Intended Purpose
This Campaign SMS feature is useful for any situation where you want to automatically notify a Contact based on action the Contact has taken – for example, send a “next step” message when they submit a web form. And when that Contact replies to your automated SMS the reply can go directly to a person in your company who can immediately engage and begin a real-time conversation with that Contact.
So, you can see that Campaign SMS is intended to be a personal communications tool.
But please note, this Campaign SMS feature is not intended for broadcast marketing. Do not use it with the intention of sending an SMS to a large number of Contacts at one time. The Carriers monitor usage and will shut down senders they consider to be broadcast marketing. Broadcast marketing messages are intended to be sent from Short Code numbers rather than regular phone numbers.
If you need to send a large volume of SMS messages you can add the Local Presence add-on in conjunction with this Campaign SMS add-on.
Sending Volume
The Campaign SMS feature will allow your campaigns to send a total of 3 SMS text messages per minute. If your campaigns send at pace faster than 3 per minute that’s OK, because the extra messages will be queued and sent on a first-in-first-out basis. However, that queue is limited to 180 messages, so if your campaigns continue sending messages at a pace faster than 3 per minute you will eventually reach the limit of your queue. When your queue limit is reached messages after that point will be dropped and you’ll see a ‘402’ error code for the HTTP POST in your Campaigns tab on the Contact Record. After 1 minute your queue will again be able to accept 3 more text messages.
So, if you design your campaigns to send an SMS message in response to customer activity then you won’t have a problem with the sending volume. But if you manually start the SMS campaign by adding a large number of contacts to the campaign at one time then you may reach the volume limits.
If you need to send a large volume of SMS messages you can add the Local Presence add-on in conjunction with this Campaign SMS add-on.
Why does turboDial Drop Messages that Exceed the Queue?
SMS messages are intended to communicate with a sense of “immediacy”. Most users will look at their phone within a few seconds of receiving an SMS. And unlike emails, you would not send an SMS to someone in the middle of their nighttime, since their phone could wake them up with the message alert sound.
So if your campaign sends an excessive number of SMS messages turboDial cannot save them and continue to send them over time. Doing so could result in an SMS you intended to send a 4:00 PM arriving at 11:00 PM, for example.
If you need to send a large volume of SMS messages you can add the Local Presence add-on in conjunction with this Campaign SMS add-on.
Important: Be Notified of Failures
If your Campaign SMS HTTP POST causes your queue limit to be exceeded, or has something invalid in the configuration, then the SMS will not be sent. You should create the API Goal in an Infusionsoft campaign that will be triggered if your Campaign SMS fails. You can use that goal to notify you about the failure, for example by applying a tag that causes the contact to appear in a Saved Search report you are monitoring on your Infusionsoft dashboard.
The API Goals for SMS failures can be found in the “Outbound Send Failure” section on the Automation Triggered when Sending and Receiving SMS text messages page.