How do I send a message from the Control Panel? (Archives)

The most important aspect of your Control Panel is the “Send a Message” page. This tutorial will walk you through how to navigate this page and send out your mass text alerts with your online SMS service. (For instructions on how to send from the mobile app, click here.)

When Should the Message Be Sent?

From this box you select the timing of your message for your mass text alerts.  You can choose to have your message sent out immediately (“Send the Message Now”), or you can choose to set up a day and time for the message to go out later (“Schedule the Message to be Sent at a Later Date”).

If you choose to “Schedule the Message,” then the following screen will appear:

From here you will be able to select a specific date and time for your mass text alerts to go out.  You can also designate how often you want your message to repeat (if at all).

Send Message to a Group

Your online SMS service allows you to send to specific groups on your account. From the “Send Message to a Group” box you can designate whether or not you want your message to go out to all of your contacts, or if you want your message to go out to one of your groups.

• If you would like your message to be sent to every single contact on your account, you can check the “Send Message to All” box.
• If you would like your message to go out to members of a specific group that you’ve set up on your account, you can type the group’s name in the text box and then select the group’s name from the drop-down menu that appears.
  • (You can click the “Manage Groups” link on the right side of the screen to add, edit, or remove groups from your account.)
• If you want to specify which individual contacts receive the message (rather than sending to an entire group or sending to all contacts), you can skip this box and scroll down to the “Send Message to Individual” box.

Send Message to Individual Contacts

The box that says “Send Message to Individual Subscribers” allows you to manually select specific contacts to send your message to. Click the “Send Message” checkbox of every contact that you want to receive their message.

You can sort the contacts by clicking any of the column headers at the top of the table. For example, if you want to sort the list alphabetically by first name, you can click the “First Name” column header and the list will sort automatically.

You can change how many entries from your contact list are shown by clicking the arrow (above the table) that says “Show 10 entries.” Then from the drop-down menu that appears, you can select 25, 50, or 100 entries.

You can also search through your contact list by typing a search query in the text box above the table.

Message Content

In the “Message Content” box you can type in the message that you want to send out in your mass text alerts. (Whatever you put in the Header and Footer will be saved for future messages.)

If your message is more than 160 characters, it will split into 2 or more separate messages. The phone preview will show you at which point your message will split.

You can select the "Send as an MMS picture message" if you want to include an attachment in your message and/or want to send a longer message without splitting (the MMS messages will allow up to 1550 characters). MMS will count as 3 messages per recipient instead of 1.

When you are done typing your message, click the “Send Message” button on the bottom of your screen. (You can click the "Send Test" button if you want to send a quick test text to your number.) Just underneath that button is a report letting you know how many contacts are set to receive your message.

--

Start sending mass text alerts today with an online SMS service at Mobile Text Alerts!