Send a text campaign

A text campaign is one message to phones. Only people who agreed to marketing texts get it. Each text uses credits from your balance.

You need a registered business and a live texting number first. See "Register your business for texting". You also need credits. See "Buy texts and see your balance".

#Start a text campaign

1. Open Email & SMS, then Campaigns, and press the button to start a campaign. You choose a channel: Email or Text.

   On screenEmail & SMS › Campaigns › Email

2. Press Text. If it is greyed out, the card says why, for example that the carriers require every brand to register first, or that your number is waiting for the carriers to switch it on.

3. You can also open SMS, then the Campaigns tab, then New text campaign.

   On screenSMS › Campaigns

A text campaign has three steps: Who, Message and Review. There is no design step, because the words are the whole message.

#Who

Pick the lists and segments this text goes to. Under the count you see two numbers, for example 900 people can be texted · 39,100 people in your audience have not agreed to texts. Only the first group gets the text. If nobody has agreed yet, the page says: Nobody in this audience has agreed to texts yet. Add the texting box to your checkout and try again once people have opted in.

#Message

1. Write the text in Your text, the way you would write to one person.

2. Press Add a name to put the person's first name in. It becomes "there" when we do not know the name.

3. Watch the meter under the box. It shows how many texts the message is, and the characters used. Under it a line reads About 380 texts, which is the parts per text times the number of people.

4. A phone preview shows the whole message. Your brand name goes at the start, and Reply STOP to opt out goes at the end. They are added for you, are required by the carriers, and cannot be turned off.

5. Any link becomes a short link on your own domain when the text sends. That lets us tell you who clicked. Public shorteners such as bit.ly are not allowed.

#When the carriers will not deliver it

If the text names a product or an amount, or makes a health claim, a box says The phone carriers will not deliver this. and explains which part. Reword it. The text cannot be sent as written, and there is no way to override this. One blocked word can switch off the number for every brand on it.

A text over three parts is refused. Remove an emoji or an accented letter to bring it back down to 160 characters a part.

#Send yourself a test

Under Send yourself a test, type your mobile number and press Send test. A test uses one text from your balance. Fix any problem above first, or the button stays off.

#Review and send

The review step quotes the text exactly as it will arrive, who gets it, and what it costs: About 380 texts, and You have 1,240 texts. If your balance is short, you are told the send will start and stop when credits run out. Buy texts first.

Choose Send now or Schedule for later.

#When texts go out

Marketing texts are sent between 9 AM and 8 PM in each person's local time. Anyone outside that window gets it the next morning, never at 2 AM. If you schedule outside the window, a note says nothing is lost: everyone gets it the next morning.

We work out each person's time from their saved time zone, or from their area code. If we cannot tell, we send between 12 noon and 8 PM Eastern.

Three more rules apply to every brand, and you cannot widen them:

• Never on a Sunday. The text waits for Monday.
• At most 3 promotional texts to one person in 24 hours. The extra text is held and tried again shortly.
• Order and shipping texts are not held. Answering someone who texted you first is not held either.

Held texts are never dropped.

#After it sends

The Campaigns tab on the SMS page lists each text campaign with its state. Text campaigns also appear on the main Campaigns page.

#If it didn't work

• The Text card is greyed out. Your registration or number is not ready. The card says which.
• "Register for texting first." Finish the registration.
• The send button is off. Look for the carrier box in the Message step, or an empty text.
• People you expected are missing. The Who step counts only people who agreed to texts.
• Fewer texts went out than people. People who replied STOP are removed. People held by the daily limit get theirs later.