Text Campaigns FAQ

Jump To:

• Text Campaign vs. Reactivation Text Campaign
• Cancel a Campaign
• Preview Your Campaign
• Emojis & Attachments
• Incoming Messages and Replies
• Status 'Unknown' or 'Aborted'
• What Time of Day to Send Texts
• Start Date Time vs. Send Message After

Text Campaign vs. Reactivation Text Campaign

A Text Campaign lets you send one-off text messages to specific contacts or groups.

• Allow you to choose the message, the contacts that will receive the message, and the date/time for the message to be sent. (This is the SMS option on the Campaign page)
• It can be used for simple check-ins, holiday messages, event-specific details, etc. 

Similar to monthly email campaigns, a Reactivation Text Campaign is sent to all of your No Phase contacts. 

• They have the same functionality as Text Campaigns, but they also include drip duration options (9, 30, 90 days)
• Because these are meant to nurture and reactivate, these campaigns are only sent to contacts in 'No Phase'.

Cancel a Campaign

• If the campaign has not been sent yet, deleting it will cancel the campaign, and nothing will be sent to your contacts.
• If the campaign has already started sending, deleting it will not stop it, but it will remove it from your campaign history. We suggest against deleting a sent text campaign since it will affect your data and contact histories. Please contact support if you need assistance with this.

Preview Your Campaign

• We strongly recommend adding yourself and co-workers as contacts to practice sending, scheduling, and replying to messages.
• Below is a template you can use for your first test. Copy and paste this into the message body:

      Hi [Contact.FirstName], this is [Practice.Name]. We're testing our new text messaging tool! Please send a quick reply to this message so that we know it was received. 

Emojis & Attachments

Emojis can be sent and received in the Text Chat Log only. Breakthrough does not support sending pictures, attachments, or emojis to your contacts through text campaigns.

Reasons we restrict emojis in text campaigns:

• They are not universal across cell providers and can sometimes not show up or show up as a different emoji
• Depending on the carrier, they may be considered a segment of your text messages (which means a higher chance of being filtered as spam)
• Emoji require twice as much data to encode than standard alphanumeric characters and can impact the formatting of your message

Incoming Messages and Replies

You'll see a blue dot in the Text Chat log anytime someone replies to a text and it has not been read yet. To view and respond to messages, open the Text Chat inbox. 

1. Open the Text Inbox by going to the Text Chat log tab 
2. Click the 3 horizontal lines button on the left-hand side as shown above.
3. Click the contact that you want to message - you can search for their name, or apply filters to find the contact quicker.
4. Type your message and click 'Send Message'

Status 'Unknown', 'Aborted', 'Undelivered' etc.

If a message fails, you can discover why by going into the Campaigns page and click on 'View Message Logs' (shown below).

The most common causes of a text not being delivered are:

• The number cannot receive a text message (such as a landline) 
• The carrier was not reachable at the time of the text message
• The contact did not have a phone number 
• The contact did not have a valid phone number
  

If you see these errors, you don't need to do anything, but it is helpful to look them over so that you can either update the contact's cell phone number in the system or omit them from future messages. 

What Time of Day to Send Texts

Ideally, marketing messages should be sent between 12pm and 2pm. Ask your CSM for more information and strategy on SMS campaign timings.

Whether it’s a weekday or a weekend, most people are awake and active at noon and are therefore much easier to reach. Sending texts a little after peak daytime hours may also help your message stand out rather than getting lost among other messages.

Start Date Time vs. Send Message After

The Start Date Time field defaults to 8:00 AM on the first day of the campaign. The Campaign will be queued up to send, but the actual time it gets delivered depends on the size of the contact list its going out to, as well as individual phone carrier settings which we have no control over.

Note: With built-in Breakthrough email and SMS campaigns, there's no specific time in the app that the messages send. Some factors that can impact or cause partial delays in send times depend on the number of contacts you're sending to or if it is a high-traffic day with multiple practices sending out messages from the system. However, most campaigns go out within 20 minutes of the start time you select.

Example: In the image above, the text campaign will begin sending on 9/2/2026 at 8:00 AM. (Local time for the practice.)