Using SMS is a great way to stay in touch with your subscribers while they're on the move, delivering instant short messages so that your subscribers can act on your updates straight away.
Your account includes full 2-way SMS capability and there are many ways you can utilise this to benefit your business.
Text-to-subscribe service
Our text-to-subscribe service gives your subscribers an easy way to respond to your promotions and print advertising and subscribe to your mailings. Your subscribers can text in to a UK shortcode (or international number if you're based outside of the UK) along with your account SMS keyword, to add their mobile number to a list within your account. They can also sign up their email address and/or leave a message by including this in the same text.
Text-to-subscribe also gives you, the account holder, additional options to set up automated notification emails or SMS messages to members of your team when someone texts in. Any message content included by the subscriber is displayed in the email notification, great for the team to instantly respond to feedback. You can also send an automated SMS reply to the subscriber. This could be a 'Thank you' and/or any offer you used to incentivise them.
Formatting mobile numbers for importing
When importing mobile numbers you have collected outside of your Sign-Up.to account you need to make sure they are formatted correctly within your CSV file.
Creating and Sending SMS messages
Once you have your subscriber mobile numbers stored in your account, you can start sending SMS campaigns. Simply create the SMS campaign and then schedule it to send to the relevant mailing list(s).
Our system allows for concatenated messages giving you the option of creating lengthier campaigns if needed. There is an allowance of 462 characters (up to 3 messages per campaign) - each message costs 1 credit so depending on the length of your campaign, it may cost up to 3 SMS credits per subscriber per send.
A countdown of characters used will show when creating the SMS campaign and you will also be told how many credits the message will cost when you schedule it to send, so make sure you have enough SMS credits to cover this.
Send a Quick SMS
If you're looking to send a one-off SMS message to one person, this can be done using our Quick SMS functionality. Each Quick SMS has an allowance of 462 characters (up to 3 messages per Quick SMS) and each message costs 1 credit so depending on the length of your Quick SMS, it may cost up to 3 SMS credits to send. SMS credits can be purchased within your account.
Export any incoming messages
Our text-in service is ideal if you'd like subscribers to send in their answers to a competition or send in feedback. You can view these messages by exporting your incoming messages.
Viewing SMS message delivery reports
Once you have sent out a SMS campaign or Quick SMS from your account, our system will track the delivery status of that message. You're able to view your SMS delivery reports within Analyse>Campaign Analysis, by selecting SMS or Quick SMS from the drop down option.
Marketing Automation
Marketing Automation gives you further options to automate your SMS marketing.
By using a combination of date type profile fields and the 'around a specific date' trigger you could automate things like appointment reminders, birthday messages and renewal reminders.
You could even set up multiple marketing automation rules to trigger a series of SMS messages when a subscriber is 'added to a list'.