Sending an SMS Broadcast Message

MEP allows you to associate a blacklist with a broadcast. When the message is sent, the blacklist is checked for any phone number that should not receive the message. Before creating your SMS broadcast, you should first determine whether or not a blacklist is going to be used. If so, you must first ensure that the blacklist is created and that it is associated with a virtual gateway account. See

• Gateway Accounts for information about virtual gateway accounts and how to create one.
• Blacklists for the steps to create a blacklist and associate it with a virtual gateway account.

To create and send an SMS broadcast:

1. Click the Broadcasts tab.
   The Broadcasts home page appears, showing a history of broadcasts associated with your account. Click an existing broadcast to view and download results.

   
   

2. Click Create Broadcast.
3. On the Broadcast Types page, click Send SMS as the type of broadcast you want to send.

4. On the Create Broadcast, complete the details about this SMS broadcast. The uper half of the page is the general settings for your broadcast. The lower half lets you select the end users to which you are broadcasting. Under this is an Advanced Settings section, which contains additional settings you may wish to use. The page will look similar to this:

   

5. On the top half of this page:

   • By default, the Broadcast name field is populated with SMS Broadcast. You can optionally change the name, which is not visible to end users. This can help you find it at a later date if needed. If you do not specify a name, a default name is used.
   • Create your Message. If you want to customize your message to each recipient, see Customize messages with uploaded values.

   • Choose the SMS Account through which you wish to send the messages. Depending on your account, you may also be able to change the message originator.

     Note: If you are using a blacklist, select the virtual Gateway Account associated with the blacklist.

   • Choose whether the broadcast Start Time is Now or Later. If you choose Later, select the date and time for the broadcast.
     Note that may get a message from MEP to tell you that you have gone over the character limit for a single part SMS or that you need to use a different character set — for more information about these, see Single and multipart (concatenated) messages and Character encoding options in broadcast messages.
6. Select the Send To recipients for the broadcast. The three options are:

   • Selecting one or more MEP Subscriptions that are already available.

     
     

   • Enter Users Manually by either adding numbers into the field or by cutting and pasting text into the field.

     

     When adding users manually, you can optionally click Correct missing country codes to automatically fix number the international format for US and/or UK, US, UK, Australian, or Irish numbers. You can also select the Require network check box to require that the network operator id be passed as well. A link in the right-hand pane opens a list of network operator codes
     

   • Upload a file of mobile numbers with their mobile operators. You can use one of these file types:
     

     • XLS/XLSX — character encoding can be windows-1252, ASCII, or UTF-8
     • CSV — character encoding can be windows-1252 or ASCII, but not UTF-8

     
     

     You will be presented with a pop-up that allows you to check the contents of the file. The file can contain additional details for each end user, that you can then include as a variable in the SMS message. For more information see Customize messages with uploaded values.
     

7. Now that you have created the message and chosen its recipients, you can send the broadcast. However, there are some additional options that you might consider using in the Advanced Settings:
   • You can spread the broadcast over a period of time. This is an especially useful feature if you are sending a call-to-action message that will direct end users to your business or call center.
   • If your message is time-sensitive, you can set an expiry date after which delayed messages are no longer delivered.
8. When you are ready, click the Send Now to immediately send the MMS broadcast, or if you selected to send later, click Schedule.
9. Click OK to confirm.

Previewing messages

If your broadcast message includes variables, then you may wish to preview the messages before they are sent. Previewing lets you see the exact message text that will appear for each of your end users. For some users, previewing may be mandatory. Previewing is available for SMS broadcasts only.

To preview messages, select the Preview the broadcast before sending check box before sending or scheduling the broadcast.

The Broadcast Preview pop-up will appear once you click Preview and Send or Preview and Schedule. From here you can scroll through each message, or search for specific phone numbers to check.

The Broadcast is only sent (or scheduled) once you have clicked Send or Schedule at the bottom of this pop-up.

Note: The Broadcast Preview pop-up box will also tell you if any of the recipients are in a blacklist (in which case, the message will not be sent to them). This message only appears if the broadcast is sent through a virtual SMS account with a configured blacklist.