Overview
The new SMS campaign features enable the campaign managers to run their SMS campaigns to up to 5lakh contacts along with the features like the ability to send static and dynamic SMS, Campaign level Reports, Campaign level Inbox, and the ability to mark an ongoing campaign completed, and much more. A campaign manager can get all the information specific to a campaign in one place, like Campaign Details, Campaigns Stats and Campaign Calls.
Key Benefits
Static and dynamic campaigns- Now campaign managers can choose the type of SMS they would like to send and personalize content to target recipients through static(same content to the array of numbers) and dynamic SMS(different message content for each number).
Campaign Level Report - Users can download individual campaign level reports, once the campaign is completed.
Mark As Completed - Any ongoing campaign can be marked as completed and the remaining numbers in the list will not be sent the SMS. A campaign should be first paused in order to mark it as completed. Reports will be available for such completed campaigns.
Campaign & SMS Details: Each campaign has a standalone view of all campaign level summary, real-time stats, and SMS details (outbox view)
Send Test SMS: Users can test the campaign before they can initiate it by sending a test SMS of the campaign to any contact.
Estimated cost: You can calculate the estimated cost of the campaign in prior without going through the hassle of going through the report and filtering statuses.
Navigating the SMS campaigns
The New Campaigns (Campaigns new) option can be found under the Tools menu on the left hand panel of the dashboard (see the highlighted box in the image above).
The SMS campaign can be found next to the call campaign button(see the highlighted box in the image above).
Create SMS campaign
In order to create a new SMS campaign, follow these steps:
Click on the Create SMS Campaign button on the Campaign home page. It will open the page where the user has to provide campaign details.
Fill in the campaign details such as campaign name, campaign type, selecting the list, date and time, selecting/entering the content of the SMS
Campaign Name: Name of the campaign - minimum of three characters
SMS content type: It will be either “Static” or “dynamic”. Choose Static when your SMS content is the same for all the audience and choose Dynamic in case you want to send personalized SMS to your audience.
If Static is selected, you will get an option to select the contact details from the list that are already saved(You can create lists from the List page). You can select up to 5 lists per campaign.
If dynamic is selected, you will have to upload a list.
Only 1 list is allowed which can contain up to 10 lacs of contacts along with variables ( up to 5 variables are allowed). Maximum file size of 60 MB can be uploaded.
This list should have numbers as a mandatory column.
DLT Entity ID: Your Entity Id is registered on the DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) portal of operators in India. This is mandatory to be passed for SMS towards Indian destinations (Learn More about DLT). This will be a read-only option.
Select a template: You have two options here. You can select an existing template that is saved with us (Exotel) OR you can provide DLT-approved templates and other details manually.
Selecting a saved template
Selecting the template will automatically fill the below-mentioned parameters.
A pop-up will open with all the approved templates in your account.
You can search the templates with template ID or body and select the template.
If the DLT template ID is not present, you can click on the hyperlink to update your DLT Template ID and will be redirected to the SMS Settings page to edit this information. Here is how you can get your SMS Template and DLT Template ID and add it.
Once the DLT template is selected, DLT Template ID and SMS type will be auto populated
DLT Sender ID: Please select the appropriate Sender ID ( For Transactional and Transaction opt-in SMS type select Text sender ID and for promotional SMS type select numeric sender id)
SMS Content: Will be fetched from the template. If SMS Content Type is Static the content can not be edited. This is to avoid manual errors as the content will remain static. If SMS Content-Type is Dynamic, you can replace only the variables. Please click on the text box to map the variables in the SMS body. Clicking on the text box will show the available columns for mapping the variable, These variables are fetched from the CSV uploaded.
If the manual is selected, you need to fill in all the DLT details manually. Please be careful in adding your DLT Template ID and content as we will not validate the same, recommend entering these details and trying a test SMS to be sure if the correct details are uploaded.
DLT Template ID: Content Template Id against the SMS body registered with the DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) portal of operators in India.
SMS Type: SMS type based on the template registered on DLT in India with the below options
transactional (Service Implicit content)
transactional_opt_in (Service Explicit content)
promotional (Promotional content with numeric sender ID)
Sender ID: SMS Sender ID is the header as approved on the DLT Platform with which your outbound SMS will be sent.
SMS Content: Please type the SMS content manually. Make sure the content is DLT whitelisted ( the content should be the same as the approved template). In order to replace any variables from the CSV type @@. It will show you all the available variable names ( column names of the CSV). You can select variables as per your requirements.
Start Date and Time: The campaign will start from the date and time specified here. You can not select a time less than the current time. Start time will always be 15 mins ahead from the current time.
End Date and Time: Campaign will end from the date and time specified here. By default, it is set to 30 days from the Start Date and Time. The minimum end time that can be set is 2 hours from the start time. This is an optional step and is recommended to use only if the campaign is time critical.
