Content, How to Manage SMS Communication

Owned by Parker Hutcheson (Deactivated), created
Sept 07, 2023
2 min read

The Symend Platform offers a few ways to build content to engage customers. Here we’ll examine how to create SMS outreaches using the Content Block Library to add text and hyperlinks, then review how to add personalization and text to content blocks, and finally how to preview and publish SMS content.

SMS Communication should be a short and simple text message, with a clear Call-To-Action, delivered to a customer’s mobile phone. We’ll build that using content blocks, which are editable blocks that can be added to communication channels to display content for customers.

NOTE: Before starting, ensure that your SMS gateway is configured by your Organization Administrator before creating your first SMS.

Table of Contents

How to Create Content for SMS Messages

Let’s create an SMS Content Message.

Create a Text Message that can be referenced and scheduled to be sent as a part of a campaign.

  • Click the Content button in the main navigation

  • Click Text Message in the drop-down menu

  • Click New Text Message

  • Enter a name and description

  • Click Create
    We can now begin customizing our text message. Start with the first text block. When we click into the text block we can, "Add Customer Attributes" to personalize our messages.

  • Type the text content "Hello," click add and select first name, then type "! Happy Birthday! Click here:"
    We will be able to add links via the link block, save your text block and now click add a link block. We can select Custom Landing Pages, Websites, emails, or phone numbers.

  • Type the text content with an example link "horizonmobile.com/rewards".
    We can now save our link and finish our SMS with another text block.

  • Add another text block

  • Type the text content: “to get a free gift! - Horizon."
    We can now preview our SMS.  Now that we have made our SMS, we can preview how it looks on the left.

  • As you see, our personalization content is currently not displaying. We’ll set values to be displayed for these attributes in the preview as settings. These settings are unique per user on the Symend Platform.

  • Click "Preview As" and in the field "First Name" type "Patty Smith"
    When we click save we can see these displayed in our SMS preview window.

  • Enter your desired text 

Action

Description

Action

Description

Insert Text

Allows you to add a new text section to the message

Insert Link

Allows you to insert a link to an internal or external page

Insert Personalization

Allows you to insert a tag that will be resolved into a values after an attribute is declared in the Data Designer immediately before sending it to your customers

NOTE: Personalization tags can also be manually typed. Incorrect personalization tags will result in publishing errors

  • Send a Preview Text Message
    You can send a preview Text Message to yourself before scheduling it for sending in your campaign. 

  • Click the Send Preview Icon 

  • Enter your phone number into the window

  • Click Send Now

  • Publish a Text Message
    To make a new Text Message available for sending in a campaign, you will need to have it published from the content builder view.

  • Open the unpublished Text Message

  • Click Publish
    You have successfully created and published your first Text Message which you can use in a Playbook Campaign. 

NOTE: If you use an incorrect personalization tag, then there will be a failure to publish a Text Message. Â