Introducing Zoho Campaigns' own gateway for SMS campaigns

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.

    • Sticky Posts

    • Tip of the week 03 - Sending emails in batches

      Today's marketers not only want their email marketing to be efficient, but also smart. For an email campaign, you may think you have all the essential elements for lead conversion—a big mailing list, an attractive template design, and the most-engaging message content, but after hitting the ‘send’ button, you may not get the expected conversions. Wondering why? Here’s one of the major reasons. Many marketers miss out on sending the email campaign the right way. Did you know that you should not be
    • Tip of the week 04 - Know about your recipients' 'prime open time.'

      In today's market, the importance of customer behavior is astounding, with a vast amount of research and resources going into finding how customers make decisions. The process of persuading your customers to open your email and click on your call-to-action becomes easy when you understand the psychology behind their behavioral traits. Time to turn into a psychologist! Let's get to the basics—you want your emails to resonate well with your recipients. So, what's the primary thing involved here? It's
    • Zoho Campaigns Expert Diaries on SoundCloud, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube

      Hi email champs,  As email marketers, we find great lessons in each other's works—be it the subject lines that worked good, the design that was received well, or the CTA that had the maximum clicks. Email marketing encompasses a wide variety of topics spanning everything from creation and design to development and deliverability.  Here's when we from the Zoho Campaigns team found the need to build an email marketing community comprising of seasoned marketers and email geeks who can help each other
    • Email Deliverability Tip #3: Seal the deal with the preheader

      In the last post, we learned about the subject line. Today we'll be learning about the preheader. A preheader is the short text that follows the subject line in an email. The preheader is designed to hint at what your email message is all about. A good preheader should act as a second subject line and convince your contacts to open the email. Now, let's learn the best way to craft a preheader. Your subject line and preheader should work together and accurately convey the gist of your email. Keep
    • Tip of the week 15 - Add subscription-preferences option. Drive more engagement.

      If crafting content for emails, getting creatives done, and running email campaigns is your love, then unsubscribes are the heartbreakers.  You can save your emails from being unsubscribed/trashed by adding a proper subscription-preferences option in your emails (works best at the time of signup). Giving subscribers the option to choose what they want to receive from you and decide how often (frequency of the emails) your emails should hit their inboxes will increase the reach of your campaigns manifolds. 
    • Recent Topics

    • Custom fields for calls and an enhanced call creation form

      Greetings, I hope you're all doing well. We're happy to announce a few recent enhancements we've made to Bigin's Calls module. We'll go over each one in detail. Enhanced call creation form in Bigin What is this enhancement about? This update includes
    • Customize user data collection with User Layouts

      Users denote the people in your organization who work on agile projects using Zoho Sprints. You can add them to your workspace and associate them with required projects. Organizations have distinct requirements in collecting user data. Apart from the
    • Zoho Sites with GoDaddy DNS

      We have a site hosted with www. in front that works perfectly well. The issue is with getting the TLD/naked DNS pointed to the www. while using GoDaddy dns. I have edited the DNS Forwarding entry in the domain so that the root example.com forwards to
    • Possible for "Specify URL Criteria" in URL/Permalink settings to be assigned to a variable?

      I want to embed a Zoho Analytics chart view as a Related List item in the Zoho CRM Accounts module, such that when one is viewing a CRM Accounts module record for an Account, the user will see the chart for that specific company. Is it possible to set
    • How to present an Analytic on a CRM dashboard and filter it on loginuser id

      How to present an Analytic on a CRM dashboard and filter it on loginuser id? I want to display an Analytics pivot table (as a widget) on a CRM dashboard and have the pivot filtered on the loginuser. I want additional user-filters available, such as date,
    • Allow 2 logos for Branding, one for Light Mode and one for Dark Mode?

      Our logo has a lot of black text on it. If we leave the background transparent, per recommendation of Zoho, when a user is viewing a file and turns on dark mode, our logo is not really visible and looks really weird. It would be really great if we could
    • Payroll In Canada

      Hi, When can we expect to have payroll in Canada with books 
    • Why can't we associate a contact to mulitple accounts?

