Tag: segmentation

Increase the deliverability of your text messages

One of the biggest challenges in using text messaging for business purposes is to increase the deliverability of messages.

Here are some tips to ensure the deliverability of your text messages, all in complying by the Acceptable Use Policy rules.

Increase the deliverability of your text messages

Here are some common things you can do that your messages are delivered and read:

  1. Get permission from your recipients. You can include an opt-in message on your website, social media channels, or even in-store.
  2. Keep your message short and to the point. Avoid using jargon or complicated language.
  3. Personalize your messages using aNinja’s template variables. Use the recipient’s name or other relevant information to make your message more personal.
  4. Use recognizable sender name: Ensure that your messages clearly identify who is sending the message. Avoid using shortcodes or numbers as your sender name, as this can appear spammy.
  5. Send your messages at an appropriate time, taking into account the recipient’s time zone and daily schedule. Define the sending time in aNinja’ settings.
  6. Inform your recipients how they can opt-out of receiving any future emails.
    1. Ultimately, add an unsubscribe link to your tests. Basically, the initial message needs to include the following language: Reply STOP, STOPALL, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, or QUIT.
  7. Also, honor opt-out requests: send an automated reply through aNinja triggers.
  8. Additionally, you can segment your recipient list to improve the relevance of your messages. Send targeted messages to specific groups of recipients based on their interests or behaviors.
  9. High key messaging metrics: A high delivery error rate. It indicates you may be attempting to contact numbers that are no longer in service, or are unreachable such as landlines; and/or external carrier filters are refusing to deliver your messages.
  10. Also, you can provide us with your business address; there is an additional verification process (A2P) that we can set up that helps reduce the chances of the carrier systems flagging your text as spam; as long as you follow the above. Reach us at support@aninja.com.
Text Content

Review your text template content to adhere to the messaging policy:

    1. Include Sender identification
    2. And an opt-out language
    3. Also, try and use multi-step sequences to engage customers.
    4. Avoid using spam trigger words such as “free”, “guarantee”, “limited time offer”, and “act now”. Instead, use clear and concise language that accurately conveys your message.
    5. And, don’t overuse abbreviations and emojis. They can be a red flag for spam filters.
    6. Lastly, avoid anything that is illegal or Forbidden:
      • Prescription Medication. Offers for prescription medication that cannot legally be sold over-the-counter are prohibited in the United States.
      • Illegal substances such as Cannabis, CBD, Puff
      • Sex, Hate, Alcohol, Firearms, Tobaco, and Vaping-related.
      • Gambling.
      • Fraudulent messages.
      • Malicious content, such as malware or viruses.
      • Any content that is designed to intentionally evade filters.

aNinja is forced to comply and temporarily block your text sending capability if it is being flagged as spammy by upstream carriers. Make sure to comply with all the above practices to avoid the carriers filters flagging your texts as spam.

Text template examples

These templates should serve as a starting point, and you should customize them to fit your business needs and communication style and increase deliverability of your messages.

Promotional message:

“Hello {{Contact.name}}, we’re offering a limited-time discount of 20% on all our products. Use code XXXX at checkout. Offer ends [date]. Reply STOP to opt-out.”

New product launch:

“Hey {{Contact.name}}, we’re excited to announce the launch of our new [product]. Get yours now and receive a 10% discount using code NEW10 at checkout. Reply STOP to opt-out.”

Limited-time offer:

“Hello {{Contact.name}}, our [product/service] is now available at a discounted price of [price]. This offer ends [date]. Don’t miss out! Reply STOP to opt-out.”

Flash sale

“Hi {{Contact.name}}, for the next 24 hours only, we’re offering a 15% discount on all our products. Use code FLASH15 at checkout. Hurry, this sale ends soon! Reply STOP to opt-out.”

Referral program

“Hey {{Contact.name}}, refer a friend and receive a $20 credit towards your next purchase. Your friend will receive a 10% discount on their first order. Share the love! Reply STOP to opt-out.”

Seasonal promotion

“Hello {{Contact.name}}, get into the holiday spirit with our festive [product/service]. Enjoy a 20% discount using code HOLIDAY20 at checkout. Happy holidays! Reply STOP to opt-out.”

 

Relevant articles:

A few things you want to consider before sending out texts

Avoid your messages being marked as spam

SMS Encoding GSM-7 and UCS-2

In this article, we explain the SMS encoding and explore two common methods: GSM-7 and UCS-2

In the world of SMS messaging, understanding the nuances of GSM-7 and UCS-2 encoding is key to ensuring efficient and cost-effective communication.

Overview

When it comes to sending SMS messages, not all characters are created equal.

