Tag: texts

History of Interactions and Activities of a lead

aNinja brings you the history of all interactions and activities made for a lead in the lead view.

What’s the history of interactions and activities

Once the creation of a lead in your aNinja account, the system saves all the interactions and activities that you make to this lead, in the history section.

Moreover, they are listed in ascending order. So, the users and team members are kept in the loop of the actions performed on this lead.

In the history section you can view:

  • Calls made and durations.
  • Emails sent & received with this lead.
  • Notes that are left by any team member so any other user stays updated on any relevant info.
  • Texts sent to this lead.
  • Tasks assigned and their statuses.
  • Workflow steps changes.
  • Chatbot conversations initiated by this lead.
  • Triggers

Accessing the lead history

From the lead view, in the middle right of the page, you can see all the interactions and activities of the lead.The history of all interactions and activities for a leadYou can also filter activities and interactions that appear in the history section from “All Interactions” dropdown:

Including: Calls, Chatbot Conversations, Emails, Email Sequences,  Notes, Text Sequences, and Tasks.

Automated Texts time window

With the automated Texts time window, you can schedule your texts so that they arrive at the most optimal time.

If your audience didn’t respond to a sequence previously, it’s likely because the timing wasn’t right. Experiment with different timings to see what works best. Consider sending texts during the weekend or early morning, when people are more likely to check their phones.

Specifying the time window for sending out text messages

  • Enable the “Only send automated texts within acceptable time window”
  • And set the start / end / timezone accordingly.

Benefits of sending messages within an acceptable time window

Sending text messages within an acceptable time window has numerous benefits, including:

  1. Increased Open Rates: If you send messages outside of business hours or during times when people are unlikely to be looking at their phones, your messages are more likely to go unopened or unnoticed.
  2. Improved Response Rates: You’re more likely to receive a response from your recipients.
  3. Enhanced Engagement: You’ll build stronger connections with your audience.
  4. Increased Conversions: You ensure that your messages are being received and acted upon. And you’re more likely to convert recipients into customers.
  5. Better Customer Experience: You’ll provide a better overall customer experience. People appreciate messages that are sent at times when they are more likely to be available and receptive

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!

aNinja Text Forwarding

When you are out of reach, you might want to use text forwarding to forward your aNinja texts to an available phone number.

Text forwarding with aNinja

  • On the top right of your login, click on your Profile
  • Go to Texting
  • And turn the Text Forwarding On/OffaNinja Text Forwarding
  • Text forwarding in aNinja has now been configured!

MMS messages

MMS stands for ‘multimedia messaging service’. It was built using the same technology as SMS (short message service) text messages.

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

Some of the rich content types which can be sent include phone contacts, audio and video files, and images.

Types of MMS messages

  • Audio files
  • Video files
  • Images

Sending MMS through aNinja

  • Search for your lead
  • When on a lead View, click on Text in 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
    • Then, the content of the template is injected into the body section. And the media file saved in the template is attached to it.
  • Or, you can manually type the message in the body section.
  • Click on the attachment icon and select a file
    • Supported file formats (jpeg, png, and gif)
    • Check the “Supported media types” below.
  • Before you send your text, you want to make sure that the total message size is under the maximum size limit for the channel.
    • Check the “Attachment Limits” section below.
  • Click Send to send your text immediately,
  • Or, click on the arrow next to send to schedule to a later date and time.
  • An MMS can also be sent in bulk text sequences. Attach the media file to the template and use it in the sequences.

Note!

Make sure to include content in your template before saving it, not only attachment(s). Otherwise, when attaching it to a text sequence, it will not be launched.

Supported Media Types

Different carriers support different types of media, regardless of the media types allowed in aNinja.

When you send an MMS, the telephone carrier checks the content-type header at the provided MediaURL to validate the content type of the media file. If the content type header does not match that of the media file, the request will be rejected.

You can check the status of the MMS in the lead view, on the bottom right of the message. Hover your mouse over the error to see the message provided by the carrier. Some carriers don’t provide error messages.

The following types of content are fully supported. This content will be formatted for delivery on destination devices.

  • image/jpeg
  • image/jpg
  • image/gif
  • image/png

 

The following types of content are accepted. Requests will not be rejected, but the content will not be modified for device compatibility.

Audio
  • audio/basic
  • audio/L24
  • audio/mp4
  • audio/mpeg
  • audio/ogg
  • audio/vnd.rn-realaudio
  • audio/vnd.wave
  • audio/3gpp
  • audio/3gpp2
  • audio/ac3
  • audio/webm
  • audio/amr-nb
  • audio/amr
Video
  • video/mpeg
  • video/mp4
  • video/quicktime
  • video/webm
  • video/3gpp
  • video/3gpp2
  • video/3gpp-tt
  • video/H261
  • video/H263
  • video/H263-1998
  • video/H263-2000
  • video/H264
Image
  • image/bmp
  • image/tiff
Text
  • text/vcard
  • text/x-vcard
  • text/csv
  • text/rtf
  • text/richtext
  • text/calendar
  • text/directory
Application
  • application/pdf
  • application/vcard
  • application/vnd.apple.pkpass

Most of the phone carriers support image file attachments in one of the supported file formats (jpeg, png, and gif) and they might not support these types (PDF, BMP, MPEG, MP4, Quicktime, and 3GPP).

Message encoding

Text messages, also known as 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; 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.

Attachment Limits

When sending text and pictures in the same message (MMS messaging), a message can contain up to 10 images and 1600 characters.

Through aNinja, you can send an MMS of 600KB. If your message (including body text and media) is larger than 600KB, your message request will fail to send.

In aNinja, we have reduced the size of the MMS to 600KB to increase the chances of deliverability. As the top US carriers have recently reduced their allows MMS sizes as follows:

Carrier Short code MMS attachment size
AT&T 600 KB <—- ideal size
Sprint 1400 KB
T-mobile 1000 KB
Verizon 1200 KB

So you want to provide a shorter video that is ideally < 600KB if you want to reach all the targeted audience.

Our carrier automatically compresses JPEG, PNG, or GIF files to reduce their size if they exceed certain thresholds, to help you fit more images on your message when needed.

Hence, there will not be any additional charges applied for the message body. It will be included in the MMS cost.

If your media is not an image file and is larger than the limit allowed by the destination carrier, your MMS message will fail.

You can always compress the size of your media file using tools online.

Lastly, we recommend hosting your media file on your website or a file hosting service and adding the link to download it in your template or text call to action.