SMS campaigns
Overview
An SMS gets read. That is its strength and its risk: it arrives even when nobody wanted it. This channel is therefore governed more strictly than email — not out of caution, but because the law requires it.
SMS consent is its own consent. Someone who agreed to the newsletter has not agreed to marketing SMS. They are two consents, and they are kept apart.
The unsubscribe is its own too. Whoever replies "STOP" is suppressed for SMS — the newsletter continues. And the other way round.
Sending runs through the same path as everything else. There is no second send path and no second accounting; only the channel is different.
Core tasks
Create a campaign. Name, text, audience. The audience is the same one used for email — a second recipient list for SMS would exist otherwise, and it would stay maintained only as long as someone remembered it.
Watch the number of messages. Below the field you see how many messages the text breaks into. 161 characters cost twice as much as 160 — you cannot see that in the text, and otherwise only the invoice notices. Some providers count accented characters double; when in doubt, write shorter.
Send. A separate step that must be confirmed. Every recipient is checked: confirmed SMS consent and no SMS suppression. Whoever has neither gets nothing — without an error, because that is not an error.
Read replies. Replies to an SMS land in the ticket inbox, like an email. A "STOP" is additionally recorded as an unsubscribe.
Fields in detail
| Field | Required | Values / format | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
Name name | yes | text | What the send is called in list and reporting. |
Text body | yes | text | The message. Brevity really counts here: beyond the character limit the SMS is split into several and charged several times; special characters lower the limit further. The mask shows the number of parts. |
Audience audienceId | yes | an existing audience | Who receives the message. Only recipients with a mobile number and a valid consent for this channel — consent for email does not cover SMS. |
Scheduled for scheduledAt | no | point in time | When it is sent. Empty means immediately. Mind the hour — an SMS at 11 pm is received differently from a mail. |
Brand brandId | no | one of your brands | Which sender identity is used. |
Every SMS costs money at the provider. The send shows the number of recipients and the parts per message before the start — the only chance to notice an expensive mistake.
Settings & permissions
- Module
module.sms. octi.sms.view— see campaigns and history (role Sales).octi.sms.manage— create and edit campaigns. Moves nothing (role Sales).octi.sms.send— trigger sending. **Chargeable, elevated protection, assigned to no role
by default** — as with email sending.
- A Twilio account must be configured (integration
twilio, with a sender number). Without it
nothing goes out; that is a loud failure, not a silent one.
FAQ & troubleshooting
Out of 5000 contacts only 40 received anything. That is normal for a freshly built list: only recipients with confirmed SMS consent count. Newsletter consent does not apply here.
Someone wrote "STOP" — do they still get the newsletter? Yes. The suppression applies to SMS only. Throwing both into one pot would be the convenient and the wrong answer.
Sending cost more than expected. Check the message count below the text field. A text of 200 characters is not one message but two — and is billed twice.
Can I take a campaign back? No. A sent SMS is out. Hence the confirmation before sending and the separate permission for it.
A sent campaign can no longer be edited. Deliberate: a text that changes afterwards makes the question "what did the recipients read?" unanswerable.