In fact, the way your text is encoded can greatly impact the number of text segments sent. It also impacts the cost of sending those messages. And even whether or not your recipients can properly receive your messages.

What is SMS Encoding

It refers to the process of converting text characters into a format that can be transmitted over a mobile network. Since SMS messages have limitations in terms of character count, encoding is necessary to ensure that messages are transmitted efficiently.

GSM-7 Encoding

GSM-7 is a widely used encoding standard that allows for the transmission of text messages in a compact form.

It supports a set of 160 characters. It also includes uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and common punctuation marks.

However, not all characters are supported in GSM-7. Some special characters – accented letters – and non-Latin characters are not included in the GSM-7 character set. And they require a different encoding method.

Messages containing only GSM-7 characters can contain up to 160 characters in a single, non-segmented message. GSM-7 messages of more than 160 characters will be split into 153-character segments.

UCS-2 Encoding

UCS-2 is a universal character encoding standard. It can represent almost any character from any writing system in the world.

It uses 16 bits to represent each character, making it capable of encoding a much wider range of characters compared to GSM-7.

And it’s used when messages contain characters that are not supported in GSM-7: such as non-Latin scripts, emoji, or special characters.

Messages with one or more UCS-2 characters can contain up to 70 characters in a single, non-segmented message. UCS-2 messages of more than 70 characters will be split into 67-character segments.

Implications of GSM-7 and UCS-2 Encoding

The choice of encoding can have significant implications for SMS messaging.

When using GSM-7, each character typically takes up one byte of space. This allows for up to 160 characters in a single SMS message.

However, when using UCS-2, each character takes up two bytes, reducing the maximum character count per message to 70.

This means that messages encoded in UCS-2 may be more expensive. They require more space and may be split into multiple messages (segments), resulting in higher costs.

It’s important to note that if a message contains a mix of GSM-7 and UCS-2 characters, the entire message may be automatically encoded in UCS-2.

Tips for Ensuring Correct SMS Encoding

Here are some tips to avoid unexpected message splitting or higher costs due to UCS-2 encoding:

  1. Use GSM-7 encoding whenever possible: Stick to the GSM-7 character set for your messages to maximize the character count and minimize costs.
  2. Be aware of special characters: Special characters, accented letters, and non-Latin characters may not be supported in GSM-7. And they may require UCS-2 encoding.
  3. Test your messages: Use tools or services that allow you to check if your message can be encoded in GSM-7 or if UCS-2.
  4. Be cautious with text editors: Some text editors may automatically add non-GSM-7 characters; such as angled smart quotes or non-standard spaces. Ensure that your text editor is not inadvertently adding characters that may trigger UCS-2 encoding.

Related articles

Understanding SMS text segments and Billing

Increase deliverability of your text messages

Forbidden message categories for SMS

Avoid your texts being marked as SPAM

Text/SMS Signature

When sending a text/SMS via aNinja, you would want to include a text signature at the bottom.

What’s a text signature

It is a powerful way to convey your professionalism to your readers and give them the information they need to contact you. It is placed at the bottom of each text, which helps leave a great impression and makes you stand out from your peers.

You want to consider the size/segmentation of the text when you include a text signature to avoid being overcharged.

Setting your text/SMS signature in aNinja

  • Login to your aNinja account.
  • Go to Settings > Phone Numbers

  • Click on the edit pen

text signature

  • Type in your signature

text signature

  • And hit Update
  • Now your signature will show at the bottom of each text you send via aNinja.

This signature is sent in bulk texts as well. At the time you create your text sequence, the system grabs the lead info, templates that yo’ve included in the sequence, and the phone number assigned to launch this sequence.

However, if you change the signature after the sequence was launched, the system updates the in-queue steps.

Things to consider before Bulk Texting

Bulk texting is an aNinja great tool that you use to nurture your leads and keep them updated with your latest campaigns, and offers, and send them reminders. Here are a few things to consider before bulk texting.

Things to consider before bulk texting

Here are a few things you would want to consider/check before sending out your text blast.

  • Phone number to send out the texts

To be able to send texts, you want to have a phone number saved in your aNinja account. Either you buy a new phone number from aNinja or you port your own.

  • Leads phone numbers

If possible, provide a mobile number in the lead’s primary contact to ensure delivery of your message.

  • Text segmentation

When preparing a text template, you want to count the characters you’re adding to this text. A text is composed of 160 characters which is considered one segment. If your text exceeds 160 characters, it will be delivered to the recipients anyhow, but you will be overcharged for all extra segments by your phone carrier.

SMS and MMS are encoded by the carriers in different formats to represent the characters and special characters used in the message.

