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(info) About HubSpot's SMS Feature for Maricopa Colleges

HubSpot’s SMS feature can significantly enhance communication strategies across Maricopa 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.

Resources

🥇 SMS Best Practices

  • Use a Compliant SMS Consent Process

    • Utilize opt-in terminology. Contacts can opt-in using the three words START, UNSTOP, or SUBSCRIBE. Every SMS message must include a clear opt-out option. Prioritize giving your contacts the option to opt out of receiving messages.

  • Test, monitor, and analyze campaign performance regularly

    • Check delivery rate, click-through rate, and unsubscribes to monitor campaign performance. Use your campaign results to help you craft better text messages for future campaigns. Watch which texts achieve a high rate of clicks and which text messages cause unsubscribes, then tweak and test text messages to see what drives better results.

  • Coordinate your texts around your email marketing and social media.

    • Scheduling texts in conjunction with your email and social media posts is a solid way to make sure your messages are seen and stick in your customers’ minds. The more times someone sees a message, the more likely they are to take action.

  • Leverage Brezze AI Copilot

    • Breeze Copilot is a conversational AI tool. Use Copilot as a virtual assistant to support your sales, marketing, and service goals. Copilot can help you prospect companies, generate content, complete routine tasks, and more. To personalize your experience with Copilot, you can control Copilot's access to your HubSpot account.

đź’» Watch Video on SMS Marketing Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2hV4eq5pic

âś… đź“„ Step-by-Step Instructions for Creating and Managing SMS

 1. Identify Your SMS Use Case

Effective planning is the key to achieving success with SMS marketing and outreach. As you prepare to launch an SMS campaign, it is essential to have a clear idea of your message's use case.

Consider these common SMS Use Cases.

Informative

Promotional

  • Registration Updates: Inform students about their class registration status, including waitlist updates or changes to their schedule.

  • Important Dates: Remind students of key dates, like the start of the semester, drop/add deadlines, and tuition payment deadlines.

  • Financial Aid Notifications: Provide updates on the status of financial aid applications, deadlines, or disbursement details.

  • Enrollment Campaigns: Encourage students to register for classes during specific enrollment periods or highlight late-start classes.

  • Event Announcements: Promote campus events, workshops, job fairs, or graduation ceremonies for student engagement.

  • Program announcements: Share news about new academic programs, certificate courses, or degree pathways.

Student Services

Enrollment/Admissions

  • Advising Appointments: Remind students of their advising appointments or make it easy to schedule one via SMS.

  • Onboarding and Orientation: Guide new students through orientation and provide reminders about onboarding activities.

  • Campus Support Resources: Share information about support services, such as tutoring, career advising, or mental health resources.

  • Follow-up on Inquiries: Provide timely follow-ups for students who have inquired about programs, ensuring they feel supported throughout the enrollment process.

  • Re-enrollment Reminders: Encourage students who have paused their studies to re-enroll by highlighting upcoming deadlines and support options.

2. Set Clear Goals

When creating an SMS marketing campaign for a college, it’s essential to establish clear objectives. What are you expecting from your SMS marketing campaign? Increase event attendance? Increase student engagement? By setting clear goals, colleges can tailor their SMS campaigns to meet specific outcomes, ensuring a successful campaign.

3. Create an Attention-Grabbing SMS Campaign

  • Write Actionable SMS Copy

    • Know your character count. While HubSpot allows a 300-character limit SMS messages max out at 160 characters—if you exceed the 160 count, your text message will be sent as two separate texts. Get to the point quickly, and use links (and link shorteners) to fill out the details of your message.

    • Say hello! Send a welcome message to any new contact. Clearly state who you are and why you're messaging to provide valuable context.

    • Get to the point: By keeping messages brief, recipients can easily read and act on the information on smartphones, watches, and digital assistants like Siri.

    • Don’t overdo it: SMS is a high-cost communication channel. Reserve SMS for use cases that are deeply personalized and/or express urgency.

    • Be transparent: Consistently reintroduce your brand, purpose, and message frequency.Opt out: Every message should include the option to opt-out.

    • Personalize your copy: Tailor SMS communication using personalization tokens to automatically insert relevant details like a student’s name, program interest, or other preferences, creating a more meaningful connection.

How to Use Personalization Tokens

  1. Add personalization to your message by clicking Personalize.

  2. Click the Type dropdown menu, then select the type of personalization token to insert.

  3. Click the Property dropdown menu to select which property value to pull into the message body.

  4. Enter a default value that can be used for any contact without a value populated for the property, then click Insert.

image-20241016-194733.png

For more details on how to use personalization tokens this, you can explore the Create and Send SMS Messages in HubSpot resource guide.

Good SMS Examples

image-20241011-221422.pngimage-20241011-221452.png

4. Send a Test SMS Message

Testing SMS messages is crucial to ensure that the content such as personalization tokens display correctly, review for proper formatting and test that links in the SMS work. Testing helps you avoid errors and improve engagement. For more details, you can visit HubSpot's guide: Send Test SMS Messages.

