Creating SMS Campaigns

Maropost for Marketing sends broadcast text messages to the list of contacts who have given their consent to receive promotional messages from you. To know more about SMS compliance, activating the SMS Campaign feature in Maropost, and managing the SMS campaigns, see Introduction to SMS Campaigns.

To create a new SMS message, perform the following steps:

1. In Navigation, go to CAMPAIGNS, and then select SMS Campaigns.
   
   
2. On the SMS Campaigns index page, click the Compose Your Message button.
   
   
3. On Step 1, enter the message name and the message. Here, you can also test the message by providing a test phone number. See Step 1:  SMS Details for details.
4. On Step 2, select the contacts to whom you want to send the SMS campaign. If you want to schedule the campaign to be sent later, then select a date and time. See Step 2:  Select Audience & Schedule/Activate for details.
5. Click Send Now to send the SMS campaign right away or click Schedule to send the campaign at the selected date and time. You can also click Save as Draft to save the changes without sending or scheduling the campaign.

Step 1:  SMS Details

Enter the SMS details such as message name and message text. The SMS Preview on the right-side panel shows how your message will be displayed to the contacts. You can also enter a test phone number to test the message.

This step contains the following fields:

• Message Name – Name for the SMS campaign.
• Message – You have a limit of 160 characters in your text message. Your message MUST include the following words:
  • “STOP”, “CANCEL”, or “UNSUBSCRIBE” – when a contact texts back either of these keywords, they will be unsubscribed from all the list(s) used to send the text messages. 
  • (optional) “STOP ALL” – If you are using one-off lists to send a campaign, and will not be using that list for any repeated messaging, then you may include this keyword in your message. When a contact replies to your text message with STOP ALL, they will be unsubscribed from ALL lists and added to the Do Not SMS list. They will no longer receive any further text messages from you.
  • “Message and data rates may apply” or “Msg & data rates may apply”
• Test Phone Number – If you’d like to test the text message before sending it to your contacts, enter a mobile number that you want to receive the test text message on.

The following screenshot shows the Step 1 - SMS Details:

Step 2:  Select Audience & Schedule/Activate

Select an SMS contact list from the drop-down options. To learn about creating and managing the SMS contact list, Managing SMS Contacts.

The following screenshot shows the Step 2 - Select Audience & Schedule/Activate:

Then, you can send the campaign right away by clicking the Send Now button or schedule it to be sent later by clicking the Schedule button. Before scheduling the campaign, you must also select the date and time (in the Eastern time zone) at which the SMS campaign is to be sent.

Here's are the options you can choose from:

• Save as Draft – the SMS campaign will be saved in Draft status. It will not be sent.
• Send Now – Send the SMS campaign immediately regardless of the scheduled date and time.
• Schedule – Send the SMS campaign at the specified date and time.

The following screenshot highlights the date and time selection in Step 2: