In addition to regular email campaigns and automation, Ecomail also allows you to send SMS. In this article, we will look at what is needed to send an SMS campaign and how to send such an SMS.
Merge tag, lawyer view, unsubscribe from all lists.
1. What do I need to do to send a message?
To send SMS you need:
work in Ecomail in a paid program (not in the free version of the account)
upload the email addresses together with the phone number in the format +420XXXXXXXXXXX, (you can find out how to edit the phone number in bulk here)
purchase SMS credits beyond your plan/credit package
⚠️ sending SMS is only available for accounts created in ecomail.cz and ecomail.pl
SMS distribution is an additional service in Ecomail. You must therefore purchase credits individually (they are not part of any paid mode in Ecomail). SMS credits can be purchased with a card in your account in Account Management:
For Czech customers, the purchase of SMS credits, 1 credit = 1 CZK excluding VAT. The minimum amount of SMS credits to be purchased is 500 credits for 500 CZK, excluding VAT.
Most popular countries for sending to:
Czech Republic 0.8 credits / 1 SMS
Slovakia 1.1 credits / 1 SMS
Hungary 1.6 credits / 1 SMS
Poland 1.1 credits / 1 SMS
For Polish customers, the pricing is simple. 1 SMS = 0,1 zł 🎉
You can find out how many credits you have left in Account Management.
2. Setting up an SMS campaign
If you meet the above, start creating your campaign.
a) Creating a campaign
Click on the "Campaigns" section in the top menu. Select the Campaign Name - this is only visible to you in the app.
Then select the campaign type, i.e. SMS campaign.
In the next step, select the contact list, segment, or combination of lists you send the campaign to.
The next step is to create the content of the SMS message.
Tips for SMS campaign content:
The maximum SMS length is 160 characters for messages NOT containing diacritics or symbols (e.g. €) and 70 characters for messages with diacritics. The app automatically counts the characters in the campaign
If you use merge tags, the SMS length may vary for each contact - so we recommend testing and considering that some contacts will split the content into two messages.
Each SMS should correctly contain the information that it is a commercial message.
b) Custom sender name
For Czech clients, the default sender name for SMS campaigns is ZPRAVA.
This is a shared name between all clients. For the best deliverability and reputation of SMS campaigns, use your own sender name.
The maximum number of characters for a custom name is 11 characters without accents, including spaces. The entire registration process can take up to 30 business days as the name must pass the provider's approval. The sender's custom name is subject to a registration and recurring monthly fee. The cost depends on the countries you will be sending SMS campaigns to under this name.
In the case of deactivation, the request to cancel the sender's own name must be delivered to the third party by the 20th day of the current month. Therefore, please write to us in time. 😊 For more information, please contact us at support@ecomail.app.
For Polish clients, the default sender name is the Ecomail App ID (Ecomail account name).
c) Testing the campaign
In the testing step, you can test your campaign on your own phone number. However, merge tags will not work when testing your campaign (because they cannot be overwritten with a crisp value from the contact's profile). Therefore, the SMS text will be exactly as you see it in the campaign creation mode.
Note: If you have registered a sender name, it will only be overwritten when you send a live SMS campaign. Therefore, the test message will always be sent under the default name ZPRAVA.
d) Summary and sending
In the penultimate step of creation, you can see a summary of the entire campaign—the recipient, the sender's name, and the message text. You can send the campaign immediately or schedule it to be sent at a later date or time.
The app will also notify you if there are not enough credits in your account for the number of contacts.
The last step is the actual sending of the campaign.
3. Unsubscribe from SMS message
The contact must be able to unsubscribe from SMS campaigns. You can therefore include relevant text in the message along with a merge tag.
*|UNSUB|*
In the sent SMS campaign, the unsubscribe link is written instead of the merge tag:
💡 TIP: The 33 characters of the resulting link, not the characters of the merge tag, will count towards the character count.Add your own relevant text before the link itself so that the recipient understands that they can unsubscribe via the link - in this case, "Unsubscribe from SMS".
The unsubscribe link is functional in a finally sent SMS campaign.
In the contact's details in the app, you can then see the unsubscription from the SMS message (i.e. not automatically also from the business messages from the newsletter, from which the contact can unsubscribe in each received email campaign).
a) overview
b) contact detail
⚖️ The Lawyer's View
Section 7(3) of Act No. 480/2004 Coll., on Certain Information Society Services, provides that it is possible to use a customer's electronic contact for the dissemination of commercial communications provided that the customer "has a clear and distinct possibility to refuse consent to such use of his or her electronic contact in a simple manner, even when sending each individual message."
Unsubscribe from multiple lists
If for some reason you are working with multiple contact lists in the application, we recommend that you activate a feature in each list's settings that will ensure that if a contact unsubscribes (both from SMS and email) from one list, they are automatically unsubscribed from all other lists:
Of course, this does not apply in cases where there are multiple lists, e.g. due to language mutations or different databases.
4. Segment by status
You can also easily segment unsubscribed contacts. Use the In Campaign -> Unsubscribed from SMS Campaigns condition.
There is also a reverse condition In Campaign - Subscribe from SMS Campaigns. These are the contacts that have not (yet) opted out of the SMS campaign.
💭 Didn't find the answer? Contact us on chat or email support@ecomail.app. 😊