Direct marketing is evolving with the rise in technology and reaching customers on their smartphones has never been easier. Utilize the data collected in your CRM to send questions, updates, or insights directly to your contact’s mobile device through a quick text. These messages can include a link to your booking calendar, learning more about the services you offer, or simply keep them updated throughout your processes. Whatever your campaign might be, sending personalized SMSs through an automated campaign is a simple and direct way to communicate with your contacts.

This blog article is going to cover:

Acquiring a phone number to use for SMS sending
Setting keyword responses for tracking and automation
Sending a once off SMS campaign for opt-in
Creating the SMS templates to send out
Scheduling SMSs within a structured Drip Campaign

1. Purchasing a Phone Number

The first step is acquiring a phone number to use when communicating with contacts. To access the SMS and Call Management page, hover over Communicate > SMS/MMS/Voice within your account. Within the Actions drawer, click to “Request New Number.” You can search based on country, area code (US only), and strings of numbers that you want for your phone number. This is useful for vanity numbers you can use for marketing.

Our Twilio integration allows you to own this number and manage this number right through your GreenRope CRM account. There are costs associated with sending SMS messages, so you must be a paying account holder with a credit card on file. Costs vary by country, but sending and receiving SMS messages in the US costs about 1.2 cents each. Sending MMS messages costs about 3 cents per message. Each phone number you purchases costs roughly $1.55 per month. All of the fees associated with owning and using the phone number will be added to your monthly subscription with GreenRope.

2. Setting Keyword Responses

Within the SMS and Call Management page, click on the phone number you’ve set up to access the Modify Phone Number window. There are many customization options you can add within this window, including the option to forward your incoming SMS messages to a secondary phone number or email inbox. To set up the keywords, scroll down to the “Automatic Opt-In” heading to outline your custom keywords and associated automation to trigger. For example, some common keywords include:

YES - confirming opt-in, add into your new group for SMS series
STOP - confirming opt-out, remove from SMS group to prevent future texts
OfferingA - specify product and services through keywords to help segment contacts

Keywords help set up specific automation around your SMS outreaches through triggering correlating workflows. For example, when a contact responds to this SMS with the keyword, you can schedule automatic follow ups, send them on another campaign, or add/remove from the campaign group.

3. Creating your SMS Campaign

Similar to an email opt-in, you can increase the SMS series effectiveness by first confirming the contacts want to receive your messages. To do this, send your contacts a single SMS campaign (3.1) first, then add them into your drip campaign (3.3) once they confirm. Although this is not required to send an initial text to your contacts, it will help the contacts understand the messages to follow and your business builds their trust.

Another benefit includes collecting the email addresses of contacts not in the system already. If the mobile phone number is not associated with a contact who has a valid email address, we will append a short "please reply with your email address" message to that person as a way to encourage them to give you their email address.

3.1. Initial Opt-In Campaign

Within the SMS and Call Management page, hover over the Actions drawer on the top-right to create a New SMS Campaign. Follow the steps outlined to choose your recipients, name the campaign, add keywords, images, and message. All responses to this campaign will also be stored on this page and tracked within the contact’s CRM Activities section of their profile.

3.2 Create SMS Campaign Templates

In order to accomplish the continued SMS campaign sequence, you’ll want to create your templates within workflows then schedule those to trigger within the drip campaign to send out. To start, go into the “Automation” > “Workflow Manager” and (1) create a new folder to house all of the workflow templates you’re about to create. Then you can (2) create and save these workflow templates into your designated folders for organization.

Once your folder has been created, continue to create your first workflow. To streamline this process, use this workflow as a template for your messages moving forward. It’s best to name the SMS workflows accordingly and we suggest using a number for organization and reference.

Within the “Sending Actions” tab of the workflow, you’ll create your SMS message to send out to your clients. This message can include placeholders, links, images, or icons to help attract attention. Make sure to also let them know of any keywords you’re wanting them to use.

Once you save this initial workflow, you can use it as a template for your next SMS outline. Continue to build each SMS message through its own workflow, number accordingly, and save it within your designated folder. Within your Workflow Manager page, your folder should look something like the following with each workflow containing a custom SMS messages for clients and descriptive headings for your team to recognize.

3.3 Building the SMS Campaign

Since the workflows will send an SMS to your clients, there is not a way to track if they have opened up your outreach. Instead, you’ll use the workflow triggering and keyword responses from the clients to track the success of your campaign. With this in mind, the best way to schedule your continued SMS campaign will be through our Drip Campaign feature which is best done in a separate group of your account and automatically trigger for all new contacts added to this group.

Creating a new drip campaign is simple, go to Automation > Drip Campaign to create a new campaign.

Name your drip campaign
Choose the times you would like to schedule your messages
Select when your recipient receives your message. For example, you’ll send your first SMS Immediately for new contacts added to the group. Then, add delays to structure on-going messages and a fixed date for promotion related outreaches.
Insert your SMS templates for each message through the workflow drop down.
Add another message to your drip campaign.

Continue this process until you have scheduled all of your SMS templates, then save the drip campaign. Any new contact added to this group will automatically start on your SMS Campaign set up, you can track the progress on this page and within their contact record. That’s it, pretty simple. The hardest part is coming up with your content to send out!

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Creating an SMS Drip-Campaign inside GreenRope By Madison Potter, Client Advocacy Manager