SMS Campaigns

SMS campaigns deliver a short text to customers who have opted in. Texts get read within minutes, so they suit time-sensitive offers, delivery updates and restocks.

Register a sender under Settings > SMS first. See Setting up SMS. The text message option only appears once one of your countries is approved.

Creating an SMS campaign

1. Go to Campaigns > Create campaign and pick Text message campaign. You can also tell Gro Agent to write you a text and it will build the whole thing.
2. Audience: pick the segments to send to and any to exclude. Only contacts in those segments who are subscribed to SMS and have a phone number receive it.
3. Message: write the text. The counter shows characters and how many segments it will use.
4. Review: send now or schedule it.

Writing the message

• Keep it short. One segment is 160 characters of plain text. Emoji and most accented letters switch the message to a different encoding where one segment is 70 characters.
• Lead with your brand. Customers see a name or number, so say who you are in the first few words.
• One link at most. Links are shortened automatically to a gro1.io link and clicks are tracked.
• Merge tags work. Use Insert merge tag to add {{ person.first_name }} and other profile fields.
• Do not write an opt-out line. Gro appends one to every marketing text.

Test sends

Use Send test to text a single profile. The profile needs a phone number and an SMS subscription, and your sender must be active for their country. Tests go through the same checks as a live send.

After sending

The campaign overview shows sent, delivered and failed counts. A message fails with a reason when the recipient’s country has no active sender, the number could not be normalised, or the carrier rejected it. Customers who reply STOP are unsubscribed automatically and appear in the campaign’s unsubscribe count.