Create an Intelligent SMS Broadcast
A text written for the individual, not a template sent to a crowd.
Intelligent SMS Outreach writes a different text for every contact in your audience. Each one is written from that contact's own history with you and from the objective you set for the campaign, then reviewed before it can send.
In a text this matters more than it does in an email. There are no paragraphs to hedge in and no subject line to set up the ask — the message either lands in one or two lines or it does not land at all. A text written for the person can reference the thing they actually care about; a template has to be vague enough to suit everyone.
The wizard has three steps: the objective, the audience, and the schedule.
Before You Begin
- Your messaging service is set up and able to send to your audience's country
- Any cadence mandates you want applied, created in Library > Mandates
- Contacts with mobile numbers who have not opted out of texts
- Enough balance to cover the campaign — writing is charged per contact, and the wizard will not let you schedule a campaign your balance cannot cover
Steps
Step 1: Objective
From Communications > SMS > Broadcasts, open New SMS Broadcast and choose Intelligent SMS Outreach.
- Campaign Name: an internal name, such as Q1 Re-engagement or Product Launch Texts.
- Objective (required): what this campaign is for, in a line — Book a demo, Drive event registrations. This governs every text written. It is treated as binding, it is the last thing the writer reads before composing, and a date, an action or a link you put in it will reach the recipient.
- Description & Context: anything else the writer should know. Internal only.
- Attach Mandates: switch on the mandates that should govern these texts. Mandates are the rules the writer must follow, and a mandate outranks the objective where the two disagree.
Step 2: Audience
Choose From a List or Build Filter.
Filter conditions are combined so that every one must match. The wizard shows the resulting count and lets you open the preview to see who qualifies.
Contacts who cannot be texted — opted out, or no mobile number — are shown locked with the reason and left out of both the audience and the cost. Deselect anyone else you do not want included; the count and the cost follow your selection.
Step 3: Schedule & Send Settings
This step decides when the campaign is allowed to work.
- Start Date: begin now, or on a date you choose.
- Send Days: the days of the week it may write and send. Weekends are off by default.
- Send Window: the hours within those days, with a Timezone beside them. Both the window and the days are read in that timezone, which defaults to your organization's.
The Summary panel below gathers everything up: the objective, the audience and the conditions that produced it, the send window, and what the campaign will cost — $0.50 per contact, which covers writing the text and reviewing it. Text delivery is charged separately, per message, at the carrier's rate.
Confirm the cost and launch
Create & Schedule opens a confirmation panel, and nothing is created until you confirm there.
It shows the contact count, the cost of writing the texts, the estimated delivery cost, the campaign total, your wallet balance, and what is needed to start. The button stays disabled until your balance covers 1.2 times the total — the headroom that keeps the rest of your account's work running while the campaign drains — and names the exact shortfall if it does not.
Result
The campaign is running. Texts are written a few at a time, inside your send window and on your send days, each reviewed before it goes out. A message that fails its review is held back rather than sent, and the campaign carries on with the rest of the audience.
The campaign page shows what each contact was sent, whether it was delivered, and anything they texted back. You can pause, resume or cancel from the broadcast list.
Troubleshooting
The panel says why. Usually your balance does not cover 1.2 times the campaign total, and the exact shortfall is named — top up and reopen the panel. It also blocks when the audience is empty.
Check the send window, the send days and the timezone they are read in. Outside the window nothing is written or sent. The campaign page shows all three as the campaign is actually running them.
That is expected. Each text is written individually, so a large audience is worked through gradually. Watch Pending fall on the campaign page.
Their text was written but did not pass review, so it was held back. If many contacts are quarantined, the objective is probably pulling against one of the attached mandates — reword it and run a fresh campaign.
