SMS campaigns

TABLE OF CONTENTS

SMS campaigns

In this tutorial, we will go step by step through the creation and sending of SMS from the Mailrelay platform.

As always, if you have any questions, you can rely on our support team, who will guide you clearly and quickly.

First, let's see where the SMS menu is located. Well, you can find it in the main menu located on the left sidebar of the panel, under the name SMS.

If we click on that tab, a dropdown menu will appear with three options that we will quickly list and then explain in more detail.

SMS campaigns: Here we can create our message and see a chronological list of all the created messages.
SMS sent campaigns: To view the list of all sent campaigns, along with their status and date.
SMS package usage: Here we can see the statistics of the package, including used and available credits, as well as the option to purchase a new package.

Next, let's delve deeper into each of these options.

Step1: SMS Campaigns

Clicking on this tab takes us to a new screen with a series of rows and columns that represent the chronological order of the created SMS.

Each row corresponds to a created SMS.

ID: Corresponds to an internal numbering given to each created SMS campaign.
Name: It is the internal name we have given to our SMS (not visible to recipients)
Sender name: It is the "title" that appears to the recipient when receiving the SMS.
Created at: The date of the SMS campaign creation.
Updated at: The date of the last modification of the SMS campaign.

There is a last column with four colored icons representing actions to be taken with that SMS: Send, Show, Edit, and Delete.

Step 1.1: Create SMS

To create an SMS, we can do it from the SMS Campaigns menu by selecting the Add option. This option is located at the top of the page, highlighted in blue.

Upon clicking, a new window appears with three options to fill in:

Name: As mentioned before, it is the internal name by which we will refer to our SMS, which recipients cannot see.
Sender name: It is the title that will appear to the recipient when receiving the SMS. As indicated, it must have between 3 and 11 characters and special characters or spaces are not allowed.
Message: Here we will write the body of the message. According to regulations, it is mandatory to add an unsubscribe link in the sent SMS. By clicking on Add unsubscribe URL and the unsubscribe field will appear automatically. When subscribers receive the SMS, that field will be replaced by a linkable URL. This option will occupy 22 characters of the SMS.
- SMS count: This represents the number of SMS to be billed per send, depending on the maximum characters of each SMS and its encoding.
- Message size: This indicates the maximum number of characters allowed depending on the encoding.
- Message encoding: The message encoding is a character code, which depends on the alphabet used. In this case, the system calculates a maximum message size depending on the encoding.
  - ASCII / GSM: Allows 160 characters per sent SMS. SMS messages are generally sent using the GSM-7 or ASCII character set, which covers most characters. When SMS messages are sent in the GSM-7 character set, each character is seen as a single character in an SMS message. The following characters are part of the GSM-7 character set but equate to two characters in a text message: \ ^ ~ [ ] { } | ~€
  - Unicode: Allows a maximum of 70 characters, with the cost of 1 SMS sent per recipient every 70 characters. It allows handling all Unicode characters, including emoticons. When using the Unicode character set, each character is seen as two characters. This decreases the number of characters you can put in your SMS from 160 to 70.

As you can see in the image below, the size of my message is 188 characters, so the SMS count is 2. This means that when sent, it will be counted as 2 SMS instead of one. Finally, on the right side of this page, a preview of our message is shown as the recipient will receive it.

Once everything is to our liking, click on the blue button at the bottom of the page, Create SMS Campaign. A new page will open.

Step1.2: Send SMS

On this new page, we can select the recipients of our campaign, either by entering one or more numbers that we copy and paste or by selecting a Subscriber Group. We can also choose whether to send the SMS immediately or schedule it for a different date.

As mentioned, there are two options for sending the SMS:

Text list: You can paste the phone numbers of the recipients using the country code prefix (e.g., for Spain, we use +34 in front of the number). Important: Only one phone number per line is allowed.
Groups: To do this, select the Groups option, and a dropdown menu will appear where you can select the group(s) to which you want to send the SMS.

Once you have selected the recipients of our SMS, we can choose whether to send it immediately or schedule it for another time.

Inmediately: By selecting this option, the SMS is sent right away.
Scheduled: By selecting this option, a new field will appear where you can choose the date and time of the sending.

A checkbox appears to confirm when the SMS uses more than one credit, for security.

Once finished, click on the Send button located at the bottom left of the page, highlighted in blue.

Step 2: SMS sent campaigns

After sending our SMS, we need to go to the SMS sent Campaigns menu to review the status of our send.

We will see a screen very similar to the one we saw in the SMS Campaigns option, with a series of rows and columns indicating data about our sent SMS.

Here we can see columns reflecting the information filled in during the SMS creation stage, such as the internal name, sender name, message, status (Finished, Canceled, Scheduled, or Processing), creation date, completion date, and in the case of scheduling, the scheduled date.

If we click on the magnifying glass icon on the right of each row, it takes us to a new screen where we can get a more detailed summary of the send status through three options.

Overview: In addition to the data shown on the previous page, it displays a percentage of processed and delivered SMS. This way, we can see those SMS that have not been delivered yet and the total number of those that have been delivered.

Sent messages: Shows the delivery status for each recipient. Each recipient appears on a separate line, and we can see information about the recipient's number, delivery status (Delivered, Processed, and Canceled), send and delivery dates, and credits used.
Log: Shows a list of actions performed in that send with the events and changes made.

Step 3: SMS package usage

The last option is SMS Package usage. If we click on this option, it takes us to a new screen where we can check the usage of the current package. A large blue bar shows the consumed credits and the total package credits.

At the bottom of the screen, two options appear:

Purchase new package: Clicking on it takes us to the Billing page, where we can purchase the desired SMS package.
View detailed package usage: Clicking on it takes us to a page where we can choose a date range to see the number of sends and credits used for different campaigns performed within that range.

And that concludes the tutorial on SMS creation and sending.

We hope this tutorial will help you and if you have any additional questions, do not hesitate to contact us.