Engage customers with smart SMS Campaign

Introduction

Either it’s a small startup or a full-fledged enterprise, everyone wants to grow and attract customers for their business to grow. Their priority is to engage the customers with their services and products. They pitch in to market with public marketing and promotions. Target customers might be interested in personal assistance.

SMS can help business to reach such targeted customers. While SMS worth investment, it requires complete knowledge of getting perfect SMS Gateway, managing customer information, integrating SMS Gateway with application, filter target customers for sending campaigns. Imagine the time and resources it would take to integrate and send SMS.

We provide flawless and smart way of integrating SMS Gateway and sending SMS campaigns. Want to try it yourself? Let’s dive in…

Let’s start with this scenario

Business has a list of customers in CSV file

id,first_name,last_name,email,gender,ip_address,phone 13.121.11.156,Murial,Ascough,[email protected],Male,78.204.38.249,+84 463 705 0317 64.4.110.201,Ansel,Hammonds,[email protected],Genderfluid,226.51.97.10,+689 270 545 0635 127.107.238.37,Ursola,Gilvear,[email protected],Female,251.85.99.151,+86 557 545 6211 1.208.171.48,Vincenty,Raiman,[email protected],Female,236.130.122.227,+380 160 123 2302 12.91.92.109,Lucio,Boyle,[email protected],Genderfluid,88.31.112.32,+353 957 904 4620 213.117.138.122,Samaria,Crutchley,[email protected],Genderfluid,81.219.164.190,+63 578 727 9253 255.176.108.96,Ortensia,Gann,[email protected],Non-binary,136.15.176.21,+33 177 186 0400 5.226.94.117,Edsel,Le Grice,[email protected],Genderfluid,243.14.193.52,+234 858 947 9608 76.63.153.234,Jeanelle,Luparto,[email protected],Agender,105.156.130.0,+48 550 248 5004

Business Requirement

Business has its own SMS Gateway provider and is looking to identify the country of customers and send personalized campaign to valid phone numbers in US.

Breaking down the requirement, following operations are required.

1. Verify Phone number from CSV file
2. Condition to filter only US Phone numbers
3. Send SMS to the phone number using the chosen SMS Gateway

Let’s get started. We will divide this tutorial in 4 steps.

1. Integrating SMS Gateway
2. Building Flow
3. Uploading CSV File
4. Executing Flow

Integrating SMS Gateway

To integrate SMS Gateway checkout

Integrate SMS Service Provider

Building Flow

Once the gateway is integrated, let’s start building the flow based on the requirements. The flow always operates in specific pattern.

1. One input for data source
2. Operations to process
3. Output

Input and Output are required to be in all flow. We provide efficient Input mechnism. Business has to provide the field name only. Based on our requirement and from csv file, input will have field names: id,first_name,last_name,email,gender,ip_address,phone

To create a flow, navigate to New Flow under Flow Manager from left menu.

This will bring the page for flow editor. From the Operations menu choose Data Collection and drag it to the right canvas.

While doing so, on canvas, two nodes are created. Green node denotes the input operation and the field names are required to pass in the input operation. Blue node is to preview and confirm the selected fields. Give the name to the flow on the top middle of canvas. To provide the field names, click on Setting icon of Choose Data Pattern to open Setting Panel.

After providing the field names click on Save & Continue button. It will temporarily save the fields. Click on Setting icon of Preview fields to preview and confirm the field name provided.

Click on Save & Continue for next step. Now from the Operations menu drag Verify Phone operation to the right canvas. After drag, connect the two nodes: Preview fields and Verify Phone using circles available on both operations.

Click on Setting icon of Verify Phone operation to open Setting Panel. Here, business can choose the field for phone verification. In our case, phone field will be used. Once the field is selected, 3 extra fields are auto generated for us. phone_type, phone_country and phone_valid. To confirm and move to next step click on Save & Continue button.

So far, we have created the flow to grab field names and verify phone number. After phone verification, we get the phone_country. This field will be used to check the country.

Now, from Operations menu drag Condition operation from right to left canvas.

Connect the Verify Phone and Conditional Branch nodes with each other. This node will help us filter out the data we require. Click on Setting icon of Conditional Branch to open the Setting Panel. Once inside Setting Panel, click on Add new branch to add condition.

Conditional Branch allows us to select or insert new node based on the condition. In our case, we want to Send SMS to US phone number. So condition will apply phone_country = “US”. If the condition met, we will select the Send SMS node to SMS as shown in the image.

After the required fields are selected, click on Apply button and then click on Save & continue button for next step. As soon as the button is clicked, we notice that a new node Send SMS is auto created and is linked with Conditional Branch node.

Now on Send SMS node we can select the SMS Gateway and other configurations

After the service provider is chosen, some basic information need to be provided.

Recipient Phone field – Select the field from the dropdown. SMS will be sent to this number

Sender – Sender name or number of the user while sending SMS

SMS Message – This field is required for sending SMS. User can pass the fields as merge fields using placeholders. Placeholder is represented by name between {{ and }}

Callback URL – User might want to receive the status of each SMS. So add the valid URL to receive the status from the service provider.

Default Country – The recipient phone in the data might contain only phone number and not country code. So this field will help choose the default country for such phone number.

Request Structure – This field is visible once the Service Provider is selected. Each provider has its own way of sending SMS. This field provide the request structure in JSON. User need to provide the placeholder instead of actual data in the field.

Click on Save & Continue button

Now we have build the flow. Click on Save button on top right of canvas to save the flow.

Integrating CSV File

To integrate CSV File, checkout this page

Add CSV Data Source

Executing Flow

We are almost there :). After integrating SMS Gateway, building flow, integrating CSV file, finally we will execute the flow with the csv file.

1. Click on Data Sources in Datasource Manager menu from the left.
2. From the Data source dropdown select the CSV source, that was integrated earlier.
3. Once selected, the list down below will show all the CSV files that has been uploaded.
4. Select the specific file that we want to send SMS to. After selecting the file, it will show the field names in list.
5. To confirm on data, Click on Run Query button. This button will show the sample of data from CSV file.

After confirmation, Choose the required Flow from the Dropdown and click on Run Flow button to execute.

Yay! the process has started and the flow is running in the background. To view the reports, click on Data Flow Requests under Reports menu in left menu