A guide to sending SMS from the Marketing cloud

With MobileConnect, you can create SMS/MMS messages using the Mobile studio in the Salesforce Marketing Cloud. It pushes the message to the partners or the aggregators who then push the SMS to the local phone carriers through the SMS gateways.

The local telecom companies are the carriers of these SMS and therefore it is important to know the regulations before proceeding. Verify whether the carriers meet your business expectations before collaborating.

Some of the common challenges are

• Auto-messages for Opt-in and Opt-out in pre-registration.
• Having the Opt-out keywords like STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE, etc.
• Including from name in the SMS for form registrations.

Setting up SMS Campaign through MobileConnect in Salesforce Marketing Cloud

If you strive for strong, diversified communication and higher engagement with customers, enabling MobileConnect in your Salesforce Marketing Cloud will help.

• With MobileConnect, you can set up an SMS instantly using the Content Builder message creation wizard.
• Generate conversations, surveys, implement Opt-in functionalities, trigger emails on demand and perform progressive profiling using Mobile Studio
• Use AMP Script for high personalization of the content through an extensive set of functionalities.

Mobile Codes

Mobile Codes are specific numbers through which you can connect the Marketing Cloud to the local carriers for delivering SMS to one or more countries. The cost of mobile code depends on the country and the type of code used. The code has a tier associated and it represents the price for activating the codes.

There are four tiers that are available for now

• Tier 1: Italy – Private long, Netherlands-Shared short, Mexico-Shared short, Czech Republic- private long, UK- private long.
• Tier 2: Singapore-Private long, UAE- private short, Colombia- Private short.
• Tier 3: Canada- private short, UK- private short.
• Tier 4: France-private short, Mexico- private short, Brazil- private short.

Long codes vs Short codes

Shared code vs Private code

Shared codes or Private codes – Which is better?

Brand identity is the key for businesses and the ‘sender name’ is available only with Private codes. It is important to build trust for delivering a multichannel user experience. However, the users cannot respond to your SMS and it is crucial to add the phone number at the bottom of your text message.

How do you use Keywords in MobileConnect?

Whether it is for providing a service, FAQs, Automated SMS bots, or SMS campaign subscriptions, Short code enables you to use Keywords for bidirectional communication.

• Keywords must be unique within a code and must have more than 3 characters
• Case sensitive and can identify a different set of words with any variations. For instance: CALLME, CallMe, callmE, etc.

System keywords

System keywords in MobileConnect are used for opt-out managements and they are not editable. Some of the examples are below.

• CANCEL
• HELP
• END
• STOP
• UNSUBSCRIBE

Keyword usage

When you have SMS as the communication channel for a particular campaign, Keywords are more essential and act as a powerful tool. For bidirectional communication, you can also opt for other channels like WhatsApp or Line that the Marketing cloud offers.

Why should you use MobileConnect?

Here’s what MobileConnect can do and achieve. We have divided the campaigns into four types.

1.Transactional messages

Whether you have an order confirmation, registration confirmation, appointment scheduling, product delivery, or even shipment tracking, Transactional messages are used as they do not require much personalization.

• Registration confirmation
• Product delivery
• Shipment tracking
• Appointment scheduling

2.Security messages

This can be considered a subcategory of transactional messages.

• Message sending limits exceeded.
• Security notifications like password expiration reminder, change of password etc.
• Multi-factor authentication (MFA) codes.
• Guidelines with informative links to web resources.

3.Commercial messages

If you want P2P (Peer to peer) or 1:1 conversation, you can re-engage with the individual subscriber. You can also use commercial messages to navigate and redirect the users to your website or the landing page.

• Surveys.
• Reviews.
• Sharing rewards/ competition/ discount from a brand.
• Promotional messages.

4.Progressive profiling

These are used for data enrichment campaigns to collect data or insights which is missing in the profile database. These fetch a high success rate and grasp the customer’s interest very quickly with their short and engaging questions.

SMS Marketing Principles

The message frequency, your target audience, and highly personalized messages should be prioritized when you are developing a customer journey for a campaign. Follow this checklist and stay ahead in the SMS marketing game.

• Use global subscription or ad hoc campaign to get permission from your users to send messages
• Have a clear objective for your campaigns
• Check the message frequency and deflect complaints that may arise due to high message frequency which might even lead to stopping your services.
• Include disclaimers to give clear info to your users
• Always make the opt-out option accessible for your users. You might want to include a keyword in the SMS.

Summary

If you are planning for a global roll-out, consider the use cases before finalizing the marketing channel in Salesforce. Always try something small like unidirectional SMS as it’ll give you the confidence you need to execute big campaigns.