With SMS campaigns, enjoy a cost-effective and efficient way to engage with your audience. SMS messages get delivered right to your audience's mobile phones and ensure a wide reach, as most people own a mobile phone and have access to text messaging. 

Before you start

• If this is your first time creating an SMS campaign, ensure you have purchased SMS credits to be able to send your SMS messages. To learn more, check our dedicated article About add-ons or Pay as you go (WhatsApp, SMS and email credits, and Dedicated IP).
• Check our best practices for SMS deliverability.
• Understand and follow the SMS marketing regulations in your recipient country. 
  If you are sending an SMS campaign to recipients in the United States (USA)🇺🇸 or Canada 🇨🇦, you have to register for a toll-free number and comply with the United States regulations. 
• Brevo strictly prohibits the sending of passwords in readable format or methods that allow recipients to access password-protected content or content requiring authentication such as auto-login links.
• You can also send SMS campaigns from the Brevo API or some of your plugins.

✍️ Create an SMS campaign

1. Go to Campaigns and click Create campaign. 
2. Choose SMS. 
3. Name your SMS campaign to easily find it in the list of your SMS campaigns. This name will only be visible to you. In our example, we will name it Valentines Day 2024.
4. Click Create campaign. 
   

The SMS campaign setup page opens to choose the content, sender, and recipients for your SMS campaign ⬇️.

🧑‍🎨 Message content: create your SMS content

1. In the Message content section, click Create. The SMS editor opens.
2. In the Message text field, enter the content of your SMS campaigns that your recipients will receive.
   An SMS message can have up to 160 characters, including spaces and line breaks. Above 160 characters, the next SMS length changes to 153 characters. To learn more, check our dedicated article Is there a limit on the number of characters used in an SMS message?.
   
   ❗️ Important

   You have to include an unsubscribe option in your SMS content. To learn more, check our dedicated article Include an unsubscribe option in your SMS messages.
3. Optional: Customize your SMS content with: 
   • Contact attributes using the bracket { } icon. To learn more, check our dedicated article Personalize your SMS messages with contact attributes.
   • Emojis using the smiley  icon.
4. Optional: Click Select an image or drop an image from your computer to add it to your SMS campaign. 
   
   ❗️ Important

   This feature is currently available to some users in the USA who have registered for a toll-free number via Telnyx. Remember to activate the Manage US compliance option below before sending your SMS campaign. To learn more, check our dedicated article Add an image to your SMS campaigns (MMS).
5. Activate additional options if you added emojis, links, or special characters to the content of your SMS campaign, or if you are sending your SMS to the USA or Canada:
   
   🇺🇸🇨🇦 Manage US compliance (USA and Canada)

   If you are sending your SMS campaign to recipients in the USA or Canada, activate the Manage US compliance option. To learn more, check our dedicated article Comply with the United States SMS marketing regulations with our compliance feature.

   🔣 Special characters (emojis, accents, non-Latin alphabets)

   Activate the Special characters option if your SMS message contains special characters such as GSM characters, Unicode content used in non-Latin alphabets (e.g. Arabic, Russian), and emojis. Otherwise, special characters could be replaced when sending.
   

   ❗️ Important

   Special characters (Unicode & emojis) reduce the SMS character limit to 70 which could increase the overall SMS count.

   🔗 Automatically shorten links (URL shortener)

   ❗️ Important

   The Automatically shorten links option is only available for Enterprise clients at the moment. Never activate the Automatically shorten links option if you use a public URL shortener, such as bit.ly, as they are not recommended and can affect deliverability.

   Public URL shorteners, such as bit.ly, are often flagged as potential phishing links as they use shared domains. Use Brevo's Automatically shorten links option to shorten the length of the links added to your SMS content. It presents different advantages:

   • Use a dedicated domain, brvo.ly, ensuring better deliverability and maintaining trust with recipients.
   • Reduce your link size for more space for creativity. Your link will be shortened in the following format: xxxxx.brvo.ly/xxxxxx with xxxxxx being replaced with a random sequence of letters and numbers.
   • Track the click engagement of your recipients from the CSV report, providing insightful data to improve future targeting and performance. 
6. Click Save.

