How to Create and Send a Text Marketing Campaign

Overview:

Text marketing can be a great way to communicate with your customers. This article will go over creating and sending a text campaign which is considered a "Promotional" text and does count towards your Monthly Text Limit.

Preconditions:

Access to the Marketing module.
In order to send text messages for marketing purposes, your company first needs to be verified in compliance with recent telecommunication regulations. Please see the article How to Apply for Business Verification for Text Marketing for instructions.
Customer(s) must have opted in to Promotional and Event Text Marketing campaigns in the “Email & Text Subscriptions” section of the Customer Portal. Please see the article How to Get Your Customers to Opt-in to Text Marketing for more information regarding customer(s) opting in.

Important Information:

With the early 2023 10DLC SMS Compliance changes around text marketing, businesses are required to go through a business verification process in order to send marketing texts to their customers. Along with this change, the phone number from which your text messages will be sent has to be a local, 10-digit number.

Text marketing is split into two different categories: Promotional and Customer Care. Your golf course through the foreUP software, after business verification has been completed, will be assigned two separate local phone numbers for each type of text marketing category. PLEATE NOTE: This means your customers will need to opt into both types of text marketing numbers/categories in order to receive both types of marketing texts.

- - Promotional - Text messages sent from the Marketing modules "New Text Campaign" are considered promotional texts and DO count towards your monthly text limits.
  - Customer Care - Two Way Texting, Tee Time Text Reminders, and Contacting the Tee Sheet by Text are considered customer care texts and DO NOT count towards your monthly text limits.

Steps:

Follow the below steps to create and send a text marketing campaign:

Go to the Marketing module.
Click "New Text Campaign".
Fill in the "Campaign Name" and type the text message in the Green Texting Bubble. With your text completed, click on either "Recipients" to move to the next step or "Save Changes" to exit the campaign and come back later to finish it.
Recipients can be added individually by searching for the customer using the "Search Customer Bar".
Text campaigns can be sent to "Everyone" or based on customer "Groups" by selecting a group from the drop-down menu and clicking "+Add Selected Group" (NOTE: Multiple groups can be selected)
Once the desired recipients have been selected, click "Campaign Details" in the bottom right to move onto the next step of scheduling your text campaign.
Select from one of the three options to schedule your campaign;
- - Option 1: "Send Text Now"
    - This will send the text immediately after the final review.
  - Option 2: "Choose a Date"
    - This will send the text at a future time and date of your choosing.
  - Option 3: "Create based on Event"
    - This will send out Tee Time Reminders by text at a predetermined number of minutes or days before a customers scheduled tee time.
After selecting the schedule of your text campaign, click "Review" in the bottom right to go to the final step before sending or scheduling your text campaign.
Confirm the information on the screen and click "Send Now!" to send your campaign.
You will be taken back to the Marketing module and should see a green pop-up banner that says "Campaign Sending!"
All sent campaigns will be available under the "Campaigns" tab. (NOTE: Any tee time reminder text campaigns that were scheduled as "Create based on Event" will show as a "Recurring" status indicating that it is still active for any customers that meet the criteria of having a tee time.
All campaigns sent through the Marketing module as a "New Text Campaign" are considered a "Promotional" text and will count towards your Monthly Limit.