What is an SMS Info Campaign?
This form of SMS messaging enables the users to initiate the conversation by texting a keyword to your sender code.
What is the benefit of creating an SMS Info Campaign?
This campaign type allows you to send relevant information to aid in nurturing a purchase, learn more about your customer base, influence demand planning and resourcing to both program subscribers and prospects.
What are some common use cases for SMS Info Campaigns?
Mobile app downloads: When a contact wants to receive a link to download an app they are asked to text a keyword to a sender code to receive the link.
Contests and Quizzes: When you run a contest or quiz, contacts and prospects are asked to text a keyword to a sender code to participate.
Sales/Promotions: When you run a sale or promotion, contacts are asked to text a keyword to the sender code to inquire for more information on their products of interest.
Buying Guides/Promotions: When you want to reach out to contacts and prospects to entice them to make a purchase.
Voting/Polls: When you want to gather valuable data or increase audience participation by making them the decision makers.
How do you get started?
After you have decided on a strategy you will then need to setup the Keywords and Journey in the Listrak platform. Once you are all set up and the campaign is activated all you need to do is promote it! You can use various mediums to advertise such as sending out a Broadcast message to your subscribed SMS contacts; announce it in an email, on a website banner/landing page, a mailer or on a poster in your store - any of later will target new comers or site visitors. You can then use the data that has been gathered to further engage existing subscribers or acquire new ones!
Jump to a section to learn more:
Setup Keywords
Configure the Keywords in the Platform
Navigate to Settings > SMS Settings Sender Code.
If you have multiple sender codes, you will need to select the correct sender code from list navigation dropdown menu.
Click Create Keyword (located at the bottom of the page).
Enter each unique keyword name.
💡 Helpful Tips
The minimum character count is 2 character except for the one character keywords mentioned below.
Each keyword must be unique.
Keyword aliases may also be added.
The following keywords are reserved for acquisition campaigns and cannot be used in info campaigns are: JOIN, HELP, STOP, Y, N, O (Canada).
Info Campaign Keywords can also be used as criteria when building a one-time filter in an SMS Broadcast campaign.
⚠️ Not available as filtering criteria in the NextGen Platform.
Click Create to save.
Setup the Journey
Navigate to Automation > Journey Hub Journeys.
Click New Journey button.
Choose Inbound SMS as the Entry Event (also located under Categories > Contact).
Give your journey a name.
Configure the Entry Criteria
Click on the entry event in the builder and select the sender code.
Select the Condition > SMS Received.
Select the Operator > Is.
Multi-select all keywords that are applicable to this journey.
You can identify up to 50 keywords.
Set the re-entry frequency to No Limit or Once.
Setting the frequency to No Limit allows a contact to enter the journey multiple times over their relationship with your brand.
If desired, set entry prevention rules to stop contacts from entering this SMS Info Campaign journey if they are in another journey.
The contact will receive the Invalid Reply message if they are prevented from entering per rules applied.
Use the phone number option to stop internal contacts in your organization from receiving the messages.
Configure the Exit Events
An exit event determines what must happen in order for a customer to exit a journey. If no exit events are configured or customers do not take the specified action they will naturally exit the journey at the end of their path.
Select the exit at the bottom of the journey.
If desired, select an event and then the merchant from the entry event.
Or, select Journey to exit a customer out of this journey if they enter another journey.
Configure the Flow
Now that you have determined how a customer becomes eligible to enter or exit the journey, you can determine the experience they will have by customizing paths based on the keyword they entered, message engagement, and more.
Below are a few of the strategic considerations you may make when configuring your SMS Info Campaign journey.
Actions
Coupons: Include coupons in the message to incentivize a customer to make a repeat purchase.
Exit: Use the exit action to stop contacts in a specific path from continuing through the journey.
Webhook: A webhook can be configured to send information to a third-party system such as sending information to a system that manages your catalogs. Learn more about setting up a webhook.
Data Management: This action can be used to subscribe or unsubscribe a contact from a list or lists when they reach the action.
Wait Step
Use wait steps to pause a contact before they receive additional messages.
Messages
To add an SMS message, drag the SMS element onto the canvas. In the properties panel, name the message, select the sender code, and click Create Message. These are the message(s) that will be sent back to the contact when a keyword(s) is received.
💡 Selecting a list is not an option for SMS messages created for this type of journey since both non-subscribers and subscribers can enter this flow.
Message Delivery Settings
When configuring an SMS message you can turn on the message delivery settings in the Properties Panel. Enabling this setting allows you to limit the time range for when a message is sent.
You can also enable Time Zone Optimization to adjust the time to a customer's location based on their area code.
Decision Splits
Most decision splits can be placed anywhere in the journey to customize a customer's experience as they progress through the journey. Below are a few of the strategic ways decision splits can be used in an SMS Info Campaign journey. Once you have determined the strategy you would like to customize, learn more about configuring your decision splits.
💡 Use the multi-path option to create a fully customized experience for different groups of purchasers.
✉️ Engagement Split: This split can change a customer's path based on the contact's most recently Inbound SMS keyword texted. Use this type of split along with the multi-path option to send tailored SMS messages based on the keyword entered.
📦 Purchase History Split: This split can customize a customer's path based on their past order history. Using the multi-split functionality you can tailor thank you messages based on the total number of orders a customer has placed to treat one-time vs. repeat buyers differently.
🔀 Random Split: The random split can be used to test different components of a campaign by sending a percentage of customers one experience and the rest another experience. Use the random split to test how many messages to include, which subject lines have an impact on open rates, or test how long to wait between messages.
