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HubSpot’s SMS feature can significantly enhance communication strategies across Maricopa Community Colleges, allowing teams to send critical updates and personalized messages at the right time. This tool can be especially effective in student recruitment, engagement, and retention efforts.

Discuss segments here

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Each college has a monthly limit of 25,000 SMS segments, shared among Recruitment, Marketing, and Student Affairs. When sending SMS campaigns, messages are divided into segments, each charged individually, so understanding message segmentation is essential to managing costs. 

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🗨️ SMS Segmentmetation

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titleWhat is an SMS segment? Why SMS Segments Matter?

In SMS campaigns, messages are divided into segments, each incurring a charge. Each college has a shared monthly limit of 25,000 segments amoung the Recruitment, Marketing, and Student Affairs teams. If this limit is exceeded, the college is responsible for additional costs.

Phone carriers use segments to batch and bill text message deliveries. SMS (Short Messaging Service) restricts message length based on the encoding type:

  • GSM-7 Encoding: Supports up to 160 characters of basic text per segment.

  • UCS-2 Encoding: Allows up to 70 characters per segment when emojis or certain special characters are used.

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titleVariables That Impact SMS Segments

  1. Using emojis and certain characters outside the basic text character set (known as GSM-7, full list of characters here) will cause your segment character limit to change to 70.

  2. Using more than one segment will decrease the length of each segment. Messages with basic text will only decrease by 7 characters, and messages with emojis will decrease by 3 characters.

  3. When using a personalization token such as <name>, where the name length changes depending on the customer, the character count of the message will change accordingly.

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titleCalculating SMS Segments

SMS messages have a basic limit of 160 characters using GSM-7 encoding or 70 characters with UCS-2 encoding. When these limits are exceeded, phones can still send longer messages by breaking them into smaller segments.

Message 1 (GSM-7): 160 characters of basic text per segment.

Message 2 (UCS-2): 70 characters per segment when emojis or special characters are used.

  • Text: Good evening, <Name Personalization> from [Insert College Name]. Are you still interested in attending in the Spring? Classes are open for January and February start dates today! Reply STOP to unsubscribe.

  • Message Length: 207 characters

  • Calculation: 207 characters / 160 characters = 2 segments

  • Recipients: 500 contacts

  • Total Segments: 2 segments × 500 contacts = 1,000 segments

  • Text: Good evening, <Name Personalization> from [Insert College Name]. Are you still interested in attending in the Spring? 📙 Reply STOP to unsubscribe.

  • Message Length: 148 characters

  • Calculation: 148 characters / 70 characters = 3 segments

  • Recipients: 800 contacts

  • Total Segments: 3 segments × 800 contacts = 2,400 segments

Resource: Use an SMS Segment Calculator Resource to determine the exact segments for your messages based on encoding and message length.

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Track your college’s segment usage, with the SMS Segments Available by Business Unit Dashboard in HubSpot.

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🥇 Best Practices

Use a Compliant SMS Consent Process

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titleReply to Messages and Track Conversations

Reply to Messages

  • When a contact replies to an SMS message that you've sent via HubSpot—whether it was scheduled manually or sent through a workflow—their response will appear in the Conversations Inbox as a new conversation.

  • To reply:

    • Navigate to Conversations > Inbox in HubSpot.

    • Click on the SMS conversation to view the SMS message conversation history. This will show both your outgoing message and the contact's reply.

    • Review the contact's CRM data, which is readily available alongside the conversation. This helps respond in a personalized and informed manner.

    • Use the reply editor in the inbox to write and send a response. Ensure that the contact is still opted in to receive SMS messages before replying.

Track Conversations

  • Keep track of message history and view previous interactions to offer personalized responses.

For a detailed guide, visit the see full resource on HubSpot’s Knowledge Base: Use the Conversations Inbox.

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