      This simple feature has been for 14 years now... it's way past ridiculous. We don't want to add a multiple lookup field, we just want to add a second account to our contact. This way i'll go on Jonh Doe and see in the account field : Company 1 and Company
    • Calendar Bookings in Recruit

      Hi there, We have recently started using Zoho recruit and although it has some great functionality there are a few gaps that are causing real headaches. One of those being how interviews are scheduled. The majority of our hiring managers are field based
    • Automatic Department and Employee Sync Between Zoho One and Zoho People

      Dear Zoho Support, I'm writing to propose a valuable feature request that would streamline data management and improve user experience within the Zoho ecosystem: automatic synchronization between departments and employees in Zoho One and Zoho People.
    • Delete Unactive Users form Directory

      Hi, how to delete all unactive users ?
    • Manual Journal entry problem

      Hi, all my manual Journal entries are not reflected in my general ledger. i have check to see if the entry were done correctly and everything is fine. Please help me
    • Changing Related Modules in a Report

      Once a report is created, is it possible to add Related Modules? David Shalev | Chief Revenue Officer | 800 558 9130 davids@splitit.com | www.Splitit.com
    • Is there a way to limit/turn off unlimited Version History?

      We save CAD files in our Zoho WorkDrive and while the files aren't very big themselves, whenever someone hits the save button in the CAD program it uploads another version of the file to the WorkDrive. This means files that are only a few MBs in size can actually be taking up 10s of GB in our WorkDrive if someone is saving frequently. Is there a way to limit the number of versions WorkDrive stores to save WorkDrive space?
    • ZOHO One Webinar Functionality

      I am currently trialling ZOHO Projects and have also been looking into over a dozen different Webinar solutions from various vendors. I understand that ZOHO Webinars is a stand alone tool. But that ZOHO Meetings also offers webinar functionality. The
    • Avoid None option in List Custom Fields

      Does anybody know a way to avoid -- None --  option to be displayed in a List Custom Field?  - With Mandatory option selected, you can prevent from saving if user select --None-- value. - With Default value selected, a different value than --None-- is
    • How do I modify the the incoming/current call popup? I can modify other call pages but not that one.

      I want to modify the incoming and active call popup on the crm to include customer relevant information, such as purchase history or length of relationship. Under modules and fields, I don't seem to see active call as a choice to modify, only the main
    • JavaScript or iframe embed with transparent background

      If I have a form with transparent Wallpaper, it appear great on my website by using my default background. However, using Zoho Forms SAVE button, the user is directed to Zoho Forms managed page and a blank background. Alternatively, I can include a Wallpaper
    • Emails and Kanban for Portals

      There was talk portals would have emails and email templates, and kanban view. Is there any release date for this? Portals has been so good for offering a simple crm option. It just needs a couple of small things.
    • Custom sorting Axis in a Heatmap report

      I have a heatmap and want to sort the order of the axis in a custom priority order - is this possible ? So I want the priority to be "New, Urgent, High, Medium, Low, Not Set, Unknown" Can I set this manually ?
    • The 3.1 biggest problems with Kiosk right now

      I can see a lot of promise in Kiosk, but it currently has limited functionality that makes it a bit of an ugly duckling. It's great at some things, but woeful at others, meaning people must rely on multiple tools within CRM for their business processes.
    • Zoho People down

      Zoho People (EU) appears to be inaccessible this morning. Have gotten through log-in and MFA but have been on the "Please wait while we work our charm..." page for several minutes now. A colleague has tried to access it via the One dashboard and experienced
    • No Zoho Support on the weekends or after hours?

      Zoho Support is only available Monday - Friday during normal business hours. My business (as does many businesses) operates 7-days a week. Last Saturday, I had a client come in and in order for me to help her, I needed to log into CRM but to my surprise,
    • How do I overcome the 800 transaction rule limit?