The default encoding method is GSM-7, which consumes fewer segments, making it more cost-effective.

However, if the text content includes special characters like emojis or backticks, a different encoding method called UCS-2 is used; it consumes more segments, approximately double the amount of GSM-7.

  • Text limit per bulk/per user

According to your Billing plan (only for Advanced and Pro plans), each user can send 2000 SMS per bulk.

If you wish to increase your SMS limit, either:

1- Reach support at support@aninja.com and they will bump it up for you, with a one-time charge of 15$ for every additional 1000 SMS per user.

2- Or, enable the auto-recharge for Billing, that automatically recharges your add-ons once your plan included add-ons are hit.

Otherwise, limit your bulk texts to 2000 SMS per bulk by segmenting the contacts in the CSV file before you import it.

Understanding SMS Text Segments & Billing

Text messages (SMS) are composed of segments. And each segment is 160 characters of text.

Overview

When you send a text that contains more than 160 characters, it is actually billed as multiple texts that are technically called SMS text segments. And you are billed according to the number of segments and not texts.

When you prepare a text template, or you’re about to send a text to a lead from the lead view, you might like to include emojis and special characters to give it a nice design. But they may count more than one character.

To help you monitor the size of your text template, we’ve included a character counter in text templates. It’s also important to understand how many texts you are billed for.

There is a fixed character limit for one text (160 alphanumeric characters per SMS text segment). Emojis and special characters might be counted differently. You also might want to watch out for invisible characters.

When you launch the text, it is encoded by the telephony carrier in different formats to represent the characters and special characters used in the message. (check the encoding section below).

To avoid your phone number being suspended by the Carrier, you want to refrain from using forbidden message content.

 

What’s an SMS text segment or Segmentation

SMS industries count messages before sending them through your carrier. They count the number of characters that a text contains. Each segment is of 160 characters. But sometimes the character limit exceeds, and one text is converted into two. You’d end up with two messages on your bill.

We’ve exposed in the text template an alert that pops-up when the size of the text overpasses 3 segments.

Maximum Message Length with aNinja Messaging

The aNinja Programmable Messaging platform has a limit of 160 characters in a single incoming or outgoing message request. And that’s based on the text segmentation standard.

When you go over that, the system is automatically creating additional text segments to send out your longer message.

Additional Considerations for Long SMS Messages

Although aNinja supports large message payloads for all Messaging Channels including SMS; it is important to understand that some wireless carriers and devices may behave differently than others when receiving long SMS messages.

In addition, the size of an SMS, and which characters are present (e.g. emojis, signs, and symbols) affect its price, based on segmentation.

Message encoding

Text messages, or SMS, are encoded by the carriers in different formats to represent the characters and special characters used in the message.

The default encoding used in SMS is GSM-7, which consumes fewer segments, making it more cost-effective.

However, if the text content includes special characters like emojis or backticks, a different encoding called UCS-2 is used; it consumes more segments, approximately double the amount of GSM-7.

When it comes to MMS, the encoding used can vary depending on the content of the text. It can be either GSM-7 or UCS-2, depending on whether special characters are included in the message or not.

We highly recommend you learn about GSM-7 and UCS2 encoding methods before sending out your text in Bulk.

Some things to consider
  • Try to keep your texts to a max of 160 characters to have a one-to-one mapping of texts sent to text segments billed.
  • Emojis and backticks count as multiple characters.
  • Eliminate smart quotes, signs, and symbols before sending messages.
  • If you’re using emojis or special characters, try to keep your SMS to 70 characters or below.
  • Count up the SMS text segments before you run a campaign instead of after. When preparing your text template, keep an eye on the segments & characters counters exposed at the bottom corner of the text template. Counters are also available in the text feature in the lead view.
  • Also, check for invisible characters in your template if you pasted the template content from a word document or similar. The characters counter would then indicate e.g. 4 segments when the total number of characters is 270/160, representing 2 segments.
  • Host a media file on your website or a file hosting service. Then add the link to download it in your text. (Instead of sending the media file in MMS).
  • Test sending the text to yourself before sending it out in Bulk.
  • Lastly, please spare a few minutes to check this article for more recommendations before texting. Learning the best practices for sending SMS messages prevents you from being overcharged for additional unnecessary segments.

aNinja Custom Fields

aNinja Custom Fields allow you to add extra information to your lead’s contact. They can be created manually, or dynamically created via API-injected leads.

What is a Custom Field

A custom field is a personalized data field that you can create and define to store specific information in your aNinja account. It allows for customization and flexibility in capturing and organizing data according to unique requirements.

aNinja Custom fields allow you to augment your lead data with additional custom fields of different types.

