Our Announcements feature allows you to send one message to a group of contacts, instead of texting each contact individually. You can customize these messages using variable fields. Variable fields pull specific customer information like your customer's name into your Announcements.

To create an Announcement, head to Messaging Tools > Announcements on your dashboard, select your department (if you have more than one), and click the blue New Announcement button to the top right.

Enter the title of your message (this is only seen internally) and the body of the text. Please note that the Announcements feature is not to be used for SPAM. Textline reserves the right to review announcements and block access to anyone abusing the feature. Announcements also support MMS and attachments.

If you want to include variable fields (pieces of information pulled from the customer's details), you can use fields from the Address Book or custom columns from a CSV upload (done in Step 2). Learn how to use variable fields here.

Finally, select the Department (or phone number) you want the Announcement to send from. If you only have one Textline phone number, you can skip this step.

On the next screen, you can choose to send the Announcement several different ways:

Please note that if you utilize the tagged contact option, the contacts used for your Announcement will not be pulled until the Announcement is sent. You can tag contacts by selecting the "view" button next to their name in the Address Book or in their information section in the Conversation Dashboard. You can read more on tagging contacts here.

This screen allows you to configure how you would like to handle conversations and replies after you send your Announcement. The fields have a default setting, so feel free to skip this page. If you want to read more about these advanced settings, head here.

This is the step where you decide when you would like to send your Announcement. Your options are to Send Now or Send Later.

The final page is a preview of your Announcement. It shows you a summary of the settings you selected in the previous screens (minus the advanced settings in Step 3). It also has edit buttons so you can easily change those selections.

If the preview looks good, click the Send button to send or schedule your Announcement.

Once you've sent your first Announcement, you can find that Announcement and duplicate it to copy its contents and settings and reuse it for a new Announcement. More on Announcement Duplication can be found here.

Watch the video tutorial on Announcements here.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Sending mass messages over SMS is highly regulated, and there are legal restrictions around sending text messages for marketing purposes. The Announcements feature is intended to provide information to existing customers or contacts relevant to products or services that they have already purchased or that the customers have already agreed to be a part of. Please click here for more information on these regulations.

Due to the level of regulation, Textline will need to approve your first Announcement before it is sent to your customers. Once you've created and selected Send on your first Announcement, we will review the message and determine whether or not it has been approved. You will receive a notification when the message has been approved and sent.

If you would like to speed up your Announcements, the Smart SMS department is a great option. You can read more on Smart SMS and its effects on Announcement speeds here.