      I just received a message: "You have reached the maximum rule limit of 800." I searched the documentation, and I didn't find anything about the cap or limit. I asked the ZOHO Books team if there is a way to increase the limit. Their answer was: "Please
    • Search functionality in Vault is very poor

      Hi Zoho Team Please... the search functionality is absolutely vital in Vault, particularly when it's being used by a team. It's just a fact of life that everybody has their own way of naming something, so using exact match on the Password name is horribly
    • 👋 Pessoal, como está sendo sua experiência com ferramentas de produtividade?

      Percebo que muitos usuários de soluções como Google Workspace e Microsoft 365 acabam enfrentando desafios quando pensam em migrar de plataforma, especialmente por conta de multas contratuais ou até pela complexidade em adaptar as equipes. Além disso,
    • Quais são os maiores desafios que você enfrenta ao implementar o Zoho CRM?

      Olá, pessoal da comunidade Zoho Brasil! Sou parceiro autorizado da Zoho e, ao longo do tempo, tenho notado que cada implementação de CRM traz desafios únicos, dependendo do segmento de negócio, das metas da empresa e até da familiaridade da equipe com
    • Parent - Child Ticket Twins

      I think i maybe losing my mind. Are these two completely separate parent-child ticketing functions? I think I remember adding a plugin years ago and I think I also remember seeing something about parent-child ticketing in a release notes being added.
    • Can the Comments from approval process be posted onto a module field and not on the timeline?

      I have set up approval process for the quotations module and would like for the approval comments to be posted onto a module field as opposed to me searching for the particular quote and going to the timeline section. This would also help keep tabs on
    • auto reply shopify order details in zoho desk based on order number in subject using deluge script custom function

      auto reply shopify order details in zoho desk based on order number in subject using deluge script custom function
    • Is there an ability to keep the status field unlocked while having an active blueprint?

      Hi. Is there an ability to keep the status field unlocked while having an active blueprint? Here is the case. We have a transition let's say "Ask to the customer" When we do this transition the Status is switch to "waiting for customer" But if for exemple
    • Rename Category and Sub Category fields

      Is it possible to rename the field labels for Category and Sub Category - if so can this be done at layout or department level ?
    • Thoughts on users being able to create Zoho accounts?

      For anyone who's used Zoho for a while, I'm sure you've come up against an issue where you create an account for a user, and they go ahead and sign up for a new one accidentally. Then, only they can delete the account, as it exists outside the organisation.
    • Deluge should permit a connection to be set with a variable

      Hello, Being one who occasionally likes to post code in the forums, I try to make anything that the end user needs to define be present at the very top of the script so that those who want to implement the script won't have to hunt through lines of code,
    • Bcc option in "new ticket --> send as email" disappeared

      Is it just me or did the bcc option disappear in the "send as email" option of new tickets in desk? This is very inconvenient.
    • Automated Intercompany Transaction

      Hello team - expecting a support today. I have some good experience with Zoho products as an accountant and trying to introduce the Zoho to my newly joined company. So far it's going on good except below question. I'm currently maintaining multiple companies
    • change subscription within customer portal

      Would be great for the customer to be able to change their own subscription (or restart existing one) within the customer portal. Also, would like to be able to have early termination fee on subscriptions if canceled early.
    • How to Automate Form Creation and Workflow Setup in Zoho Creator?

      Does anyone have ideas on how to create a form workflow that can perform the following functions automatically when a new submission is received for the existing form? Create a new form and report Create a new page Generate a new form workflow for the
    • How can i use edit url in the html snippet dynamically using parameter ? after clicked on that value

      after clicked on that value ..  How can i use edit url in the html snippet dynamically using parameter ?  for each record their corresponding record will open..  Can we have sample url for the same ?
    • Sales without Invoice refund

      I have a sales without invoice in my stripe account from April. This is a double entry as the customer paid the invoice and that was recorded in Stripe. I cannot delete it as it was included in a VAT return. I need to remove it or refund it to balance
    • Next Page