SMS marketing supports the Alibaba Cloud SMS Platform and third-party SMS platforms. You can send regular or instant promotional messages, SMS notifications, and digital messages to audience.
Promotional SMS: text type SMS, support for inserting a number of short links. Applicable to new product promotion, member care, birthday wishes, product promotion, event invitation and other application scenarios.
Third-party promotional text messages support the insertion of several variables and short chains with short parameters.
In general, Alibaba Cloud promotional SMS does not support inserting variables and short chains with short parameters.
SMS notification: text type SMS messages. You can insert several variables or short links. Each short link can contain a short parameter. Applies to coupon usage notifications, fixed holiday marketing campaign notifications, etc.
Digital SMS: The SMS content supports text, image, audio, and video. You can send messages only through the Alibaba Cloud SMS platform.
Among them, the variables, short links, and short parameters in the promotion SMS and SMS notification are used as follows:
Variable: used to send different content for different users, which can be the user's label information. For example, if you insert the variable ${name} and specify its value as the user's name, the user's name will be displayed in the corresponding position of the variable when sending an SMS message.
Short link: referred to as short chain, is the original long URL compressed into a short URL, can be reserved for SMS more content space.
Short parameter: A short parameter is generated based on the user's mobile phone number. After the short parameter is spliced into the short chain, the user's short chain click data can be tracked. Data tracked by Alibaba Cloud SMS will be returned to the Alibaba Cloud SMS platform, and data tracked by third-party SMS will be returned to Quick Audience. In essence, the short parameter is also a variable.
The following table lists the support for variables, short links, and short parameters on different SMS platforms. Y indicates that a metric is supported. N indicates that a metric is not supported.
Promotional Message | Notification | |||
Alibaba Cloud SMS | Third-party SMS platform | Alibaba Cloud SMS | Third-party SMS platform | |
Variable | Common customers: N | Y | Y | Y |
Short Link | Y | Y | Y | Y |
Short parameter | Common customers: N | Y | Y | Y |
SMS Marketing Process
SMS marketing supports using audience created by you or a public audience created by others to send text messages to the mobile phone number (original /AES) associated with the audience.
To create a marketing object as audience, you can filter the target group from a data table or an RFM or AIPL model, or upload the list of marketing object IDs as a group. For more information, see Audience Management.
The SMS port configuration is performed by the organization administrator.
For more information about how to configure SMS, see Configure Alibaba Cloud SMS API.
For more information about how to configure a third-party SMS interface, see Create Third-party SMS Platform API. The third-party SMS interface must be developed based on the Third-party SMS Platform API Specifications.
For more information about how to add an SMS signature that is used to declare the identity of an SMS sender, see SMS Signature Management.
The SMS signature can only be used after it is approved by the corresponding SMS platform.
(Optional) If you need to use short links in SMS messages, you need to create short links.
(Optional) Create an SMS template. For more information, see Create Text SMS Template or Create Digital SMS Template.
An SMS template can be referenced in an SMS task as the content of an SMS message. You can also edit the text message content only when you create an SMS task without creating an SMS template in advance.
(Optional) You can limit the number of times you send text messages to the same user within a certain period of time (excluding the number of text message notifications) and the time period for you to do not disturb. For more information, see Fatigue Control.
For more information about how to create an SMS task, see Create Promoting SMS Task, Create SMS Notification Task, and Create Digital SMS Task.
Regardless of scheduled tasks or instant tasks, text messages must be approved by the corresponding SMS platform before they can be sent. Digital messages must be approved by the carrier to which the mobile phone number belongs before they can be sent.
After an SMS task is created, you can manage SMS marketing tasks to view the execution status and sending details of the task. Users in the specified receiving status can be saved as a group. For more information, see SMS Marketing Task Management.
After the text message is sent, perform SMS Marketing Effect Analysis to view the Message Response.
Message Response
After you enable and configure the Alibaba Cloud SMS API and Third-party SMS API for receiving upstream messages, you can send SMS messages to users. You can go to the Message Response tab.
View the user responses received.
Reply to the user's reply message again.
Filter responses that contain a tendency to unsubscribe.
Unsubscribe message
For SMS platforms that support unsubscribing from promotional messages, such as the Alibaba Cloud SMS platform, each promotional message sent by an SMS marketing task will end with the words "Back to T unsubscribe" (accounting for 4 SMS words).
If the user replies "T", the SMS platform will block the user for the current SMS signature. When SMS marketing tasks send promotional SMS messages using the same signature through the SMS platform, they will no longer be sent to the user.
FAQ
What is the difference between promotional text messages and SMS notifications in SMS marketing?
A: Promotional SMS and SMS notifications are both types of SMS marketing supported by Quick Audience. What they have in common is:
Both are text type text messages and support inserting short links.
You can use Alibaba Cloud SMS platforms or third-party SMS platforms to send messages.
Their differences are:
For SMS platforms that support unsubscribing from promotional SMS messages, the words "back to T unsubscribing" (accounting for 4 SMS words) will be added at the end of the promotional SMS messages.
The moderation standards vary. For example, you cannot send marketing content to SMS notifications. For more information, see Public Content Specifications and template specifications of third-party SMS platforms.
Billing standards vary. For more information, see Domestic SMS Pricing and third-party SMS platform pricing.
For SMS marketing tasks, will template review affect the time to send SMS?
A: The template is reviewed by the relevant SMS platform or operator:
Text SMS templates are reviewed by the SMS platform. Alibaba Cloud SMS review time is generally within 2 hours (working hours). For more information, see Instructions for Use. For more information about third-party SMS review time, consult third-party SMS platforms.
Digital SMS templates are reviewed by three major operators. You can use this template to send digital text messages to mobile phone numbers that belong to carriers only after the carrier approves the template.
Before you send an SMS message, the SMS message template must pass the review. The specific rules are as follows:
For SMS marketing tasks that are sent immediately, the template is sent immediately after the template is approved.
For SMS marketing tasks that are sent on a scheduled basis, you cannot use the template that is being reviewed or modify the template. Only the template that has passed the review can be used.
When creating an SMS marketing task, the template content is modified after the template is selected. Do you want to review the new content?
A: If you select a template and modify the content on the Create SMS Marketing Task page, the system will create a new template for the new content. The template name is the current task name.
The new template needs to be reviewed again and can be sent only after it is approved. You can manage the new template in the corresponding template list.