SMS in Campaigns allows you to reach your customers quickly and effectively even when access to email and the internet is limited, so your clients will get your promotions.
Contents
Before you start
You need to have your contact's phone number in an international format: +11231234567 (+ country-code area-code phone-number)
You need to have contacts subscribed to the SMS channel. To send SMS messages to US customers, you must collect TCPA consent and opt-in records.
You do not have to use your phone number to send SMS campaigns via Omnisend.
SMS channel is included in the Free and Standard plan ($1 worth of SMS credits) and Pro plan; you can also purchase SMS credits as a subscription service (on the paid plans).
Add a link to your website to track the click rates for your SMS campaigns. Note that we shorten your URLs on SMS; this article explains how and why.
You may set a frequency limit for your SMS campaign. So, everybody who has recently received an email from the campaign would skip your SMS campaign.
Set-up process
1. To send an SMS campaign, go to Campaigns → New campaign → SMS Campaign → Create SMS.
2. Once you click on Create this campaign, you will be brought to the SMS Campaign editor, where you set the message, add the campaign name, sender's name, the text of your SMS, and opt-out instructions.
3. We are adding two options for the customers to unsubscribe from your SMS marketing, Reply Stop to unsubscribe for US/CA and Unsubscribe link for all non-US customers.
Add an unsubscribe link to the SMS
Even though adding the Unsubscribe link is optional, we highly encourage you to add it to your SMS campaign's content. SMS marketing is more sensitive compared to Email one. The customer can't choose when he wants to check the message, and it is almost impossible to ignore it. To avoid receiving spam reports or complaints from your customers, you should allow them to unsubscribe from your marketing.
When it comes to the SMS messages sent to the US/CA customers, adding the Unsubscribe option to the marketing SMS is mandatory. When a customer replies with STOP keywords, Omnisend should respond and update your opt-in list. Therefore, we allow you to include different opt-out instructions for US/CA and non-US/CA customers. Check this article for more information on TCPA-compliant marketing.
Please note keyword replies can be used only for US/CA customers. Therefore we advise adding a "reply STOP to opt-out" text for the US/CA subscribers and an Unsubscribe link for the rest of the recipients from different countries.
In the Preview section, you will see how both messages will look.
Important! Unsubscribing from the SMS message will ONLY unsubscribe the customers from the SMS channel; they will still receive the email campaigns if they don't unsubscribe from them via the Unsubscribe link in the email.
Frequency limit
If you don't want to send your SMS/MMS campaign to customers who have received an email campaign recently (the default window when we check if the recipient has received an email is 16 hours, but you can customize it), you can select this option to skip them from your SMS campaign to not overwhelm your subscribers with multiple messages at the same day.
Note! This frequency feature doesn't check messages sent through automation. Also, it doesn't check messages sent through other Channels (Push notifications, SMS).
The table below defines which SMS types can be sent to different types of contacts in your Audience. Please be aware that according to CTIA regulations, transitional messages like Order, Shipping, and Cancellation Confirmations are not and will not be delivered to the US market. Therefore, these messages can only be sent to subscribed contacts in your Audience.
4. If you have enough credits, you will have the option to send a test SMS. You can send a test SMS to any mobile phone number. Test SMS is priced the same as a regular SMS message; check SMS pricing here.
You will need to re-fill if you don't have enough SMS credits. All the customers on the Pro plan will get SMS credits equivalent to the monthly subscription plan payment. These credits can also be ordered as an additional service within your Free, Standard, or Pro subscription plan. The billing tiers for the SMS credits subscription start from $20.
Find more information on SMS pricing in this article.
Important note: SMS credits should not be mixed with your monthly email credits limit.
5. Once you have the required number of ad credits and are happy with the message, click the Next step to select the recipients. You can send it to all SMS subscribers or subscribers belonging to a particular segment. Also, you can exclude some segments, for example, a segment of contacts that haven't opened a couple of previous SMS campaigns.
6. After selecting your recipients, you will get the price estimation for the total SMS campaign.
If you need to send SMS messages to US/CA numbers, you will see the price for all non-US/CA and US/CA customers calculated separately on the Price Estimation stage of the SMS campaign. The final amount will include the cost of the SMS messages sent to non-US/CA customers to US/CA customers.
Find more information on SMS pricing for US/CA customers here.
7. Review your SMS campaign and send it out immediately or schedule it for later.
You are all set! In the reports, as for any campaign sent, you will have the statistics of your SMS campaign.
Reports
Reports for SMS campaigns contain:
SMS Sent. Subscribers that were in the chosen segments.
Click rate. If your message had any link, you would see how many recipients clicked on it.
Sales. If your customer placed an order after clicking on a link in SMS, you would see the tracked sales.
Unsubscribe rate. The number of unsubscribed customers out of those that had this option.
Bounce rate. The number of customers who haven't received the SMS for multiple reasons (e.g., invalid number).
Important note: open rates cannot be tracked in SMS campaigns. Ensure you include a clickable link in your SMS messages to see how much action was initiated. Adding a link will let you know the click rates and measure client engagement via the SMS channel.
FAQ
How to add emojis to my SMS campaign? You can find emojis here. Then copy&paste it to your SMS campaign. However, remember that we don't recommend adding emojis to your SMS.
Is something not working? Please have a look at our Troubleshooting SMS channel article. If you have more questions or need assistance, do not hesitate to contact our Support Team, which is available 24/7 and can be reached via In-app chat or email at [email protected].
