SMS Integration

We can find the SMS integration in the section dedicated to the different systems in "Integration > Systems".

Within this section, like with any other, we can change the settings, like the color or name of the nodes.

Connector setting

To send SMS through Connectif it's necessary to have an account in one of our connectors.

• At the moment, we have the connector Instasent: it is only necessary to indicate the API "token" from the Instasent account that we'll use to send the text messages.

  

   

  Also, there's a rebound link that you'll have to copy and paste to your Instasent settings to get data on the SMS rebounds. The place where you have to paste that link is in the field "Callback URL" of the used API key settings, in your API Tokens panel within Instasent.

SMS Subscription

The SMS subscription is similar to the email subscription. For this one, we have two fields in the entity, which are _mobilePhoneStatus and _smsSubscriptionStatus. Also, the field used to send the SMS to the contacts is _mobilePhone.

• _mobilePhone: this is a system field that indicates the telephone number of a contact. It gets stored using the format E.164 and always starts with the symbol "+". That's for the code of each country. For example, "+34" (Spain's code). If there is a phone number without code, the system will use the default code for that account's country. 

  This field can be synchronize as follows:

  • Editing the contact's page.
  • Making a contact importation.
  • Using a workflow.
  • Using the special label "contact information" label.
• _mobilePhoneStatus: this field allows you to indicate the status of every contact's phone. These values will be used in the node "Send SMS". The options are: 
  • active: the contact's number will be used to send an SMS.
  • bounced: the system won't try to send a SMS since the last attempts have rebounded.
  • paused: the system won't try to send a SMS since the contact has been paused.
• _smsSubscriptionStatus: this field is used to indicate the status of the contact's subscription. The values will be use in the node "Send SMS", keeping in mind if the messages come in bulk or are transactional. The possible values are:
  • subscribed: the phone of the contact will be use to try and send SMS, no matter if it's in bulk or transactional.
  • unsubscribed: the phone of the contact will be use only to try and send SMS of the transactional type, since the option to send in-bulk won't be available.
  • none: works similarly to the "unsubscribed" status, but in this case, we don't have information about the subscription. It's the default value and it can be modified in the "Custom Fields" section of Connectif.

Node "Send SMS"

This node can be found in the "Actions" category. It has an orange tone to it, like other SMS-related nodes within Connectif.

Settings

It works in a similar way than the "Send email" node, and has three steps:

• SMS: in the first one, we select/create the message we want to send via SMS.

• Settings: after that, we have to select our preferred options for the node.

  

   

  We can select if the SMS will be sent to a contact or if it's an alert. If it's the latter, the SMS received will be from a previously indicated number, which will be the same for all contacts. 

  We can also set up if the SMS is transactional (specific situation normally generated via triggers) or a newsletter type (SMS in-bulk).

  Lastly, we have to write up a "From name", which indicates the sender of the SMS. It's limited to 11 characters because of the SMS protocol.

• Mappings: lets you select the variables and their values of the body text from the SMS, if there is any.

Node "Has Received SMS"

This node works like the other nodes of the condition type and it's used to check if the contact has received any SMS. You can apply different types of filters according to the SMS type, the labels or the date.

Some statistics about SMS with Instasent 

• Open rate around 92%.
• Usual time before opening: 3 min.
• Rate of clicks in link within the SMS: 21%.
• It's estimated that we check out phones around 150 times a day. That means you have 150 opportunities to impact your contacts.