Campaign Status callback URL: For each campaign, our server will make an HTTP POST request to this URL with the POST parameters
campaign_sid-an alphanumeric unique identifier of this campaign
date_created- time when the campaign was created
date_updated- time when the campaign was updated
date_started- time when the campaign started
status- one of in-progress OR completed
reports- link to the campaign reports ( null when the status is not completed)
3)Send a Test SMS: After filling in all the details for creating an SMS campaign, before creating the campaign there is an option to send a Test SMS. Once that option is clicked a Pop-up page will open displaying the information entered like DLT Entity ID, DLT Template ID, DLT Sender ID, SMS Type, and SMS content. You will have to enter the below details to send a Test SMS
Phone Number: Mobile number to which SMS has to be sent. Preferably in E.164 format along with the country has to be entered. Make sure the number is on the DND list.
Custom Field(Optional): You can enter custom fields ( variables) for whom the test SMS will be sent. This is an optional exercise.
Note: We recommend sending a Test SMS before starting the campaign when Selecting the template option is chosen.
4) Click Create SMS campaign: Once the campaign has begun it will be part of the list on the SMS campaign page and a momentary banner will appear to confirm that the SMS campaign was Successfully created as shown below.
View List of SMS Campaigns
On the SMS campaigns landing page, it shows the summary of all the SMS campaigns. Whenever a new SMS campaign is created the campaign starts appearing in this list.
The list contains the details of the campaign such as Campaign Name, Campaign Type, Schedule Time, Status, and Performance
There is an action menu associated with each campaign. This action menu has options to Pause/Resume/Mark as Completed/Archive/Download campaign report, based upon the state of the campaign.
Pause - Stop sending SMS to more numbers as part of the campaign that is in progress. We can pause only scheduled and in-progress campaign
Resume - Resume sending SMS to numbers that were not sent SMS earlier. You can resume only paused campaigns.
Complete - Mark the entire campaign as Completed. The remaining numbers are marked as “failed_expired”. You can mark only paused campaigns as completed.
Archive - Mark a campaign as archived. Only completed and scheduled campaigns can be marked as archived.
Download - Download completed SMS campaign reports. ( Attach a sample report)
Filter - The list of campaigns can be filtered based on the campaign status.
Search - The list of campaigns is searchable by Campaign Name (minimum three characters to start the search).
Sort - The list of campaigns can be sorted by Campaign Name and Schedule Time.
Performance- Shows the performance of a campaign with three high-level statues - Completed, Failed & Scheduled. On hovering failed count, failed is further divided into subcategories - Failed SMS, Failed Expired SMS, Failed DND SMS, Failed No Attempt, SMS Failed No Balance, Invalid SMS. On hovering scheduled count, scheduled is further divided into submitted SMS and Scheduled SMS.
SMS Campaign Summary/Stats
Clicking on the Individual Campaign will take the users to the campaign summary/stats page. The action can be changed from this page as well. The entire page is divided into two sections. On the top users can see the campaign details along with stats and at the bottom users can view the call details of that specific campaign.
Campaign Details: will show the details of the campaigns such as Lists, Entity ID, Sender ID, Template ID, SMS Type, Starts at, Expiry Time, Content, and Estimated cost.
Estimated cost: You can calculate the estimated cost of your SMS campaign. The cost is calculated based on the number of contacts, the number of the characters in an SMS body and your SMS bill plan. For Dynamic SMSs, the SMS body varies with the variable replaced. Currently, the cost is estimated assuming all the numbers are domestic Indian numbers. Calculating the estimated cost may take some time to calculate. There is an option to Get the estimated cost which will fetch the latest cost computation. You can use this option when you have changed SMS campaigns input parameters such as SMS body, lists, or bill plan. This option will not be available once the campaign starts. The estimated cost is an approximate value only, the actual cost can differ.
Campaign Stats: This section shows the number level statistics of that campaign. You can click on the ‘refresh’ icon to get the latest data. There is a delay of maximum of 5 minutes with respect to real-time data. A number can be in following possible states in a campaign:
Scheduled: The numbers that are yet to be sent out SMS in the campaign.
Submitted: This means that the SMS you have sent has been submitted from our system to SMS Gateway
Sent: The SMS was successfully delivered to the handset
Invalid:
Failed: SMSes that failed because the number is invalid, unreachable, etc.
Failed DND: SMS that failed because the number was added to the NDNC registry.
Failed Expiry: The message was sent to the operator and may have been retried several times within the default network SMS expiration duration. The message request has now expired.
Failed No Attempt: SMS that were not sent because the campaign was marked as completed in between, or the end time reached before the list was exhausted, or campaign has hit the maximum allowed duration of 30 days
Failed No Balance: SMS that were not Sent because of low balance in your Exotel account
View SMS Details
This section shows the list of SMS that is sent as a part of the SMS campaign. It captures SMS details such as Number, Name(Valid if the contact is saved in the address book), Time, Status, and Detailed Status. It also has an action menu that shows more details about the SMS like Sent time, Sender ID, Sent to and SMS reference ID.
Search - the SMS detail list is searchable by a number
Sort - the call details can be sorted by Created date
SMS Status - could be one of sent / failed / failed-dnd / submitted.
