. SMS gateway - Choose an SMS gateway. If you have not integrated with any of the gateways, integrate with them from here. 
    3. Twillio - 1600 characters and every 160 characters will cost you 1 credit. 
    4. Clickatell - You need to enable part messaging in Clickatell to send long messages. Maximum message parts for plain text messages are 35.
    5. MessageMedia - 5000 characters and every 160 characters will cost you 1 credit. 
    6. MessageBird -  A standard SMS can contain up to 160 characters, depending on the alphabet used in your SMS. But you can send one complete message with a total of up to 1377 characters , this will need 9 SMS messages to send.
    7. SMSMagic -160 for each message and total 700 characters which will account for 5 credits. 
    8. BulkSMS - 160 for each message and total 918 characters which will be send in 6 parts
4. SMS content - Enter the content you wish to send as an SMS message, with a maximum number of characters as allowed by the selected gateway. Personalize your message using merge tags. Press Control+M and select the merge tag you wish to add.
5. Enable Allow messages to send in multiple parts checkbox incase of using merge tags (content size may vary depending on merge tag).
6. Click Next. 
 

 Add recipients 

Once you've entered the basic information and the SMS content, you need to select lists to which you want to send the SMS message. In the recipients step select the desired mailing lists or segments. Once done click Next. 
 
    Exclude leads
If you wish to exclude a few recipients based on previously sent SMS campaigns or based on mailing lists, you can do so in this step. This way you can focus on newly added leads and avoid blasting messages at leads. 

To exclude leads:
  1. Click Exclude leads in the recipients selection page. 
  2. Select the previously sent SMS campaign or the mailing list, from the drop-down menu.
  3. Click Save. 

 Add recipient details 

In the recipient details step enter the following information:
  1. Lead's number - Choose the fields containing leads' mobile phone number from the drop-down menu. You can select a maximum of three fields. The field that has a proper value will be considered with priority given to the first one you select. 
  2. Country - Choose the fields containing leads' country from the drop-down menu. You can select a maximum of three fields. The field that has a proper value will be considered with priority given to the first one you select.

 
Once done click Next. 
Note: 
  1. Enter just the country name in the respective field. You need not add the countries by their codes.

  2. Enter recipients' phone number without the country code.

Send content for review

Once you're done with the above three steps, you need to send your SMS content to our moderation team for review. In the review step, click Send for review and relax till your content is reviewed.

Your SMS will be reviewed based on the words used in the content. Any objectionable words will not be accepted. The links used in the content will also be checked for their reliability. These links should not redirect to blacklisted domains and to pages unrelated to your business.

If your content passes through the moderation, you can proceed to send it out. If your content does not abide by our moderation rules, your campaign will be stalled. You will then have to change your content accordingly and resubmit for review.



Schedule your campaign

Once your campaign is reviewed, you can either choose to send out the campaign immediately or schedule it for later.

To be remembered before you send SMS messages:

Get prior consent from your recipients where you need to inform them what they would be receiving upon consent and include steps to opt out if they no longer want to receive your messages.

Reports

Once your SMS campaigns are sent out, you will be able to view a detailed report.

From the Navigation toolbar, select Campaigns and choose Campaign-based report.
Select the SMS message for which you want to see the reports for.


Report Summary

Under Report Summary you will get detailed stats about the following:

Real-time campaign data

  1. SMS messages sent - number of recipients to whom the SMS message has been sent.
  2. SMS messages ignored - number of recipients who were ignored. Recipients would be ignored for the following reasons:
    • Empty phone field
    • Invalid phone number
    • Empty country field
    • Invalid country
    • Duplicate phone numbers
  3. Delivered - number of recipients to whom the SMS message has been delivered.
  4. Undelivered - number of recipients to whom the SMS message has not been delivered.
  5. Unique clicks - number of recipients who have clicked the URL you've attached in the content.

Real time campaign data


Clicks by time

In this section you will be able to see a graphical representation of link clicks by time. With this data you can deduce the optimal open time of your message.



Clicks by time


Clicks by location

In this section you will be able to view the clicks by location in a geographical map. With this data you can deduce which location has the highest number of recipients that view your campaign.

Recipient activities

Under this section you will be able to view the list recipients to whom your SMS message was sent, delivered and the list of recipients to whom it wasn't delivered. 
You can export these lists and mass update their fields.


If you had attached any links in your SMS content, you will be able to view the number of clicks per link and the list of recipients who clicked it.


Top stats

Under this section you will be able to view the top five locations from where your links are being clicked.


Ignored leads

Under this section you will be able to view the list of leads ignored due to the following reasons:

  • Content size exceeded the maximum limit
  • Duplicate phone number
  • Invalid phone number
  • Empty phone number field
  • SMS gateway related failures

Failed cases

Under this section you will be able to view the list of leads for whom SMS sending failed due to the following cases:

  1. Gateway configuration failures - Error that occurs due to failure in fetching of data. In some cases, it might be due to error in the input data given by the users.
  2. Gateway internal failures -This might indicate a failure due to some issues in your third party service account.
  3. Content related failures - This might be due to some content specific restrictions applied by your third party service. 
  4. Network errors - This might be because of error within the network carriers.
  5. Handset errors - This occurs when leads have Do Not Disturb (DND) activated; leads are out of network range.
  6. Others - Errors that do not belong to above categories.


List-based reports

Under this section you will be able to view the stats based on the lists the SMS message was sent to.

List-based reports

User agent stats

Under this section you will be able to view the browsers and devices your recipients use.


user agents

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