SMS Campaigns

Accelerate enables you to send SMS marketing campaigns to all those in your database who are marked with the necessary marketing permissions easily, without having to export your mobile numbers and manage your campaigns on a separate platform. We use the TextAnywhere platform to send marketing SMS.

Before you can send your first campaign you will need to:

1. Set yourself up a TextAnywhere account

2. Update your Marketing Permissions database

3. Familiarise yourself with the ICO guidance on direct marketing

4. Grant permission to anyone you want to create SMS campaigns

Setting Up a TextAnywhere Account

From the Settings menu, click Organisation Settings and either scroll to the bottom of the screen or collapse all sections apart from SMS Marketing Settings. You should see a view similar to this:

Click Add SMS Marketing Settings, and you will be presented with the following screen:

These details will be passed to TextAnywhere and used to set up your account ready for the purchase of credits. Fields with a red marker are mandatory: the fields will be defaulted by the system as follows, but you can override any of them at will if e.g. you want someone different to be responsible for the TextAnywhere account.

Once you have these all set as you would like, click Save to create your TextAnywhere account.

Updating Marketing Permissions

This can be done manually, by following the instructions in the link above, or en masse by opening a support ticket with a CSV file of all mobile numbers you hold SMS marketing permissions for. The CSV file must contain a single column only, with each mobile number its own row. By submitting such a file you are confirming that you hold permission to send SMS marketing to every number contained within it.

Regulation and Legislation

It is a condition of using the Accelerate platform for direct marketing that you read, understand and comply with the ICO guidance on direct marketing (link above). QV Systems cannot offer guidance on compliance with this, or any other relevant regulation/legislation, and by using the platform for direct marketing you agree to indemnify and hold harmless QV Systems for the impact of any breaches of any regulation/legislation committed.

SMS Campaigns Permissions

The person who creates the TextAnywhere account will automatically be granted permission to create SMS campaigns. Should any administrator want to give this permission to any other users, this can be granted from the Settings -> Users area of the system.

Creating an SMS Campaign

To create an SMS campaign, click on the SMS Campaigns menu item in the header. You will then see a screen which lists any existing SMS campaigns. Click New SMS Campaign to begin the process.

Specifying Recipients

Once your campaign is saved, you can specify recipients in one of two ways: adding all prospective recipients from your Accelerate database through the Add Personal and/or Add Business buttons, or uploading a list of recipients through the dataloader.

Add Personal/Add Business

These buttons give a quick way to add recipients. Add personal will add all Relationships marked as having the SMS marketing permission. Add Business will add all contacts who belong to a business which has the SMS marketing permission. Note in this case that it is the business which holds the permission, NOT each individual contact. If you want more control over who should receive the campaign, you will need to upload the list of recipients as follows.

Uploading Recipients

Uploading recipients can be done using the dataloader which is accessible by clicking the Dataloader button in your Settings area. You log into the dataloader using your normal Accelerate credentials. In order to upload SMS Campaign Recipients you'll need to grant dataloader permissions for SMS Campaign Recipients to the user performing the upload. The uploader only accepts files of a specific csv format, which is a csv file with one column whose header is Recipient. Once you have logged into the dataloader, select the type of file you are uploading and the file you wish to upload. Clicking Continue will show you a preview of the records that will be uploaded and ask you to confirm the SMS Campaign the recipients should be loaded against. Once you confirm this information, the recipients will be uploaded in the background and you can close your browser. When all recipients have been uploaded, you'll receive an email detailing the upload. This will include details of what was uploaded and any errors that occurred.

Note that if you upload recipients, no checks will be made against the marketing permissions stored in Accelerate. It is your responsibility to only upload numbers you have permission to market to.

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