Introducing Zoho Campaigns' own gateway for SMS campaigns

We are excited to announce the launch of our SMS Gateway to send SMS through Zoho Campaigns. We have also made a few other changes in our current SMS Campaign model to improve your over all user experience.

These updates are planned with an aim to expand our product's potential by catering to the needs of businesses interested in both email and SMS marketing.

Zoho Campaigns' Own SMS Gateway

Right now we are integrated with thirteen third party applications, to support the SMS sending process for the users. However, these third party integrations create an extra signup step for you to send SMS campaigns and manage multiple bills.

To overcome this hindrance and to improve the user experience, we are partnering with a vendor & offering our own SMS gateway.

With this, you can send SMS campaigns to mobile numbers in the US and Canada without any hassle.

In future updates we are also planning to include India and multiple countries from the EU region.

Improving the user experience of SMS Campaign feature

1) Efficient way to manage Mobile number within Zoho Campaigns

a) SMS field standardization

The "Mobile number" will be the default field to store the contact number. We will also eliminate the phone number and country selection steps from the SMS creation process.

Moreover, the standardization of the contact number field will:

a) Simplify the SMS creation process
b) Make the identification of phone number duplication process easier

c) Effectively maintain SMS channel unsubscribe & DND registry for phone numbers

d) Reduce the data processing time

e) Ensure organized storage and easy tracing of contact numbers

b) Contact number will be mapped to "Mobile Number"

In our current model, during the contact addition process the " email address" has always been the default field to add contact's email address. Henceforth, " Mobile number" will also be shown as a default field to add their contact number.

c) Recommended to import mobile number with area code

You can add contacts without an area code, but you won't be able to send SMS campaigns to those contacts. We advise that you update your contacts' phone number along with the area code in the Mobile Number field to send SMS campaigns without any hiccups.

Accepted format for Mobile Number field : +1 967899090

Numbers like 9289098909 will be added, but won't be included for campaign sending, as the area code is missing.

2) Unsubscribe from all SMS marketing communication

Zoho Campaigns ensures that email recipients have the entire control over acceptance and denial of email campaigns through unsubscription option.

This similar best practices will be implemented in the SMS Campaign, with the introduction of the " Unsubscribe" option. With this, contacts can easily opt out from receiving SMS communications.

3) Option to add sender address during SMS creation process

Sender address is the first thing a receiver looks out for, in order to ensure that the communication is received from an authentic source.

So, we will support Long code & Alphanumeric sender address format in this update. And soon we will also support short codes.

So, SMS Campaign users can now select the Sender address format supported in their respective country.

We will help our users with the registration process to obtain the respective sender address format from within the product.

4) Prepaid, add-on-credit-based pricing

We will be following a pre-paid credit based pricing model for SMS. The user has to separately purchase the required add-on credits to send SMS Campaign.The credits will be automatically added on a recurring basis after every billing cycle.The purchase of credits from 1K to 1M can be made online.

Credits per SMS

US/ Canada- 4 credits

a) Can the un-used credits be carried forward to the next billing cycle?

In case, if the user has any un-used credits in a particular billing cycle, then the un-used credit will be carried forwarded to the next billing cycle.

b) How to procure long codes?

Long codes will be a separate recurring add-on. To begin with, US/Canada long codes will be 1$/month.

Know more about SMS Campaign pricing

Note: The SMS updates will be made live only to the new users. Existing users can migrate to the new update only after 45 days from the launch date.

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