  • Open the Editor: While drafting your SMS, go to the top right corner of the editor and click on Send test message.

  • Choose Recipients: In the right panel, click the Choose one or more numbers dropdown menu. Select phone numbers of team members who have added their number to HubSpot. If needed, you can enter a phone number manually by typing the full number including the country code.

6. Send or schedule your message

When you're ready to send or schedule your message, click the Send or schedule tab.

  • Configure your recipients

    • Click the Send to dropdown menu and choose lists or individual contacts to include in your recipient list. Only contacts set as Marketing Contacts will be eligible to receive SMS messages.

Manually Set Contacts as Marketing:

  1. Go to your Contacts in HubSpot.

  2. Select the contacts you want to mark as "Marketing."

  3. Click the Actions dropdown and choose Set as marketing contacts

Automatically Set Contacts as Marketing Using Workflows

  1. Create a new workflow or use an existing one.

  2. Add an action to Set contact as a marketing contact within the workflow.

  3. This will automatically designate contacts as marketing contacts when they meet certain criteria, helping you streamline your marketing efforts.

  • Review your SMS scheduling options

By default, you can only send SMS messages from 8 a.m. to 7:59 p.m. in contacts' local time zones. This applies to individual SMS campaigns as well as sending an SMS message via a workflow. If you attempt to send or schedule a message outside of this period, HubSpot will defer sending your message until waking hours begin in the subscribers' timezone.

  • Send now: Your message will be sent immediately.

  • Schedule for later: You can schedule your SMS to be sent at a specific date and time.

Understand SMS quiet hours

 2. Set Clear Goals

When creating an SMS marketing campaign for a college, it’s essential to establish clear objectives. What are you expecting from your SMS marketing campaign? Increase event attendance? Increase student engagement? By setting clear goals, colleges can tailor their SMS campaigns to meet specific outcomes, ensuring a successful campaign.

3. Create an Attention-Grabbing SMS Campaign

  • Write Actionable SMS Copy

    • Know your character count. While HubSpot allows a 300-character limit SMS messages max out at 160 characters—if you exceed the 160 count, your text message will be sent as two separate texts. Get to the point quickly, and use links (and link shorteners) to fill out the details of your message.

    • Say hello! Send a welcome message to any new contact. Clearly state who you are and why you're messaging to provide valuable context.

    • Get to the point: By keeping messages brief, recipients can easily read and act on the information on smartphones, watches, and digital assistants like Siri.

    • Don’t overdo it: SMS is a high-cost communication channel. Reserve SMS for use cases that are deeply personalized and/or express urgency.

    • Be transparent: Consistently reintroduce your brand, purpose, and message frequency.Opt out: Every message should include the option to opt-out.

    • Personalize your copy: Tailor SMS communication using personalization tokens to automatically insert relevant details like a student’s name, program interest, or other preferences, creating a more meaningful connection.

How to Use Personalization Tokens

  1. Add personalization to your message by clicking Personalize.

  2. Click the Type dropdown menu, then select the type of personalization token to insert.

  3. Click the Property dropdown menu to select which property value to pull into the message body.

  4. Enter a default value that can be used for any contact without a value populated for the property, then click Insert.

image-20241016-194733.png

For more details on how to use personalization tokens this, you can explore the Create and Send SMS Messages in HubSpot resource guide.

Good SMS Examples

image-20241011-221422.pngimage-20241011-221452.png

4. Send a Test SMS Message

Testing SMS messages is crucial to ensure that the content such as personalization tokens display correctly, review for proper formatting and test that links in the SMS work. Testing helps you avoid errors and improve engagement. For more details, you can visit HubSpot's guide: Send Test SMS Messages.

  • Open the Editor: While drafting your SMS, go to the top right corner of the editor and click on Send test message.

  • Choose Recipients: In the right panel, click the Choose one or more numbers dropdown menu. Select phone numbers of team members who have added their number to HubSpot. If needed, you can enter a phone number manually by typing the full number including the country code.

6. Send or schedule your message

When you're ready to send or schedule your message, click the Send or schedule tab.

  • Configure your recipients

    • Click the Send to dropdown menu and choose lists or individual contacts to include in your recipient list. Only contacts set as Marketing Contacts will be eligible to receive SMS messages.

Manually Set Contacts as Marketing:

  1. Go to your Contacts in HubSpot.

  2. Select the contacts you want to mark as "Marketing."

  3. Click the Actions dropdown and choose Set as marketing contacts

Automatically Set Contacts as Marketing Using Workflows

  1. Create a new workflow or use an existing one.

  2. Add an action to Set contact as a marketing contact within the workflow.

  3. This will automatically designate contacts as marketing contacts when they meet certain criteria, helping you streamline your marketing efforts.

