What are contact cards?

Contact cards are virtual business cards you can text to your audience. They’re also known as vCards — or VCR files — which contain rich media. 

Your contact card file can include:

• Image (e.g. logo or portrait), 
• Brand or person’s name
• Email address
• Phone number
• Website
• Address

When someone saves your contact card information to their device, your image and name will appear with all of your future text messages and phone calls from the phone number you shared.

Why should you text contact cards to your audience?

• Establish your professional brand: Foster professional relationships with your audience by providing branded information like your logo and name in an easily save-able format.
• Get recognized immediately: Engage your audience by helping them recognize your business and message at first glance.
• Make it easy to do business: Empower your audience to get in touch with you via quick access to important info like website, email address, and phone number.

How do contact cards work?

You can send contact cards via multimedia message service (MMS) texts. Contact cards work with inbox messages, campaigns, autoresponders, and text-to-join keywords.

You may set up one contact card per phone number. If you have multiple phone numbers, you can have one contact card for each number. In other words, accounts with multiple numbers may have multiple contact cards.

How to text a contact card

We recommend setting up a contact card to send automatically after a contact texts your text-to-join keyword. So that’s the example we’ll use to walk you through how to text a contact card, or vCard, to your audience.

First, let’s set up your contact card. In SimpleTexting, navigate to Settings and Numbers. In Number settings, hit Edit and fill out the Contact card information you’d like to share with your contacts. Hit Save.

Next, let’s set up your text-to-join keyword. In SimpleTexting, navigate to Keywords, type a Keyword name (for internal use only), and choose either an existing list or create a new one. Choose MMS as the type of message to send rich media like your contact card, then write your text message.

Here’s a template you can copy, paste, and modify:

Brand Name: Thank you for joining our text club! Don’t forget to save us to your contacts for exclusive updates.

Next, select the Add contact card icon and Save keyword. That’s it!

Here's more detailed how-to advice to set up contact cards with our help doc.

Professional recognition that gets more responses

79% of consumers have already signed up to receive text messages from businesses. Help your text messages stand out with professional contact cards from SimpleTexting.

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It can be hard to get your message right when you have limited characters to work with. It’s even harder when copywriting is not at the top of your job description. 

With the launch of SimpleTexting’s AI Assist, our customers can now send messages better tailored to their audience and the channel. Not only is it one less hat you have to wear, but it also means higher response and click-through rates. Here’s a look at how to use our AI text message generator.

How SimpleTexting’s AI Assist Works

We wanted to introduce this feature in a way that didn’t disrupt how easy it is to send a campaign. It’s why we embedded AI Assist right in our Campaign composer.

All you need to do is click Generate message under AI Assist and enter a short prompt that includes the purpose of the message and other relevant information.

In the example below, we made it clear who the message is from (a beauty salon) and the purpose of the message (offer a 10% discount available on Friday afternoon). You can find more sample prompts here.

Once you have written a prompt, select Generate messages and choose the message you prefer.

You can then tweak the message as needed from the Campaign composer by adding links and other important information.

Write Amazing Text Messages Faster with AI

We believe that AI Assist will help flatten the learning curve for those who are new to business texting while helping seasoned marketers find new ways to optimize their SMS messages. 

Over the coming weeks we’ll continue to iterate and polish the experience based on internal testing and our initial launch. We also plan to introduce more AI-based features to SimpleTexting. 

Texting is one of the most convenient ways to communicate with your audiences. Today, we have made it even easier. If you have any feedback, we’d love to hear it. Just click the blue chat button in the corner of your screen.

The post Introducing AI Assist: SimpleTexting’s New SMS Generator Built on ChatGPT appeared first on SMS Marketing & Text Marketing Services – Try It For Free.

Why Should I Add Team Members?

Team members are sub-accounts that live beneath your admin account. You can assign team members access to different phone numbers. Here’s how this new feature can benefit your business:

• Make sure the right message gets to the right department, agent, or location. Just assign each one its own number.
• Turn your agents into sales superheroes by giving each one their own SMS-enabled number.
• Seamlessly collaborate with your team. Triage support requests from a shared Inbox.
• Work together with your team to delight customers with rapid response time.
• Stay in-the-know. As an admin, you can check-in on your team members' Inboxes and jump in if they need help.

How to Add Multiple Numbers

First, let’s walk through how to set up an additional number on your account. Click Settings in the lower left corner of your account screen, then Numbers.

Click Add number and select the type of number you want.

To get started immediately, select a local number. You can also text-enable your number or choose a toll-free number. You cannot add a second short code at this time.

Type in your area code to see a list of available numbers.

Select the number you want and click Next. The last step is to go through the process of registering your local number. You'll simply give us a little information about the kind of messages you'll send and a few other details, and we'll help you through the rest of the process.

