SMS Module (Texting)

The SMS Module makes it possible to send out text messages to groups of users. You need to provide an SMS gateway, for the module to use.

If you do not have access to the module, please contact your partner or our salespeople.

In this section, you will learn:

• How to set up an SMS gateway
• How to create and send out an SMS
• How to text international numbers

To set up an SMS gateway:

• Go to the Management center
• Navigate to Marketing
• Click SMS

You will see the SMS gateway configuration options (Figure 3.1).

Figure 3.1 SMS Gateway setup

From here you can:

• Provide the email-address of your SMS Gateway – containing a placeholder for the user phone number. The gateway email doubles as the From address when sending texts, so don't use little.miss.piggy@ham.com (unless that's what you do, sell hams).
• Provide an email, if you want to receive copies of the texts sent out by the module

The Gateway address format depends on your service provider, but should start with {0} – the system substitutes the 0 with the phone number of each user you send a text to.

You should only provide an email for testing purposes – unless you want to receive an email for every single text you send out.

To create and send out a text message, navigate to the SMS module:

• Click Marketing on your Accordion
• Click SMS

You will see a message list (Figure 4.1).

Figure 4.1 A message list

Click New text message to go to the create new text message interface (Figure 4.2).

Figure 4.2 New text message interface

From here you can:

• Name the SMS Session (for internal use)
• Specify a message to send to your users
  • You can use @Name, @FirstName and @LastName to personalize the text.
• Select one or more user groups to send to – or select users based on a smart search.

When you are happy with the message and the user groups selected, click Save and send to, well, save and send the texts to your users.

The SMS module uses an external service (your gateway) for sending out text messages.

This means that:

• The Delivered row on the SMS module overview page only guarantees that the texts are delivered to the external service.
• Texts are sent to the standard country code of your SMS gateway.

To send texts to foreign telephone numbers, you need to make sure any foreign users have the correct country code prefix in their user information.

Provided that the information in your user database is correct, you should have no problems texting international users.

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