Moreover, custom fields are searchable within the system and can be used to build smartlists and search for leads and execute a trigger action based on a custom field value changed event.

Types of Custom Fields

  • Text – For text input
    • e.g. Campaign, category, form name, etc…
  • Link – For fields with any link/URL

    • If you designate the type as “Link” here, it will render the URL value as a clickable link in the lead view.

  • Date – Date in different formats
    • Select “Date” or “Datetime” as the type, and indicate the desired date format for displaying the value in the lead view.
  • Dropdown – Fields with multiple options dropdown
    • Select “Dropdown” as the type, and indicate the desired values for displaying in the lead view. Type one value on each like and hit enter to enter the second value.
    • e.g. “Source” with the values “Facebook”, “LinkedIn”, “Twitter”, etc…

Manually adding a custom field

  • On the left sidebar, click on Settings
  • Go to Custom Fields
  • Here, click on Add Custom Field
  • Label the Custom Field,
  • And, select the Type as described above (Text, Link, Date, or Dropdown).
  • Lastly, hit Save

Editing a Custom Field

  • On the left sidebar, click on Settings
  • Go to Custom Fields
  • Click the edit pen next to the field name
  • Make the changes and hit Save

Deleting a Custom Field

  • On the left sidebar, click on Settings
  • Go to Custom Fields
  • Click the edit pen next to the field name
  • Click the recycle bin icon
  • And hit OK to delete.

Adding a custom field to the contacts file / CSV file

When you’re preparing the contacts file, and before you import it to your aNinja account; save any additional information that you have on the leads as custom fields. Like “created date”, “source”, “platform”… Then map them to the aNinja custom fields.

Name the header and prefix it with “Custom.” e.g. Custom.Platform.

Using Custom fields in Triggers

You can use the Custom field value changed as a Trigger event to execute a trigger action.

Related articles:

Segmenting leads using Custom fields

Searching for leads using custom fields

Trigger Custom Field value changed event

 

Sending a text (SMS) via aNinja

Sending a text (SMS) via aNinja is a way to communicate with your leads and nurture them with your campaigns.

What’s an SMS

SMS (Short Message Service) is a text message that can contain up to 160 alphanumeric characters for every segment.

From a business’s perspective, there are hundreds of potential use cases for text message marketing including sales reminders, discounts and special offers, emergency alerts, and more.

The most effective business text messages are timely, informative, compelling, and easy to understand.

While SMS was built to send short messages, MMS focuses on sending multimedia messages.

Sending a text (SMS) via aNinja

  • When on the lead view, click on Text from the toolbar
  • Your phone number is automatically injected next to “From”.
    • If you’re an Admin user, from the dropdown, you can choose the phone number you want to send the text through.
  • The primary phone number is also automatically injected next to “To”.
  • You can either select an available template
    • The content of the template will be injected into the body section.
  • Or you can manually type the message in the body section.
  • Before you send your text, you want to make sure that it does not exceeds 160 characters, to avoid being billed for more messages.
  • Check the counters under the SMS body. When you go over 160 characters, the characters counter turns red, and the segment counter increases by 1.
  • Click Send to send your text immediately,
  • Or click on the arrow next to send to schedule your text to send at a later date and time.

Text Segmentation / Message Length

  • Maximum Message Length with aNinja Messaging
    The aNinja Programmable Messaging platform has a limit of 160 characters in a single incoming or outgoing message request.
  • Additional Considerations for Long SMS Messages
    Although aNinja supports large message payloads for all Messaging channels including SMS; it is important to understand that some wireless carriers and devices may behave differently than others when receiving long SMS messages. In addition, the length of an SMS, and which characters are present will affect its price, because of a concept called segmentation.

    • What’s a text segment or Segmentation? SMS industries count messages before sending them through your carrier. They count the number of characters that a text contains. Each segment is of 160 characters. If your text contains more characters, you’d end up with two messages on your bill.
  • Message encoding
    Carriers encode SMS in different formats to represent the characters and special characters used in the message.The default encoding used in SMS is GSM-7, which consumes fewer segments, making it more cost-effective.However, if the text content includes special characters like emojis or backticks, a different encoding called UCS-2 is used; which consumes more segments, approximately double the amount of GSM-7.

    When it comes to MMS, the encoding used can vary depending on the content of the text. It can be either GSM-7 or UCS-2, depending on whether special characters are included in the message or not.

  • In conclusion, there are multiple things you can consider before sending text messages to ensure effective deliverability with the right cost.

Need help in sending a text (SMS) via aNinja? Leave us an email at support@aninja.com. And, we will happily assist you!