Creating a Campaign

In this article, learn how you can create text campaigns with a single or series of messages from within the Textel platform using our Blast product.

Create a New Campaign

To access Blast, click on the megaphone icon in the rail navigation. This will take you to the Blast index page that showcases any and all of the existing Blast campaigns in your account. From this page, click on the Create Campaign button in the top right corner.

This will take you into our campaign creation flow on the creator step.

Defining Campaign Details

In this section you will specify the name of your campaign and the outbound line that will be used to send the messages to the campaign contacts. It is recommended that you use a descriptive and unique campaign name for easy reference. The outbound line selection is a dropdown populated with the lines available for use in the account.

Adding Campaign Messages

The campaign structure in the Textel platform allows you to have one or more messages in a single campaign. Similar to a drip email campaign, you have the ability to setup a campaign with a single message or one that has several messages sent out on a cadence. 

Within this section you can define your message(s) in the campaign and establish the order they are to be delivered.

Message Setup

Starting with your first message, type the content you want to deliver. The message can include your text, emojis, images, and dynamic parameters that allow you to personalize the messages. For more tips on creating great messages, read through our Crafting Your Message article.

If you are creating a series of messages, be sure to order them in the way that you would like them to be sent. You can order them by using the drag and drop arrows to the left of the message. They will display in set order on the message scheduling step.

NOTE: The platform will not let you overlap the schedules for messages in a drip campaign. Each message in a drip campaign must complete sending before the next message can be scheduled to start. Keep this in mind when crafting your text, as each message in a drip campaign should include all pertinent information. 

Once you have added your messages and campaign details, click the Save Details button to progress.

Selecting Contacts

On this step, you will select a Contact List as the recipients of the campaign messages. It is recommended that you use lists to organize your contacts for specific purposes. You have the flexibility to create as many contact lists as you would like. There is no limit to how many lists a contact can be on. 

Once you have the Contact List in mind, select the list from the dropdown. To move on and save the campaign, you will need to check the box acknowledging that you have collected the proper opt-ins for the contacts in the campaign.

Opt-In Acknowledgement

Textel will store the record of a contact's opt-in or out status if they have texted in the appropriate Keyword Responders on our platform. However, it is still your responsibility to acquire the appropriate opt-ins from any contact who you are planning to message with a Blast campaign. You will need to acknowledge that you have acquired the appropriate opt-ins for the contacts in the campaign. The campaign cannot be saved or sent without this acknowledgement. Failure to get opt-ins may result in complaints or reports from the mobile user to the carriers.

Now that you have written your messages and selected your contacts, it is time to schedule the delivery of your campaign messages. Your messages will display in the order they were set on creation. If you would like to reorder the messages, you will need to go back to the Creator step in the flow.

  1. To start, you will need to set the scheduled time and date that you would like the first message to start sending. NOTE: This time/date selection indicates when this campaign message will START sending. Messages are not sent instantaneously, so depending on the number of contacts, it may take several minutes or longer to send out each message to the recipients. To learn more, read about our Rate Limiting and Sending Basics.
  2. Once your first message is scheduled, we will allow you to schedule the next message in the campaign. NOTE: You will not be able to setup a time that is earlier than when the previous message is finished sending. Your options for selecting the time/date will be limited appropriately.
  3. You can repeat this process for as many messages as you have in your campaign.

Once At Least One Message Is Scheduled

As soon as one of the campaign messages has a set schedule, you will no longer be able to make adjustments to the campaign. This means you will not be able to:
  • Update or adjust the contacts
  • Update the campaign messages 
It is also important to note that once a single message in the campaign is scheduled, the campaign itself is considered to be in a Scheduled state. That means that even if all of the messages are not set on a schedule, if the time/date of a message in the campaign is met, the platform will send those scheduled messages.

Once you have set the schedule for every message in your campaign, your campaign is all set and ready to be sent!

Viewing Results

As soon as a campaign begins sending messages, you will have access to a Campaign Results report. This report will provide you a breakdown of the send statuses for each message in the campaign. You can refresh this page to see it updated as messages get sent out in the campaign. Read our Send Statuses article to learn more about what each of the statuses mean.

 


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