Working with Mobile Messages in MobileStudio

Back with the next chapter of the MobileStudio Series – Working with Mobile Messages.

The Marketing Cloud MobileStudio lets you create SMS/MMS messages that you can send out either as part of a Mobile Campaign, or as a Journey interaction. The studio comes with out of the box templates, that can get you started with your mobile message, depending upon the type of message that you want to send out to your mobile audience. So, choose your template based on your business need. The below infographic will help you get to know which template to choose, depending upon the type of message you want to trigger:

Mobile Message Send methods

As part of the mobile message creation, you will be asked to select the “Send Method” that you want to use to send out the mobile message. This Send method selection is dictated by the business need(s) that you want to achieve. The following Send Methods will be available to you as part of the message creation process:

• Schedule – In simple terms, use this option when you want to send a one-off or mass SMS messages from MobileConnect, either immediately or at a scheduled date & time. You would need to select the Short/Long code, select the receiving audience, define the message content and then either activate immediately or can schedule it for a later date & time

• API Trigger – Use this method when you want to trigger an SMS message via an API call. An example here would be sending out an Order confirmation SMS to anyone who has made an e-commerce transaction on your website

• Automation – Use this method when you want to send out an SMS message as part of an Automation flow that you build inside the Automation Studio of Marketing Cloud. An example here could be a confirmation text message to be sent out as and when an Automation activity (like data import, export etc.) gets completed

• Interaction – Use this method when you want to send out an SMS message as part of a Journey. A simple example of this could be to send a confirmation SMS out to email recipients, who have opened you email, clicked through a link and have registered on a landing page

Key Considerations while building your Mobile message

1. Text messages from SFMC MobileConnect can be anywhere between 70 to 160 characters. Anything more than that is automatically split into multiple messages by MobileConnect.
2. MobileConnect also offers a “Concatenate Message” feature, that allows you to multiple messages into one. However, do take note that in such case, the concatenation reduces the maximum character count by 7 characters. This means that your maximum character count goes down to 153 from 160
3. You can send links as part of your Mobile message and can track subscriber clicks, as a measure of your SMS campaign effectiveness (how many clicked the link). It is recommended to use a URL shortner (like Bitly) for including such links within your text message

You can always refer to the Salesforce Marketing Cloud Knowledge Article on MobileConnect Message Creation.

That’s all for today folks. Will come back soon with my next post as I continue to further explore the Salesforce Marketing Cloud platform. Till then keep learning & keep sharing!