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How to send text messages / SMS with Friendly Automate

In this guide you will learn how to integrate Twilio (an SMS provider) into the Friendly Automate marketing platform and how to actually send SMS with Friendly Automate.

You

  • will create an account on Twilio
  • will learn how to 'rent' a phone number from Twilio to use as sender
  • learn how to turn on the Twilio Plugin on Friendly Automate, that we pre-installed for you
  • will be able to set up your own feedback loops to manage sms unsubscribes

Setup Twilio and connect it with Friendly Automate

As a first step, let's create an account on Twilio: https://www.twilio.com/try-twilio

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Verify your email address:

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Just click on the link in the email.

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This is the part, when you need to verify your phone number as well:

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You can skip the onboarding process, just click on 'to the dashboard'

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On the next screen we need to get our number. If you are just testing, you can go for the test number. But if you want to send SMS in a live environment, you'd need to get your own. Anyway, as first step, we'll get the trial number.

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After choosing the trial number, we have the opportunity to buy our own number.

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Click on the search button to see all the numbers available to you. These numbers will be the 'senders' in your SMS campaigns.

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Once you purchased a number, you'll be able to see it on your dashboard in Twilio.

We will need your Account SID and Auth Token from this page.

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Let's head back to Friendly Automate. Let's open the plugins among the settings.

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And click on the Twilio logo here (1), and fill in your freshly aquired Twilio credentials into the form.

(2) Your Account SID

(3) The Auth Token

Don't forget to publish it (4).

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Once your connection is working, you can click on the Features tab.

Fill out your phone number, using the international format starting with a +.

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Very important: don't activate click tracking in Text messages. If you do, you'll send 5 SMS long emails with a very long link.
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That's it, you can send messages. However we are not done yet. What kind of automation would it be without a feedback loop. Let's head back to Twilio, and open the phone number you intend to use.

Here you can add a webhook and close the loop of messaging.

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Make sure you use the right formatuse: use your Friendly Automate domain, and add /sms/callback

We have to complete the final step. Head back to Friendly Automate and click on the newly added Twilio SMS Reader Plugin.in the settings:

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Click on it and fill out your Twilio Data.

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Typical unsubscribe keywords would be (separated by commas) 'STOP, stop, Stop'

Now you are really done!

It's time to see how SMS sending works!

Send SMS with Friendly Automate

After integrating SMS you are able to build in text messages into your campaigns. As a first step you'll need to create the messages you want to send. Open the channels and click on the Text Messages link.

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When you create your text message, make sure you calculate the length. Here is a handy tool: https://www.lettercount.com/

Fill out the internal name (1) of the SMS and the text itself (2). You can send 160 characters in 1 SMS, if the text is longer, it will be broken down into multiple messages.

Once you created your messages, head back to the campaigns. From now on you'll be able to choose send text message as an action item.

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Happy messaging!

Do you have any questions? We are happy to help you via 📧 email, ☎️ phone and 👩‍💻 video calls.

Click here to go back to the main help page:

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