Sending text messages to your client base is a great way to keep in touch about promotions and business updates. If you have a message you need to send to multiple clients it makes sense to send your message in bulk. LocalContacts allows you to select any number of clients to send messages in bulk.
Note: if you're planning to send promotional messages to clients we recommend ensuring they've opted in to receive these communications from you. Something as simple as having your clients check an opt-in box while providing their contact information on your intake form is a great way to do this.
To get started:
Log into OneLocal and navigate to LocalContacts
2. Select which individuals you would like to send the message to. You can select all contacts, or look for specific ones.
If you'd like to filter your contacts based on criteria like when they were uploaded to OneLocal, check out this guide on creating filters.
3. Once you've selected who should receive your message, use the "Send Message" button to insert a template or type a message.
How Many LocalMessages can I Send Per Day?
Knowing Your Allotted Amount of Monthly Messages
Your OneLocal Subscription comes with an allotted amount of monthly messages based on the package you signed up for. You'll find the amounts allotted below:
Summit: 4000 Messages/Month
Dominate: 3000 Messages/Month
Compete: 2000 Messages/Month
Engage: 1000 Messages/Month
If you need more messages you can purchase them as an add on to your monthly subscription. Reach out to your Account Manager or our Dedicated Support Team in the OneLocal dashboard to inquire about pricing.
If you are unsure about your package type you can refer to your OneLocal Contract, ask your Account Manager or reach out the Support team.
How many messages can I send per day?
We recommend sending no more than 1,000 messages per day at the very most, but our best recommendation would be around 500 messages per day. Of course, you don't have to send that many, but this is a healthy daily amount if you are sending bulk marketing messages to your contacts.
How to ensure your messages have High Deliverability Rates
You might be wondering what High Deliverability Rates means - let's talk about it!
When you send a text message through LocalMessages the message pings the phone carrier that serves that phone number. The phone carrier then decides whether or not to pass the message through to the phone number or block the message for a variety of reasons. The carriers base their decision on previous text message activity and the phone number's Trust Score.
What is a Trust Score?
A Trust Score is a score assigned during Brand registration with The Campaign Registry (TCR - the 3rd party that administers the US wireless carriers' new registration system). When an A2P Customer Profile registration for US 10DLC messaging is submitted to Twilio, we send this information to TCR for review. Twilio also submits the Brand for "secondary vetting," which assigns a score from 0 to 100 and gives access to higher default throughput and message limits toward US mobile carriers.
The Brand registration process uses a reputation algorithm to review specific criteria relating to your company, and then assigns a “Trust Score”. In short, the higher your Trust Score, the higher your messaging throughput (MPS).
Brand Registration Benefits
If you are interested in having your brand registered OneLocal can assist in this process. A benefit of being registered is that your OneLocal phone number will be updated to a Toll-Free Phone Number which will improve your Trust Score and thus increase the Deliverability rate of your LocalMessages.
If you are interested in getting a Toll-Free Phone Number and registering your brand with Twilio, get in touch with your Digital Marketing Specialist.
How else can I ensure my LocalMessages aren't blocked by phone carriers?
Don't send too many messages per day, as stated previously we don't recommend sending more than 500 (low-end) to 1000 (high-end) per day bulk marketing text messages per day. This excludes other text messages you may send throughout the day such as appointment reminders, review requests, or inquiry follow-ups, these should be continued to be answered as normal.
Avoid sending photos alongside your text message, photos are highly cause for a bulk text message campaign to be blocked by phone carriers. We recommend sending your bulk text message to your contacts and then sending another bulk text message to the same contacts with the attached image. We understand that images are powerful in marketing and this would be the best way to have a higher deliverability of your text message, although some may still not receive the photo image. Sending them together as one send will result in some messages blocking both the text and the attached photo. If you are choosing to send a photo with your text message make sure it is only one photo and that you are reducing the number of people receiving your message each day.
The Math:
Send text messages to 250-500 people and then send the same 250-500 people the image afterward.
Don't shorten links using Link Shorteners, these are highly monitored by phone carriers and are filtered out. It's okay to send links to your customers, but ensure it's the full link and not a shortened version.
QUICK TIP: We recommend creating a template with dynamic tags first so that all clients receive a personalized message with their name. Plus then you can easily re-use it in the future! See how to do that here.
Here's a helpful video from our team!
It's as easy as that! You can use this feature to send out promotional texts, ask for referrals or reviews, and more!