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How to create and send SMS
How to create and send SMS

Create and send SMS to communicate with your contacts quickly and conveniently.

Zaklina Udovicic avatar
Written by Zaklina Udovicic
Updated over a week ago

SMS has become a powerful communication channel. This article explains how you create and send SMS from MarketHype to be used to send important information, fantastic offers, or valuable news, for example.

To send an SMS, you need a sender and a stop word used by the contact when unsubscribing. The MarketHype success team will help you add those. Create your sender name and stop word according to these guidelines, then contact us via chat or send an email to success@markethype.io, and we will assist you.

Step 1: Create the SMS


Go to Marketing → SMS, and click on the Create SMS button in the top-right corner to create your SMS.

Autosave

All changes made while creating your SMS will be autosaved. You can see the time stamp for when the last autosaved was made in the left corner, where you also can save your creation manually.

Step 2: Compose the SMS


Once inside the SMS, you have the Compose tab to the left, where you will create the content, and a Preview window to the right, where you can see how the SMS will turn out.

Elements available under the Compose tab

  • Opt-out instructions
    The SMS is set to marketing communication by default, which means that you need to choose what language the unsubscribe text should be sent in.

  • Message text
    This is where you type the message.

  • Emoji picker

    Add emojis to your SMS.

  • Merge Tags
    Merge tags allow you to insert personalized information into your texts, such as a customer name or other dynamic data.

  • SMS part counter

    It shows how many parts the SMS contains. This depends on the character count.

ℹ️ Want to use URL links in your SMS? URL shorteners are not available in MarketHype at the moment. But we can recommend https://bitly.com/.

SMS parts and character counter

You can use a maximum of 1500 characters in your SMS. The amount of characters is shown to the right of the Message text section.

If you create an SMS without any emojis or other Unicode characters, each character will be counted as one character. This way, one SMS part includes 160 characters before it becomes a two-part SMS.

But, once you add at least one emoji or other Unicode character, each character you add (a letter, emoji, space, numbers, etc.) will be counted as two characters. This means that one SMS part of the whole SMS can include 70 characters.

No matter how many SMS parts your SMS holds, it will still be visible as one whole text message to your recipients. The SMS parts are for internal use to show you how many SMS per recipient you are creating and may be billed for.

Step 3: Set the SMS settings


When done with the content, continue to the Settings tab. Here you will add:

From

This is where you choose one of your sender names.

Send time

Choose if you want to send the email right away or schedule it for another time.

Communication type

What communication does your SMS contain?

Marketing communication will only be sent to consenting subscribers and a stop word will be included in the SMS.
Non-marketing communication is only intended for vital information and can not contain marketing. You can read more about this here.

Merge tags default

If you use Merge tags in your SMS, you need to specify a default value to show in the SMS if the data is not defined. For example, use "Dear customer" instead of the recipient's name.

Name

Give your SMS a name. It will only be shown in MarketHype to help you organize your SMS.

Tags

Add a tag to your email and organize your SMS even further. For example, add the tag "Offers" to all the SMS containing information about offers.

Step 4: Select the recipients


Finally, you will choose who will receive your SMS underneath the final tab, Recipients.

Learn more about the audience filter here.

Step 5: Review and send


When happy with your result, press Review and send/schedule, and a window will appear with a summary stating the following:

  • Recipients

  • Send time

  • Sender and communication type

  • Message

  • Number of billable SMS
    This is an indication. The final number will be visible in the SMS report after the SMS has been sent. You will only pay for messages that have been sent.

You can easily adjust and edit any of the elements by pressing the Edit button to the right of each section.

If anything is missing, for example, recipients - the review window will start by showing what you need to fix before hitting the send button. The Edit button stated above will then show a Fix now button instead to make it easy for you to adjust the issue.

Depending on what you choose as the send time, a Send now button or Schedule button is visible at the bottom of the Review and send window. The button is clickable once you have fixed all issues and scrolled through the review sections.

Analyze the result


After the SMS has been sent, you can enter it to see different measure points on how your SMS has performed. You will find an activity chart that shows activity deliveries and bounces by the hour and the following stats:

  • Delivered

    The amount of delivered SMS.

  • Bounced

    The amount of SMS that could not be delivered. It could occur if the recipient's phone number is inactive or the phone's memory is full.

  • Unsubscribe

    The number of contacts who choose to opt out.

  • Region not supported

    Shows the number of contacts with an invalid or non-supported country code.

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