Create SMS campaigns

With Acumbamail you can create SMS campaigns to get in touch with your subscribers. Although SMS campaigns have a much higher price than those carried out through email, they have a greater effectiveness, so for specific or especially important actions it is useful to complement both strategies. If you need ideas about what kind of campaigns you can send using SMS consult the SMS marketing guide that we have in our blog. Next we are going to teach you how to create an SMS campaign with Acumbamail, taking into account that you have already created your subscriber list previously,

In this article

How to create campaign SMS message

To create an campaign SMS message in Acumbamail you must go to the SMS campaigns menu. To do this, click the SMS button in the left side menu:

And, from that same menu, choose the Campaigns section. Once you've done this, if you don't have campaign SMS message created, you'll see the following screen:

To create your first campaign you only have to click on the New campaign button and you can create the first of your campaigns.

Note that in this tutorial we consider that you have already created a list of subscribers for SMS. Once you have pressed the button, you will see the following popup in which you have to enter the name of the campaign (only visible to you) and the   sender,for example the name of your company. Then click Create.

Select the list to send the list to campaign

Once you have pressed the New campaign button you will see the following screen, in which, only, you will have to choose a list of SMS subscribers, in our case we will choose the only list we have created. Remember that with your SMS credits you can send to many countries.

You can only send to a list of subscribers, if you want to send the same send to multiple lists see the section below to send the same campaign to another list. Mark the list you want to send your campaign to and click the Next button.

Create the contents of the campaign

Then, after you select the list of subscribers to which you are sending the campaign, you must create the subscriber content on the following screen:

In it you can choose multiple options, the main ones are:

• The sender of the text message, which you had already selected when creating the campaign but which you can change if you want
• The shipping date: by default it will be set as automatic shipping, but if you click on the drop-down menu you can also leave it scheduled for a specific date
• You'll be able to save your campaign at all times and you'll see how many SMS credits you'd spend for campaign and how many subscribers you'll reach.
• Finally, click the blue Send campaign or Schedule campaign button, if you have selected the option to schedule your shipment for later

In the campaign edition, the Insertbutton appears, which will allow you to insert custom content into your campaign. When you tap it, you'll see the following options:

These three options are very useful when sending SMS campaigns, your feature is as follows:

• Tag: allows you to include in your campaign any of the fields, in our list we have included the name of the subscribers so we could choose that tag and a string *| NAME|* in the SMS itself that, at the time of sending, will include in each SMS the name of each subscriber.
• Link: you can include a link in your SMS in a normal and ordinary way, but doing so using this option will provide you with two advantages: you will use our shortener so that the SMS occupies fewer characters and reduces the possibility that it occupies more than one SMS and, by using our shortener, we can give you statistics of which people have clicked on that link.
• Unsubscribe link: it is highly recommended to introduce an unsubscribe link in your SMS to allow your users to unsubscribe from your SMS list whenever they want. It will also allow you to save costs by avoiding sending SMS to subscribers who do not want to receive them.

How many credits your credit can campaign

In Acumbamail we make it very easy, while you are creating your SMS campaign you will always see how many credits it will cost you and how much space your text takes up. The calculation of the SMS size is complex and depends on several factors that we will detail in this section.

SMS have a size set by telephone operators, that limit varies when using characters that do not belong to the GSM alphabet (such as an accent) since SMS requires unicode* encoding. When using this encoding the text content of the SMS will be limited to 70 characters per SMS instead of the 160 of a normal one. With both encodings you can send an SMS of the size you want, the recipients will not notice a difference but they will cost you several credits. Below we explain in detail the limits of the size of the SMS:

• Standard: The SMS can occupy up to 160 characters, above that amount will be added a credit extra for every 153 additional characters.
• Unicode (accents, emojis and other characters): The SMS can occupy up to 70 characters, above that amount will be added a credit extra for every 67 additional characters.

* The é and ñ will also be priced as unicode.

The reason why the gap for the first credit is greater than the rest is that the operators use that difference to insert the concatenation code and that everything arrives as a single SMS.

Finally, another of the peculiarities of SMS is that operators need two characters to represent some symbols, specifically:

Send the same campaign to another list

In SMS campaigns, you can only send your campaign to a list. If you want to send the same message to several SMS lists you can duplicate the campaign and, in step 1, replace the list of receivers with a different one. To do this, from the main page of  Campaigns, you must select the campaign in question and in the drop-down that appears at the top click on Duplicate. Then modify step 1 of the campaign by choosing the list you want to send to and in step 2 press the Send Now button or schedule it.

Check your child's follow-up campaign

Once you've submitted campaign, you can view your follow-up reports in the campaign menu by clicking on the campaign. When you choose a campaign that has already been sent you will see a screen where you can choose from the following options:

If you click on the first Summary option, you'll see a summary of campaign you sent. You will also see the following graph in which you can analyze the result of the main indicators of your campaign:

Within the reports summary, we have three statuses:

• Delivered: These are those SMS that have been received and the operator has returned the reception time.
• Pending: These SMS have been delivered to the telephone operator but, either the operator has delivered them but has not returned the delivery time or has not yet delivered them for various reasons (mobile off, out of coverage, etc).
• Undelivered: SMS that could not be delivered because the number no longer exists or is invalid.

It is normal for all campaigns to have some percentage of SMS that are in pending or undelivered states. These credits will also be subtracted from the credits you have purchased, since SMS providers charge us the same amount whether the SMS is delivered or not.

Later, if you have included links created with our editor, you will be able to check the clicks that have occurred by clicking on the Tracking url's section:

It will show you the information of the URLs you have entered and the subscribers who clicked on each of them, when and how many times they have done so. You can also see the number of unique clicks (the number of people you clicked on a link) and the number of total clicks (if a subscriber double clicks, it is counted twice).

Finally, you can choose to have more advanced information on the receivers on the list, by clicking on the Receivers option:

Here you will have access to a complete list of your subscribers and you will be able to see in what state the SMS that has been sent to them are. You can also view your casualty list, the list of subscribers who clicked on your campaign and download CSV listings of each of them by clicking on the Generate Report button:

To which countries can I send SMS?

With your Acumbamail SMS credits you can send SMS to your subscribers in the following countries at no additional cost:

• Austria
• Chile
• Colombia
• Croatia
• Denmark
• Slovenia
• Spain
• Italy
• Mexico
• Poland
• Portugal
• United Kingdom

You can also send to these countries but with a cost of 2 credits for each SMS:

• Germany
• Belgium
• Cuba
• Finland
• France
• Greece
• Ireland
• Iceland
• Norway
• Romania
• Switzerland