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Template Options for SMS

This document describes configuration options for SMS templates.

Table of contents

Creating and editing templates

To learn how to create, edit, clone, preview, and delete templates, read Introduction to Templates.

SMS Template tab

The SMS Template tab provides basic configuration options for SMS templates:

SMS Template tab

Template Name

Set a Template Name to provide a name for your template, which can be useful for locating it when creating new campaigns.

Message Type

Select a Message Type to categorize your message by channel and type. For more information, read Message Channels and Message Types.

From Number

From Number determines the sender to associate with the text message. To set up senders in your Iterable project, work with your customer success manager.

Image URL

Image URL is a URL to a file to include with the SMS. Example URLs:

  • Image: https://placekitten.com/400/300
  • Video: https://www.w3schools.com/html/mov_bbb.mp4
  • vCard: https://www.w3.org/2002/12/cal/vcard-examples/john-doe.vcf

Supported file types and size limits vary depending on your SMS provider:

SMS Message

SMS Message represents the content of the message. An SMS can have up to 160 characters, but if you exceed the maximum the content will be sent as multiple SMS messages.

This toggle tells Iterable to shorten any links included in the SMS campaign's content, allowing you to fit more content in the message and better understand whether or not your contacts are clicking its links. You can also set up your link shortening domain to write deep links (to be opened by your mobile app) for particular URLs.

For more details, read SMS Link Shortening and Click Tracking.

IMPORTANT

If you're using Handlebars to insert a link into an SMS message, use triple curly braces rather than double curly braces. Otherwise, Handlebars might use special formatting to output some of the characters in the link, breaking it. For example, if your contacts have a favoriteItemURL profile field that you'd like to use as a link in your message, enter {{{favoriteItemURL}}}, not {{favoriteItemURL}}.

Opt-out instructions warning

Finally, below the link shortening toggle, you'll see some text that describes how (and whether) your project will automatically include opt-out instructions with SMS campaigns. This is an important topic that has deliverability implications. For more information, read SMS Overview.

Advanced Options tab

The Advanced Options tab provides further configuration options for SMS templates:

Advanced Options

Enable Google Analytics URL tracking

If you check Enable Google Analytics URL tracking, and your campaign is configured to use SMS link shortening, Iterable will append UTM parameters to the links in your campaign. These parameters will only be added to shortened links (standard links with URL parameters can quickly get too long to reasonably include in an SMS message).

When this option is enabled, Iterable adds the following UTM parameters:

?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=sms&utm_campaign=campaign_{{campaignId}}

(Where {{campaignId}} gets replaced with the ID of your campaign.)

These parameters are added before the link is shortened. They won't appear directly in the message, but they'll be available after the shortlink is resolved to its intended destination (in your app, or in the browser).

NOTES

  • If you don't set up your campaign to use SMS link shortening and click tracking, Iterable will not include UTM parameters on the links it sends, regardless of your selection on this page.
  • When sending an SMS proof with UTM parameters, Iterable uses a campaignId of -12345.

Enable Template Generation Using Data Feeds

Enables customization of the template with data feeds (external web services). For more information, read Personalizing Templates with Data Feeds. Enabling this option causes various other data feed-related options to appear: as described in the following sections.

  • Cache Data Feed Response

    This option causes Iterable to cache responses to the data feeds referenced by the template (to reduce load on the servers that host them). For each recipient, Iterable determines the data feed URL to query by substituting parameters from their Iterable profile into the data feed's pre-defined URL. If Iterable has a cached response for that URL from within the past hour, it will use that data. Otherwise, it will query the URL.

  • Merge the Data Feed and User Contexts

    Allows the template to reference data feed data with double curly braces ({{productName}}) instead of double square brackets ([[productName]]). Doubly curly braces can still be used to reference user profile data, too. If the same field exists on both the user profile and the data feed, Iterable uses the value from the user profile. With this option enabled, a merge parameter can prefer user profile data but otherwise revert to data feed data.

  • Use Data Feed Alias

    Allows the template's content to reference data feeds by their aliases. Using aliases can make templates easier to read and maintain, especially when they reference multiple data feeds. To learn how to define data feed aliases, read Editing a data feed's alias. To learn how to use data feed aliases to reference data, read Using aliases to reference data feed data.

Use this option to add additional, custom URL parameters to your SMS campaigns (for example, for analytics providers other than Google Analytics). These parameters will only be added to your links if you also enable SMS link shortening and click tracking for your campaign (since the links might otherwise get too long to reasonably include in a 160-character SMS message).

These parameters are added before the link is shortened. They won't appear directly in the message, but they'll be available after the shortlink is resolved to its intended destination (in your app, or in the browser).

For each link parameter that you add, specify a parameter name in the left input and its value in the right input (using Handlebars to reference dynamic values, as needed). For example, in the screenshot above, the firstName parameter (the left input) is set (using Handlebars) to the value of the contact's firstName user profile field (the right input).

You can use Enable Google Analytics URL tracking and Enable custom link parameters on the same campaign, and Iterable will add both sets of parameters. Additionally, you can add hard-coded URL parameters directly to the links in your campaigns.

The various kinds of URL parameters are added to shortened links, from left to right, in this order:

  • Hard-coded URL parameters
  • UTM parameters (Google Analytics) second
  • Custom URL parameters

Additional options

Below the configuration options, you'll see various additional options:

Clone, Proof, Preview

  • To see the template's revision history, click See Revisions.
  • To clone the template to the same project, click Clone Template.
  • To send a proof of the template to yourself (with your own data), as random users (to yourself, but using data from random contacts in your project), to an internal list, or to someone else, click Send Proof and select an option. For more information, read Sending Proofs.
  • To preview the template with user data, click the Preview With Data button.
  • To save the template, click Save Template.

Further reading

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