Text Campaigns

Jump To:

• Why You Should Use Text Messaging for Marketing
• How to Build Your Subscriber List
• Planning Your Message
• HIPAA Compliance
• Audience
• Text Campaign vs. Reactivation Text Campaign
• Reactivation Campaign Duration
• Create a Reactivation Text Campaign
• Create a New 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
• View Campaign Details 
• Supported Placeholders
• Why does my inbox look empty?
• Wrong Sender Name
• Opt-In to Texts

Why You Should Use Text Messaging for Marketing

The engagement rate for SMS marketing is six times higher than for email marketing; 90% of people open a text message within 30 minutes of receiving it!

• Texting is cost-effective and allows you to quickly and easily check in on your patients or promote services without running ads.

How to Build Your Subscriber List

By default, any lead that registers on a Breakthrough landing page consents to receive messages from your practice. Contacts can unsubscribe at any time by replying STOP.

• Include a field on your intake forms to let your patients confirm how they want to be contacted; some may prefer that you text them.
• Consider a pop-up on your website to invite visitors to text your tracking number for updates about promotions or workshops.
• Use a keyword to make opt-in easy: 
   "Text HAVEN to 6042109328 to stay in the loop about upcoming promotions and events!"
• Offer an incentive:
   "Text LASER to 6042109328 to sign up for texts and get 10% off your first laser treatment"

Planning Your Message

Consider the 4 “I”s when planning your marketing calendar:

HIPAA Compliance

The HIPAA Privacy Rule permits healthcare providers to use text messages to discuss health issues and treatment with their patients, provided they apply reasonable safeguards when doing so and that the patient has provided consent.

For more info about how Breakthrough protects personal health information (PHI), click here.

Audience

• Reactivation campaigns (email or SMS) are only sent to Contacts in 'No Phase' and 'Pending.' 
• Contacts who have unsubscribed to texts will not receive reactivation campaign texts. 
• Your reactivation text will be sent to contacts in batches over 9, 30, or 90 days. The size and frequency of these batches depend on how many contacts you have.
  •   Example: If you have 1000 contacts in No Phase and choose a 90-day duration, each week, 78 contacts will receive the Reactivation Message.

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
• 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 duration options (9, 30, 90 days)
• Because these are meant to nurture and reactivate, these campaigns are only sent to contacts in 'No Phase' or 'Pending.'

Reactivation Campaign Duration

9 Days

• This is best used during your slowest time of year or if you have a smaller contact list and primarily want to market to your past patients.

30 Days

• This can be used to maintain the current volume in your practice by keeping your contacts engaged while not overwhelming your lead converters.
• This is a good option for a practice that is experiencing frequent last-minute cancellations and wants to fill those spots.

90 Days

• This option is best for practices that want to stay engaged with their contacts but don't need an immediate "boost" in visits.
• This is also the best option for practices that are struggling with staffing or who are worried about being able to respond to replies.

Create a Reactivation Text Campaign

1. Click the Reactivation tab
2. Choose Text Campaigns
3. On the right-hand side, click the blue Reactivation button
4. Click the blue + New button
5. Set a name for your Campaign (this is internal only and won't be shown to contacts)
6. Add your text message to the Message field
7. Choose which days of the week to exclude, if needed. 
   • This prevents texts from being sent on certain days of the week, for example, if you're closed on Sundays.
8. Click the blue Next button
9. Choose the Campaign Duration. The shorter the duration, the more contacts will get the text each week. 
10. Choose the Campaign Start Date and Time 
11. Click Submit to save your new campaign

Create a New Text Campaign

1. Click the Reactivation tab
   
2. Choose Text Campaigns
3. Click the blue + New button on the top-right
4. To filter the contacts for your message, use the drop-down to select a specific phase and click Apply 
   
5. Scroll down and click Next on the bottom-right of the page
6. Set a name for your Campaign (this is internal only and won't be shown to contacts)
7. Select a Campaign Start Date and Time
   
8. Add your text message to the Message field
9. Click Submit to save your new Text Campaign

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 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 red notification bubbles in the Chat Log anytime someone replies to a text. To view and respond to messages, open the Text Inbox.

1. Open the Text Inbox by going to the Chat Log tab
2. From the dropdown menu, select 'All Messages' 
3. Click the contact that you want to message 
4. Type your message and send it using the airplane button

Status 'Unknown' or 'Aborted'

If a message fails, you can discover why by clicking the eye icon in the 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. 

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 12:00 AM on the first day of the campaign. Messages will begin sending at the time shown in the Send Message After field.

We recommend scheduling text messages to send between 11am-5pm for best results. Depending on the size of your contact list, messages may go out in batches but will send as close to the chosen time as possible.

Example: In the image above, the text campaign will begin sending on 7/11/2024 at 11:00 AM.

View Campaign Details 

On the right-hand side of your campaign, click the ‘Eye’ icon to see:

• Campaign ID and Name
• When the campaign was created
• When it will start sending and, after the campaign is sent, what time it finished sending
• Message Body, including placeholders

On the details page, click "View Contacts" to see:

• Contacts that will receive the message
• If any contacts are missing a phone number or email address 
• If a contact has unsubscribed to emails or texts

Tip: To quickly edit a contact, click the Contact ID in the first column 

After your campaign has been sent, click "View Message Logs" to see:

• When the message was created 
• The deliverability status
• The contact ID
• The number the message was sent from, and the number it was sent to
• The exact message your contact received
• When the message was confirmed sent 

Tip: If the message status is "Aborted" or "Unknown", click the eye icon in the Actions column to find out why.

Supported Placeholders

The below placeholders can be copied/pasted into your text message body so that each contact receives a personalized message. 

Why does my inbox look empty?

• By default, the text inbox will show Unread Texts first. If you aren't seeing any texts in your inbox, be sure you've toggled to the different text views shown below.

Wrong Sender Name

• The sender will always show in the inbox as the first user in your list. 
• The recipient of the text can not see this and it does not pull into any texts or automated messaging. 

Opt-In to Texts

Contacts that want to opt-in for texts (either after unsubscribing previously or as a general opt-in) can resubscribe by texting START to your tracking number. 

You cannot manually re-subscribe contacts to Text like you can with Email. 

The Email Clean-Up Campaign also contains a link to subscription preferences, which your contacts can update anytime.