Note: If you choose a toll-free number, you'll need to have it verified to avoid disruptions to your traffic by carriers.

Once that's done, congratulations! Your account now has two numbers. You can choose which one you want to use by selecting it from the dropdown in the upper left corner of your account screen.

How to Add a Team Member

Whether you have one number or several, it can be helpful to add team members to your SimpleTexting account. To do so, click Settings, then Team.

Next, click the blue Invite team member button and fill out the fields.

We know it’s important to work together, without getting your wires crossed. 

That’s why we’ve added the ability to select what number your team member should have access to.

For example, you can have one number for support and another for sales. Give managers access to both numbers and agents access to just their team’s number.

What if you’re a restaurant, and you don’t want one location to accidentally send a message to another location’s list of contacts? Or an agency that doesn’t want one client to see another client’s contacts? All you have to do is restrict list permissions. 

When you restrict list permissions, your team member will not be able to receive new incoming messages from people outside their assigned list(s).

If you use texts to provide sales, support, or send any other kind of 1-on-1 message—we highly recommend allowing full list permissions.

In other words, only restrict list permissions if you don't plan to assign your team members their own numbers.

Once you send an invitation, you’ll be able to see whether or not it has been accepted.

Once a team member has accepted your invitation, you can assign conversations to them. All you have to do is select their name from the dropdown at the top of your conversations.

What’s Next?

Our product team is currently working on more exciting updates to SimpleTexting. We’re not ready to share exactly what they are just yet. But let’s just say if you’ve ever wanted to send an OOO text message, connect SimpleTexting directly to other apps, or send MMS messages via the Inbox—you’re in for a surprise.

The post Introducing Team Members and Multi-Number Support appeared first on SMS Marketing & Text Marketing Services – Try It For Free.

This isn’t a paired down version of SimpleTexting. This is the same powerful platform you’re used to, just on your mobile device. Below are a couple of ways SimpleTexting for iOS and Android can improve your marketing efforts.

Never Miss An Opportunity With Push Notifications

Don’t let a single lead go to waste. Get notified as soon as you receive a text from a subscriber so you can text back right away.

Send Text Marketing Campaigns From Anywhere

Now you can easily create and send SMS marketing campaigns from your phone. SimpleTexting for iOS and Android gives you the power to build segments, collect data and do everything else you normally do on your desktop.

Stay Updated On How You’re Doing

Keep an eye on your click-through rates, subscriber growth and number of messages sent. Our apps puts the data you care about in graphs you can read at a glance.

Now Available On The App Store and Google Play

We hope you enjoy the simplicity of SimpleTexting and the convenience of working from wherever you are. Look out for more features in the coming weeks. Oh, and as always, if you have any feedback or suggestions—please let us know!

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MMS, which stands for Multimedia Messaging Service, is a standard for sending and receiving rich media content via text message. It’s usually referred to as MMS messaging, multimedia messaging, video messaging, or picture messaging.

Think of MMS as a souped-up version of SMS that features a couple of major improvements:

• You can now write up to 1,600 characters instead of 160
• You can now add rich media inside your texts instead of linking out to it

That second bullet point is especially important, and here’s why: People tend to respond really well to visual content. According to one study, MMS campaign opt-ins are 20% higher than SMS campaign opt-ins, and subscribers are eight times more likely to share MMS messages on social media.

It’s simple to send an MMS campaign. Just log in to our application, navigate to Messaging > New campaign, and select the MMS tab. Then, use the Media button located inside the main message field to select and upload your coupons, product images, audio greeting cards, welcome videos, cute kitten gifs, or other rich media.

Learn more about MMS Marketing services with SimpleTexting.

Are you ready to start adding some pep to your texts?

Try MMS marketing today.

No credit card, no obligations, no setup fee. Just a free 14-day trial inside a powerful new marketing platform.

Sign up for your free trial today.

P.S. MMS messages involve a lot more data than regular SMS messages, so they naturally cost more. At SimpleTexting, sending an MMS message requires 3 credits, whereas sending an SMS message requires 1 credit. View pricing plans.

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We’re proud to announce another exciting feature here at SimpleTexting: Group Text from Phone.

Group texting allows you to send a text to your list of subscribers, even if you can’t get to a computer, even if you don’t have a smartphone—even if you can’t get online!

All it takes is—you guessed it—a text message. Once you’ve activated your phone, it’s an easy process:

1. Text the name of the list you’d like to text to your phone number
2. You’ll receive a confirmation message prompting you to send your text
3. Send your text!

You contacts will immediately receive the text you just sent. Simple!

The post Group Text from Phone – Send Text Campaigns from Your Phone! appeared first on SMS Marketing & Text Marketing Services – Try It For Free.