Tool for Bulk Text / SMS Marketing with Twilio

Jun 24, 2023 · 6 min read

For a business looking to grow 🚀, reaching out to new customers and to get repeat customers is very important. There are many ways to spread words about your business, for example, newspaper ad, radio ad, TV ad, billboard ad, search engine ad, social media ad, bargain websites, email campaigns, and last but not the least, sms / text marketing campaigns.

Each option can have its own benefits depending upon your marketing strategy and budget. Some marketing options such as newspaper, radio, tv and billboard ads can’t be narrowed down to a small segment. Search engine and social media campaigns can be designed to target a smaller segment, but still are not direct. SMS and emails are the most direct marketing channels.

Text messaging (SMS) has a higher open rate than emails, which makes it a very attractive for marketing communications, especially to attract customers with offers and promotions. In the era of short messaging and videos, SMS which enforces a limit on number characters, could be used to get directly to the point without wasting anyone’s time. When compared to other options, SMS may be cost effective as well.

SMS open and response rates are as high as 98% and 45%, respectively — in contrast to corresponding figures of 20% and 6% for email.

Text Marketing: Do’s and Don’ts

Keep the content concise, clear and direct.
Don’t send paragraphs of text which becomes harder to read, and would lose recipient’s interest.
Try out sending messages at different times to find out which timing works best for your audience.
Include a small size image, gif or video to make the message more interesting.
Give an option to opt-out and respect it. May be the first message can let the recipient know that they can opt-out by replying STOP.
Use phone numbers collected from the customers with their understanding that it may be used for promotions.

What is offered by Sociocs?

Run Twilio bulk SMS / text marketing campaigns.
Schedule a campaign to send messages at a later time.
Send SMS / texts from a contact list or from an ad-hoc file.
Support for sending mass SMS / texts with Twilio Messaging Services.
Message personalization using dynamic variables.
Auto messaging to repeatedly send bulk messages from any API source (in BETA).
You don’t have to worry about Twilio API rate limit or throughput, our software handles that for you.

How to do bulk SMS/Text marketing?

Step 1 - Create an account on Twilio

We support Twilio, a cloud CPaaS that allows you to incorporate communication features into your existing applications, for SMS communication on our platform. Sociocs offers a front-end for SMS conversations, which you will use for your day-to-day needs, while the Twilio services act as the back-end, which handles the delivery of the SMS.

Why do we require you to create a separate account for SMS?

You get transparent pricing directly from one of the biggest and most reliable SMS providers in the industry. Visit Twilio pricing page to find out their rates. Our customers have seen up to 70% SMS cost reduction when switching from other services.
You get another source of truth to verify delivery of the text messages.

Step 2 - Add “SMS (with Twilio)” channel on Sociocs

Sign up on app.sociocs.com, if not done already. During the sign-up steps, make sure to select “Start a Free Trial” under “Standard Plan”.
Select “SMS (with Twilio)” in the “Connect a new channel” page. If you are an existing user, after logging in, click on “Channels” menu on the top, click on “+” button to go to the “Connect a new channel” page.
Finish the channel setup by following the instructions.

Step 3 - Send bulk messages

Create a template (Optional)

You can skip this step if you do not wish to create a reusable template.

Go to “Templates” page from the top dropdown menu.
Add a new template with the text message you are planning to send.
You can add below personalization variables in the template text, which will be dynamically added by us when sending the text message from either the information we already have or from the CSV file you will upload at the time of sending the messages.
1. {{BUSINESS_NAME}} - Adds your business name
2. {{CUSTOMER_NAME}} - Adds recipient’s name
3. You can use any column header from your file as a variable too. For example, if you want to send unique promotion code per recipient, and your file has a column with header “promotion_code”, you can add it to the template as {{promotion_code}}.

Schedule the campaign

Go to “Bulk job” page from the left sidebar.
Select the template (if created) or type the message text to be sent. You can also use personalization variables as mentioned in the “Create a template” section above.
If you would like to send an image or a video with the message, upload it after checking the “Attach media file” checkbox.
Select the country (dial) code for the recipient phone numbers (e.g. +1 for US or Canada). If the phone numbers in the file already have country codes, you should check the checkbox below the dropdown. With this checkbox checked, you can also send messages to recipients in multiple countries by prepending phone numbers with applicable country codes.
Upload a CSV file with phone numbers. The CSV file doesn’t need to have columns in any specific order. You will provide column headers, in the next step. File needs at least a phone number column. A name column is recommended. You can also have other columns for additional personalization as mentioned in the “Create a template” section above.
Provide the recipient name column header, if the column is available in the file.
Provide the phone number column header in the file. A value for this field is required.
Select “Send now” or a date & time to schedule it for later, and click “Next”.
On the confirmation pop-up, verify all the information, and click “Confirm & send”.
Congratulations! You have scheduled your first bulk text campaign.

Check out our related articles:

To streamline your customer engagement efforts across multiple channels including text messaging, choose the Sociocs Inbox that combines all conversations into a single place.

You can use either our website or mobile app or both. Don’t forget to enable browser and mobile app notifications to get promptly notified for new messages.