Create and send an SMS campaign

When you create your Webex Interact account, you will have £5 in your wallet after verifying your number to help you explore the product without committing any money upfront.

Before you send your campaigns, you need to make sure you have enough wallet balance. One SMS is
worth 160 characters (one standard text message). If you use more than 160 characters in your text,
it will most two or more SMS depending on the number of characters.

You can add balance to your account online using a credit or debit card by clicking "Add Balance" button from any page.

In this article, you will learn how to create and send an SMS campaign in 5 quick and easy steps:

1. Name your campaign

Choose a title for your campaign to easily search and filter within your account.

E.g., if you are sending a weekend offer for discounted Pizza, you could call the campaign "Weekend Pizza Offer".

2. Choose/Create a sender name

Sender name is the "from name" your customers see when they receive an SMS in their inbox. Choosing a sender name that represents your business/brand is critical since it helps your customers recognize your campaigns and identify them with your brand.

Sender name can be alphanumeric upto 11 characters or a 11 digit number starting with 07 or a 12-digit number starting with 44, but remember these important rules:

If you are using a sender name that isn’t a phone number (i.e. your company name or brand), you won’t be able to receive replies because the receiving handset doesn’t have a receiving number to send the message back to. Sender names can include special characters (Space ( ), Full stop (.), Ampersand (&), Underscore (_) or Dash/Hyphen (-) only).

Having an effective sender name:

• Sender name that represents your brand or organization.
• Clear and recognizable sender name.
• Short name between 3-11 characters for quick recognition by customers.
• Avoid special characters and symbols.
• Maintain consistent sender names to help customers remember your brand name.

3. Select who you're sending the campaign to?

Before sending an SMS campaign, you need to identify your target customers. You can either paste a list of numbers or choose from one of your uploaded contact lists.

• Paste-list - Copy and paste the list of numbers. Make sure you enter one number per line in E.164 format. Any duplicates will be removed automatically. For example, +4477xxxxxxxxx
• Lists - Select one or more contact list(s) in your account. To know how to upload contacts, check our article on uploading contacts

4. What to say in your message?

You know your customers better than anyone, so you will likely have a good idea of the kinds of messages that give you the best result. We suggest you follow these simple rules:

• Make sure your message is clear, whether it’s a special offer or information about an upcoming event or promotion.
• Give a clear call to action. Your message is wasted if the recipient doesn’t know what to do with it. Clearly state if they need to quote a code, make a call, click a link or simply visit a store or website.
• Don’t send your messages in UPPERCASE – it looks like you’re shouting.

Target your message to your specific group of customers who are more likely to show interest. We recommend segmenting your customer groups based on the information you hold on them. For example, don’t send the male gym members a special offer on ladies gym clothing.

Message templates

If you want to send the same message multiple times, you can save it as a template and easily retrieve it from the template dropdown while sending campaigns. Once you select a template, the text is loaded on to the compose box for further editing.

5. Review and send your campaign 

Before your message is sent, you have the opportunity to review the message content, check the
recipients, preview any merged content, and check the estimated campaign cost. After reviewing, you can either send the campaign immediately or schedule it to sent later.

Before sending/scheduling a campaign, Interact checks your account balance to make sure you have enough balance. If you do not have adequate balance, you will see an insufficient balance error and if your balance is low, then you might see a warning for marginal balance.

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Note:

Actual cost of the campaign may vary slightly based on merge fields in the message. You can see the final cost of the campaign in reports page once the campaign is fully submitted to the operator.

Send your campaign

Sending your campaign is the last step after review. Click the "Send Now" button on the review page and confirm to send your campaign immediately. Please note that your SMS campaign cannot be halted or changed once it is sent.

After sending the campaign, you can check the campaign statistics in Reports section which provides insight into the delivery status, engagement metrics, and other relevant data.

Schedule your campaign

Timing is everything. It’s important to consider when your customers will be most receptive to the message they receive, e.g. sending a message promoting a ‘buy one get one free’ offer on pizzas at 9 pm, when people have already eaten, is unlikely to be a success.

To schedule a campaign, click on the "Schedule" button, choose a date from the dropdown, and enter the time in hh:mm format. After your campaign is scheduled, you can monitor and track on the Campaigns Reportspage.