☑️ Subscription Split: This split can be used to customize a contact's path based on how, when, or if they are subscribed to a specific list. This can be used to tailor a customer's path based on their membership to other programs that may have in your Listrak account, such as a loyalty program.
Activate the Journey
Once all messages have been created and the paths established, you are ready to activate the journey so that contacts can start receiving their SMS messages.
To activate, select the Activate button in the top right corner.
💡 Helpful Tips
Info Campaigns can be used to target contacts who are both subscribed or not subscribed to your SMS program. Contacts who enter this journey that are not subscribed will not result in a subscription.
Keyword must be unique and cannot be used in other SMS Info journeys or SMS campaigns when the campaign is active.
Info Campaign Keywords can also be used as criteria when building a one-time filter in an SMS Broadcast campaign.
⚠️ Not available as filtering criteria in the NextGen Platform.
Make sure to activate the campaign before advertising the SMS Info campaign because the journey needs to be activated in order for it to recognize a keyword response, thus entering the user into the journey.
A premature text response from a user will not enter then in a journey.
Advertise the Keyword
Promote the keywords by advertising them in a one-time Broadcast message, featuring them in an email or site banner, or on a poster in your store.
💡 Make sure to include the sender code when promoting this campaign to prospects.
Example Build
In this SMS Info Campaign journey example, our merchant wants to know more about the categories their SMS subscribers and prospects are interested in purchasing, indicated by the various keywords that are listed in the promotions.
First, the merchant promoted this campaign by creating a website banner and by sending out a broadcast message; in which both advertisements ask for a shopping preferences in the form of a keyword response. Once a user has texted one of the three keywords - Apparel, Boots, or Watches to the sender code, they are entered into the flow, regardless of subscription status.
Examples of promoting on website banner and broadcast messaging:
Next, the contacts will enter the engagement decision split where the most recently sent keyword entered will be checked against the condition applied for each path. For example, if a contact texts Apparel, then texts Boots, they will be sent down the Boots path (SMS keyword equals Boots).
Within each path, a coupon is applied that will be used in both the first and second messages. After receiving the first message the contact will wait for 2 days then be entered into another engagement decision split to check if they have clicked on the first message. If they have they will be removed from the flow, if not, they will receive the second message in the series.
In addition, a purchase exit event rule has been added to remove any contact who makes a purchase while in this journey. ⚠️As long the SMS contact has provided an email address (at some point) that is associated to their order(s).
📷 Click images to enlarge
Reporting
The SMS Info Campaign dashboard displays a wholistic view of every Info Campaign such as Keyword activity, the number of messages received, and the number of contacts. Access this dashboard by navigating to Analytics > General Analytics SMS Info Campaigns.
Information Campaigns Dashboard
💡 Use the dashboard to view performance of info campaigns over the last 15 months. Data over 15 months old is no longer stored within Listrak.
Export: Export a list of contacts that sent keywords based on the filters applied in the Info Campaign Dashboard.
Date Range: Controls the dates that appear in the line graph and the Info Campaigns (i.e. Journeys) that appear in the table below. Click the dropdown to change the time frame.
Active Keyword Activity Graph: Displays the top 5 active keywords across all Info Campaigns.
Name: The name of the Info Campaign.
Keywords: A list of all the keywords created for the Info Campaign.
Sender Code: The sender code the Info Campaign was sent from.
Start Date: The date the Info Campaign started.
End Date: The date the Info Campaign ended (if applicable). If no end date is applied the value "Open-ended Campaign" will appear.
Total Revenue: Total amount of revenue earned from all messages sent as part of the Info Campaign.
Total Inbound Messages: Total number of messages received in Listrak.
Total Contacts: The total number of contacts who replied to the Info Campaign.
Total Clicks: The total number of links clicked in the Info Campaign.
Exporting Data
Follow these steps to export a list of contacts that texted an info campaign keyword associated with one or more of the campaigns currently listed on the dashboard.
Configure the Export
Select the date range you want the exported data to be based upon.
The Revenue, Inbound Messages, Contacts, and Unique Clicks will be calculated based on the date range, not the timeframe of the activated journey.
For example:
If the dashboard date filter is set to 01/01/2022 - 01/15/2022 but your Info Campaign Journey was activated on 01/01/2022 and deactivated 02/01/2022, the data is the last 4 columns (Revenue, Inbound Messages, Contacts, and Unique Clicks) will reflect the dashboard date filter range of 01/01/2022 - 01/15/2022.
If the same date range filter is applied when the user clicks export (01/01/2022-01/15/2022), only contacts that sent a keyword or received an automated response to that keyword during that date range will appear on the export.
Select the recipient(s) who will receive from the multi-picker drop down.
Click Export.
All recipients will receive an email from Listrak with a link to the file.
Click the Retrieve Export "Info Campaign Contacts - DateRange to DateRange" link to download the file.
The export will appear as a downloadable CSV file that contains the following columns:
Contact: The phone number of the contact that sent 1 or more inbound info campaign keywords associated with one of the campaigns currently listed on the dashboard.
Campaign: The name of the Journey in Journey Hub.
Sender Code: The sender code tied to the Journey in Journey Hub.
Message Sent Date: The date of the inbound or outbound message was sent.
Inbound Message: The info campaign keyword that was sent by the contact to the sender code tied to the campaign.
Outbound Message: The message that was sent back to the contact as a response to the info campaign keyword.