🗣️ Sender: choose a sender name 

1. In the Sender section, click the down arrow to expand it. 
2. In the Sender name field, enter a personalized name of 3-11 letters or 15 digits for your sender. We recommend using your company name to help your recipients recognize your brand. Avoid special characters such as GSM characters, Unicode in non-Latin alphabets (e.g., Arabic, Russian), and emojis. 
   💡 Good to know

   Recipients in some countries (including the USA and Canada) cannot see sender personalization, which is displayed as a numerical shortcode. To learn more, check our dedicated article Short codes, long codes, and personalized SMS senders.
3. Optional: If you are sending SMS campaigns to recipients in the USA or Canada, you have to register for a toll-free number and comply with the United States regulations. Click the link to the form in the information card to register for a toll-free number. To learn more, check our dedicated article How to register for a toll-free number (TFN)?.
4. Click Save.  
   

👥 Recipients: select recipients

1. In the Recipients section, click the down arrow to expand it. 
2. From the Send to drop-down, select in the different tabs the lists and segments containing the contacts you want to send your SMS campaign to. You can select multiple lists and segments.
3. Optional: Click Don't send to unengaged contacts to exclude recipients who show a lack of interest in your content. You can specify your own unengagement criteria in your Contacts settings.
4. Optional: Click Advanced options to define exclusion lists, and/or filter your recipients:
   🕹️ Advanced options

   • Don't send to
     In the Don't send to drop-down list, choose the contact lists or segments to exclude from your recipients. The campaign will be sent to all selected contacts except those in the lists or segments selected in the Don't send to option.
     
     ❗️ Important

     If a contact in your recipient list is also in your exclusion list, they will not receive the campaign.
   • Add filters
     Click Add filters and choose conditions to segment your recipients. You can set as many conditions as you want.
     ➡️ For example

     If you want to send your SMS only to recipients who have opened at least one of your SMS, select SMS > SMS received > at least > 1 time > Over all time.
     
5. Click Save.

🧪 Optional: Test your SMS campaign

Once your SMS campaign is ready, we highly recommend testing it to view how it will look for your recipients. Test SMS are deducted from your SMS credits.

The recipients of your test SMS must be existing contacts in your database with a phone number saved in their SMS attribute. To learn more on how to format a phone number, check our dedicated article Format your contact import file.

1. Click Send a test at the top-right of your SMS campaign creation. 
2. Select the country code and enter the phone number to which you want to send your test SMS. 
3. Click Send test. 
   

You should receive your SMS campaign on the phone number you entered and make necessary changes if needed on Brevo. Once ready, you can schedule your SMS campaign to be sent to your recipients! ⬇️

🗓️ Schedule your SMS sending

Once you have reviewed and tested your SMS campaign one last time and are ready to send it, you can click Schedule. There are two schedule options:

Optional: Send your SMS campaign in batches

For each schedule option, you can choose to gradually send your SMS campaign to your contacts to prevent peaks of frequentation on your website:

1. Activate the Send in batches option.
2. Enter the number of messages you want to send per batch.
3. Enter the desired gradual increase percentage per day. We recommend you set the number of daily SMS messages to 3,000, with an increase of 30% per day.
4. Choose the time between each batch sent. 
   

Congratulations! 🎉 You have sent your SMS campaign. 

⏭️ What's next?

• Best practices for SMS deliverability
• Supported keywords for SMS (HELP, STOP, START, INFO)
• Access and understand your SMS campaigns statistics and reports
• Receive and reply to SMS responses
• Why is my SMS campaign in review?

🤔 Have a question?

If you have a question, feel free to contact our support team by creating a ticket from your account. If you don't have an account yet, you can contact us here.

If you’re looking for help with a project using Brevo, we can match you with the right certified Brevo Agency partner.