SMS Marketing Sneak Peek: Q&A

[Caitlin_M]

 

We hope you’re as excited as we are about the new updates coming to the Constant Contact SMS Marketing tool.

We’re living in a smartphone world and your business has to keep up. Adding SMS to your email and social marketing helps you connect with on-the-go customers where they are—on their phones.

Our experts Zach and Hannah gave us a sneak peek at what's available now and what's coming down the pipeline.

We're taking the most popular questions from the webinar and expanding upon them so you can better understand how to grow and make your lists more effective.

How do I sign up for SMS marketing?

SMS is available within any of our plans for an additional monthly fee starting at $10 per month. SMS marketing can be added through My Account > Add SMS.

Why is there a requirement to enter my tax information to use SMS Marketing?

It's a legal requirement from the FCC and wireless carriers. Entering your business information will verify that you are a legitimate business. They have strict guidelines to protect both you and your text recipients.

Is the SMS feature available outside of the US?

Not at this time. This feature is only available for US customers with a website and a valid Employer ID Number (EIN).

How long does verification take? 

The approval process can take up to 24 hours but can sometimes take up to 4 days. There are a few things to keep in mind when registering for SMS marketing, including having a valid EIN and a link to a website. If there is incorrect or incomplete information, registration will be denied.

Do we need to upload our organization’s terms & conditions and privacy policy in order to set up our SMS Lead Generation Page? 

Yes, a link to your organization’s privacy policy and terms of service is required to use our SMS marketing tools. You can upload a copy of those to your account and we’ll include the link on the SMS landing page.

We suggest consulting with your legal counsel if you do not have a privacy policy and terms of service or if it needs to be updated to ensure that you're being compliant with any applicable regulations in your area.

Are there any content limitations with the SMS tool?

The SMS tool has a separate and more restricted list of prohibited content than email marketing. This can be found in our Guidelines for using SMS marketing article.

How many SMS messages can I send? Is this unlimited within a certain time period?

When you add SMS to your account, you choose your starting pricing tier based on the number of texts you plan to send and the number of contacts that have opted to receive SMS messages from you. If you send more texts than your tier allows, you will be billed at the higher tier range based on the number of messages sent during your billing period. You can manually change your tier as well if you realize that you are sending more or less than the number of texts allowed in the tier you are registered for.

What are the quiet hours? Do the quiet hours adjust for the sender and/or receiver time zone?

We have built quiet hours into our SMS tool to prevent sending SMS messages between 8:00 p.m. and 11:00 a.m. ET. They won’t adjust based on the time zone of the recipient, but if a contact is in the western part of the US, the earliest text they would receive is at 11 a.m ET or 8 a.m. PT. You won’t be sending any wake-up texts!

Can you add images to SMS messages?

Not at this time but it is something we are considering for a future update.

Can you add a link within your texts?

Yes! You're allowed to have a single clickable link in each SMS campaign. When creating the SMS campaign, the link is automatically shortened and tracking is added so you can view the click results in the reporting for your SMS campaign.

For those who have opted-in to our email lists, can we reach out to them and ask for their phone numbers? Or do they need to opt-in separately for the SMS marketing?

We have a handy template available in accounts that you can use to let your contacts know they can hear from you via text. You can create a landing page with the SMS field enabled. We still need to ask for the email address but their contact profile will be updated with their phone number. Contact profiles cannot be manually updated within your account since we must have explicit permission from those contacts to satisfy our SMS permission policy.

Is there a text-to-join option to allow contacts to opt-in via text?

We're exploring new tools to replace the previous text-to-join feature. Keep an eye on the notification center in your account.

If a contact opts out of receiving texts, will it also remove them from our email list?

Nope. The SMS opt-in is completely separate from email marketing.

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Ready to get started with SMS but not sure where to start? Fill out this form and our Customer Success team will be in touch.

[ricay]

Can you add in phone numbers manually or do people have to opt-in first?

[WGC21030]

How do you see texts responses from your members in Constant Contact?  Does it work like normal texting that allows you to correspond both send & receive?

[Zack_R]

Hello @ricay! SMS numbers can't be manually added to a contact profile. You can enable SMS on a landing page to have new contacts opt-in or import a list of SMS contacts. With the second option, you must use the check box to verify these contacts have given you consent to send them messages through the SMS tool.

[Hannah_K]

Hey @WGC21030! The SMS tool is not two-way so you will not be able to see replies. If a contact replies to the text sent with an unsupported keyword (such as STOP), they will see an automated message asking them to visit your website for further assistance.