Active Campaign CRM - SMS

View replies to your SMS messages

The Automation Reports page will display all SMS reply activities from your contacts. To view the actual replies from your contacts:

1. Click "Reports" in the left-side menu.

2. Click "Automation Reports."

3. Click "All Automations."

4. Locate the automation containing your SMS block. Click the ellipsis for that automation.

5. A modal window will open. Click the "Automation Overview" option.

6. The Automation Overview report will load. Scroll down the page until you get to the "SMS Message" table.

7. Click the ellipsis that appears next to the SMS send time.

8. A modal window will open. Click the "SMS Replies" option.

The SMS Replies report page will load and display replies from your contacts:

More info: HERE

You can use automations to send SMS messages to contacts with mobile phone numbers. To learn more about how to send an SMS message from an automation, please refer to this help document. In this article, we’ll share some quick tips to help ensure successful SMS delivery.

• Get explicit consent - it's required. Contacts must have explicitly opted into receiving SMS messages from your brand or company.

• Keep your message as short as possible. SMS messages have a 160 character limit.

• Avoid link shorteners such as Bit.ly. The use of free or public link shortener URLs in SMS messages is prohibited and will prevent the sending of your SMS message from our service. These URLs are commonly confused with spam and appear untrustworthy which causes phone carriers to block delivery of these SMS messages. To learn more about link shorteners, visit "The rules for free or public link shorteners."

• Use the default ActiveCampaign phone field. Our system will only send to the default phone number field. It will not send to a custom phone number field you may have created to collect mobile phone numbers for your contacts.

• ActiveCampaign automatically adds an opt-out offer. When you send an SMS message and a STOP clause is not detected, ActiveCampaign will automatically include a STOP clause for the contact to opt out of messaging.

• Phone numbers outside of the United States must follow E.164 number formatting. This formatting is an internationally-recognized standard phone number format and includes the following: 

  • A "+" sign

  • International Country Calling code

  • Local Area code

  • Local phone number

  • For example, if you have a contact located in Australia, you would format their phone number to be: 

+61 123 456 789

See this article for a list of country-calling codes.

Mobile phone numbers collected for contacts within the United States do not need to use the E.164 number formatting, however, you will need to include the full phone number including the area code. For example, you would format the phone number to be 123 456 7890.

Our system saves a mobile phone number exactly how it was submitted. We do not reformat the phone number. If you do not use the E.164 format for contacts located outside of the United States, our SMS provider will default to add +1 (US) instead.

More info: HERE

All SMS senders are required to include a STOP clause to inform contacts how to unsubscribe from SMS communications. ActiveCampaign automatically includes this clause in all SMS messages that do not otherwise contain a STOP clause.

How a STOP reply works

If a contact wishes to opt out of SMS communications, they can reply with the word “STOP.” An automated response to STOP is sent by the SMS platform to confirm the unsubscribe.

The default reply for this is the following:

"You have successfully been unsubscribed. You will not receive any more messages from this number. Reply START to resubscribe."

Note that only single-word messages will trigger the block. If you send "STOP NOW" instead of just "STOP," the block will not be triggered and you will continue to receive SMS.  

Here are supported keywords that can be used to trigger the block:

• STOP

• CANCEL

• END

• QUIT

• STOP ALL

• UNSUBSCRIBE

Things to note

• There is no notification to report back inside your ActiveCampaign account for when a START happens