Using SMS in a campaign

With your SMS channel and templates ready, you’re now ready to set up an SMS campaign in the Orbit journey builder.

To add an SMS message to your campaign journey:

1. Go to Campaigns.

2. Either select an existing campaign, or create a new one.

   See Creating a campaign.

3. Choose a target segment.

   

   See Adding audiences.

4. Click the + on your journey where you want your SMS message step, then select SMS under Channels.

   

5. Click your new SMS step, then give it a meaningful name for easy reference.

6. Select Apteco SMS as the channel (or your channel name).

7. Check your SMS credits displayed beneath your channel.

   

   Note: Each SMS message requires a certain number of message parts, which consume credits. The total required credits for your campaign are calculated based on:
   
   - The number of recipients in your target audience
   - The length of your message template, including any personalisation or emojis

8. Select the SMS template you want to use.

   From within this specific SMS step, you also have further actions available from the option menu.

   

   • Edit Template: Edit and save your current template without leaving the journey builder

   • View All Templates: View all of your templates in the SMS builder. You can manage templates as needed to maintain your template library

   • New Template: Create a new template to use in the current SMS message step

9. If you wish to add a manual approval to the delivery, then tick Manual Approval Stop.

You’ve now chosen the SMS channel and template for your campaign step.

Validating personalisation

If the template that you chose has personalisation fields defined, then these appear under Personalisation in the side panel. See Message personalisation.

Click the yellow bar to see what you named the personalisation field when creating your template.

To set up personalisation in your message:

1. Click Add.

   

2. Click + Add Variable in order to map this content field to a FastStats variable.

   

3. Search for, or navigate to, the required field, then select it.

   

4. To format the variable, click the option button then Formatting.

   

   You can apply uppercase, lowercase, or title case mappings and choose to output unclassified categories as blanks. The default is to leave the formatting as Unformatted.

   

5. Click Apply.

   Tip: If you always want to include the same personalisation fields in your SMS templates without requiring campaign administrators to set them each time, add them as Additional Variables in the channel definition.
   
   See Defining consistent variables in your channel.

6. Save, publish, and set a schedule for your campaign.

   See Saving, editing, or publishing changes and Setting a schedule.

You've now successfully set up an SMS message in your campaign. Orbit now automatically handles your SMS sends according to the schedule you've set.