Send a Message (Archives)

(If using the new platform design, please click here.)

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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 text alerts.

When Should the Message Be Sent?

Any good mass text service will give you options for scheduling your message- From this box you select the timing of your message. You can choose to have your message sent out immediately (“Send the Message Now”), or you can choose to set up a 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 message to go out. You can also designate how often you want your message to repeat (if at all).

If you select that you want your message to repeat you will be able to select custom options of how often, such as every week on Mondays or every 2 weeks on Fridays.

 

Send Message to a Group

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 subscribers, or if you want your message to go out a specific group on your account.

• If you would like your message to be sent to every single subscriber on your account, you can check the “Send Message to All Subscribers” 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 subscribers receive the message (rather than sending to an entire group or sending to all subscribers), you can skip this box and scroll down to the “Send Message to Individual Subscribers” box.

Send Message to Individual Subscribers

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

You can sort the subscribers 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 subscriber 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 subscriber 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. (Whatever you put in the Header and Footer will be saved for future messages.)

The "Insert Into Message" function will give you some options for custom features you can include in your message (such as your subscribers' first and last names if you have them listed in your database, trackable links, and digital coupons).

If your message is more than 160 characters, it may split into 2 or more separate messages. The phone preview will show you approximately at which point your message may split. (This also corresponds to how many messaging credits per recipient the message will deduct from your message counts.)

You can select the "Send as an MMS picture message" option 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 and will send through a different number than your normal messages.

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 phone.) Just underneath that button is a notice letting you know how many subscribers are set to receive your message.

Now you can send SMS marketing campaigns for business, text reminders, updates, or any other purpose you have for sending text alerts!

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Start sending mass text alerts today with Mobile Text Alerts!