Let us introduce you to the highly effective channel for customer communication: SMS through ManyChat! Below you'll find the description of the feature and how to use it.
Manychat can send and receive SMS from phone numbers bought you in Twilio through your Twilio account connected to Manychat. We provide solutions to include SMS in your chat marketing campaigns (building flow with SMS nodes, using SMS - keywords automation, collecting sms leads through widgets on your site, live chat solutions, and of course SMS broadcasting). All you need to start using the SMS channel - is to have a Twilio account and phone number.
How do I start sending SMS through ManyChat?
To get started, go to the Settings section and select the SMS subsection. Click on Connect button and fill in your Twilio Account SID, Auth Token, and Phone number you wanted to connect.
After that, click Connect and you’re good to go!
How to find these credentials in Twilio: You can find information about Account SID and Auth Token in Account -> Keys & Credentials section inside your Twilio account or directly on the Twilio dashboard of the account.
Please note! To use this integration, you need to have an upgraded Twilio account. If you have a trial account - Twilio will not provide needed information through API and nothing will work on the Manychat side.
How to build SMS automation:
SMS Message is a type of block that can be accessed from the "Add Step" menu:
You can use an SMS Message block in a similar way as all other ManyChat blocks. However, there are some exceptions:
- You can generate a link automatically. That can be done by clicking on the "Link to another step" button and choosing another block.
- The character limit for one Text Block is 480 characters. 480 characters will be shown as one big Text Message on your mobile device. However, Text Messages have a 160 characters limit and because of that ManyChat counts 160 characters as one Text Message and charges in a similar manner. For example, 480 SMS will be charged as 3 Text Messages. (IMPORTANT!!! When using Emojis, your per-one-Text Message character limit drops from 160 to 70; more on that can be found here)
How to send SMS broadcast:
You can send bulk SMS messages to your contacts with SMS opt-ins. To do that, you need to go to the Broadcasting -> Broadcasts section of ManyChat:
What can affect SMS delivery?
When writing a copy for SMS, carefully examine the content and pay special attention to these “red-flags”:
- Overuse of capital letters
- Overuse of emoticons
- Overuse of exclamation marks and informal words like “hey”, “pssst”, “yooo”,
- Prices
- Spam words like “free”, “won”, “now”, “only”, “sale”
- Links processed by URL shorteners
- Note that keywords like "YES" and "START" that a contact writes in their SMS response will be processed by Twilio automation and not the ManyChat automation! In that case, keywords will be recognized as the opt-in keywords and make that subscribe viable to receive your SMS message (if they are not already viable for that).
- Following the same logic, keywords like "STOP", "UNSTOP", "UNSUBSCRIBE", and "CANCEL" will opt the person out of receiving SMS messages so you won't be able to send them your automated SMS, regardless of how you set up SMS keywords on the ManyChat side!
Used properly, those things can increase your CTR, but be careful! Here are some examples of texts at risk of being marked as spam:
Get a FREE box NOW with any purchase of another box. ONLY TODAY ???
Click link below to add to cart. https://jdkshb.at/s/t3HTiL,1
Hey %%first_name%%, YOU WON!!!!!
Click here to claim your FREE t-shirt https://abcsd.at/s/r44gCC,1
Yoooo bro, GREAT BURGERs and TASTY WINE ???
If you wanna to learn more, simply click the link below. See you SUNDAY!!!!!
HURRY UP and get $10 coupon for BURGER BAR https://dkslkdlklh.at/s/Jh_617,1
How much does it cost?
The SMS channel is available through the PRO plan, but payments for sending SMS messages will be handled by Twilio, not Manychat. So you should consult Twilio’s pricing or a Twilio representative to determine your pricing through Twilio.
Where can I see my statistics?
You can see statistics in the SMS block for a specific SMS. Unlike Messenger, the SMS channel does not show open rates.
Please note:
-
You can now import your contacts into the Contacts tab using their phone numbers. More can be found here.
In order to get info on your clients' opt-ins, you can always write to our friendly support! - You can see the Contacts Statistic in your ManyChat Settings > SMS. Even if you opt your SMS contacts out of receiving further SMS messages, their phone numbers will still be contributing to that statistic. This is done for events when such a contact decides to re-subscribe back to your SMS messages by sending an SMS to your phone number.
- It's important that the phone number looks like +12345678901 or 12345678901 for them to work correctly. If the contact entered the number incorrectly, for example, with brackets or dashes, it will still be added to System Field. ManyChat will clean out unnecessary characters and prepare the number for sending SMS. However, make sure that the country code is always present in the phone number in order for the SMS messages to be viable.