SMS capabilities are currently available to North American customers only. We look forward to implementing GDPR-compliant SMS functionality for our UK customers in the future.Overview
One-time messages (formerly "Newsletters") are a great way to communicate upcoming sales or convey special messages to your customer audience. Similar to automated campaigns, they allow you to target specific types of customers and automatically pull in personal data using placeholders. The primary difference is that a message is a one-off notification that you manually send, while automated campaigns are a series of notifications that are automatically sent based on the job triggers. In this article, we'll review how to create an SMS one-time message. If you would like more information about sending an email message, check out this article.
Enabling SMS Functionality
Before you can send SMSes, you must first set up your SMS registration. You may have done this during your initial account setup, but in case you haven't, please click here for more information.
Creating a Message
There are two ways to send one-time messages (Click to enlarge):
  |   | |
| A. From the Communication tab within a Photo Job. [ Classic Interface: From the Selling tab within a Photo Job.] Using this option will send your message to applicable customers within this specific job. | B. From the One-Time Message tab on the Communication page. [ Classic Interface: From the Newsletters tab on the Customers page.] Using this option will send your message to applicable customers out of all your customers. |
Once you're on the One-Time Message page, you'll find a number of settings as indicated in the screenshot below.
- Name: Provide an internal name for your campaign. It's good practice to use a name that will be meaningful in the future, as it's possible you'll have multiple campaigns at any given point.
- Recipients: When you click Add/Edit, you'll be redirected to a new window where you can select any number of recipients. Note that you have a number of filters at your disposal, including job, customer status, year, album, etc. You can add multiple jobs by selecting them in the dropdown and then narrow your target market even further by selecting specific albums/groups.
- Automated Scheduling: Tell the system to send the SMS immediately once you click send or alternatively, have the message sent at a specific date and time of your choosing.
⚠ Important: Once you have scheduled your message and saved the settings, you still need to click the Send Newsletter button to activate the scheduled message.
- Design: Design the body and content of your SMS.
Click the SMS tab and type your message into the text box. You can use placeholders to customize your text. At this time we do not provide templates for SMS.
You will see a warning about a character limit (150). This warning is for older phone types only, where the system will split the text into two texts. Modern smartphones will still send just one text to your customers. That said, you still want to keep texts short and sharp.
Finalizing and Sending Your Message
Once you've completed the content of your message, click the Save and preview newsletter button at the bottom of the page – you'll then have an opportunity to preview the SMS with populated placeholders and make any last-minute changes before you hit send.
The Takeaway
Whether sending from a specific photo job or your entire customer base, you can effortlessly create impactful messages, conveying special notes, promotions, or updates directly to your audience.