  • Review your SMS scheduling options

By default, you can only send SMS messages from 8 a.m. to 7:59 p.m. in contacts' local time zones. This applies to individual SMS campaigns as well as sending an SMS message via a workflow. If you attempt to send or schedule a message outside of this period, HubSpot will defer sending your message until waking hours begin in the subscribers' timezone.

  • Send now: Your message will be sent immediately.

  • Schedule for later: You can schedule your SMS to be sent at a specific date and time.

Understand SMS quiet hours

 3. Create an Attention-Grabbing SMS Campaign

Write Actionable SMS Copy

  • Know your character count. While HubSpot allows a 300-character limit SMS messages max out at 160 characters—if you exceed the 160 count, your text message will be sent as two separate texts. Get to the point quickly, and use links (and link shorteners) to fill out the details of your message.

  • Say hello! Send a welcome message to any new contact. Clearly state who you are and why you're messaging to provide valuable context.

  • Get to the point: By keeping messages brief, recipients can easily read and act on the information on smartphones, watches, and digital assistants like Siri.

  • Don’t overdo it: SMS is a high-cost communication channel. Reserve SMS for use cases that are deeply personalized and/or express urgency.

  • Be transparent: Consistently reintroduce your brand, purpose, and message frequency.Opt out: Every message should include the option to opt-out.

  • Personalize your copy: Tailor SMS communication using personalization tokens to automatically insert relevant details like a student’s name, program interest, or other preferences, creating a more meaningful connection.

How to Use Personalization Tokens

  1. Add personalization to your message by clicking Personalize.

  2. Click the Type dropdown menu, then select the type of personalization token to insert.

  3. Click the Property dropdown menu to select which property value to pull into the message body.

  4. Enter a default value that can be used for any contact without a value populated for the property, then click Insert.

image-20241016-194733.png

For more details on how to use personalization tokens this, you can explore the Create and Send SMS Messages in HubSpot resource guide.

Good SMS Examples

image-20241011-221422.pngimage-20241011-221452.png

4. Send a Test SMS Message

Testing SMS messages is crucial to ensure that the content such as personalization tokens display correctly, review for proper formatting and test that links in the SMS work. Testing helps you avoid errors and improve engagement. For more details, you can visit HubSpot's guide: Send Test SMS Messages.

  • Open the Editor: While drafting your SMS, go to the top right corner of the editor and click on Send test message.

  • Choose Recipients: In the right panel, click the Choose one or more numbers dropdown menu. Select phone numbers of team members who have added their number to HubSpot. If needed, you can enter a phone number manually by typing the full number including the country code.

6. Send or schedule your message

When you're ready to send or schedule your message, click the Send or schedule tab.

  • Configure your recipients

    • Click the Send to dropdown menu and choose lists or individual contacts to include in your recipient list. Only contacts set as Marketing Contacts will be eligible to receive SMS messages.

Manually Set Contacts as Marketing:

  1. Go to your Contacts in HubSpot.

  2. Select the contacts you want to mark as "Marketing."

  3. Click the Actions dropdown and choose Set as marketing contacts

Automatically Set Contacts as Marketing Using Workflows

  1. Create a new workflow or use an existing one.

  2. Add an action to Set contact as a marketing contact within the workflow.

  3. This will automatically designate contacts as marketing contacts when they meet certain criteria, helping you streamline your marketing efforts.

  • Review your SMS scheduling options

By default, you can only send SMS messages from 8 a.m. to 7:59 p.m. in contacts' local time zones. This applies to individual SMS campaigns as well as sending an SMS message via a workflow. If you attempt to send or schedule a message outside of this period, HubSpot will defer sending your message until waking hours begin in the subscribers' timezone.

  • Send now: Your message will be sent immediately.

  • Schedule for later: You can schedule your SMS to be sent at a specific date and time.

Understand SMS quiet hours

  4. Send a Test SMS Message

Testing SMS messages is crucial to ensure that the content such as personalization tokens display correctly, review for proper formatting and test that links in the SMS work. Testing helps you avoid errors and improve engagement. For more details, you can visit HubSpot's guide: Send Test SMS Messages.

  • Open the Editor: While drafting your SMS, go to the top right corner of the editor and click on Send test message.

  • Choose Recipients: In the right panel, click the Choose one or more numbers dropdown menu. Select phone numbers of team members who have added their number to HubSpot. If needed, you can enter a phone number manually by typing the full number including the country code.

6. Send or schedule your message

When you're ready to send or schedule your message, click the Send or schedule tab.

  • Configure your recipients

    • Click the Send to dropdown menu and choose lists or individual contacts to include in your recipient list. Only contacts set as Marketing Contacts will be eligible to receive SMS messages.

Manually Set Contacts as Marketing:

  1. Go to your Contacts in HubSpot.

  2. Select the contacts you want to mark as "Marketing."

  3. Click the Actions dropdown and choose Set as marketing contacts

Automatically Set Contacts as Marketing Using Workflows

  1. Create a new workflow or use an existing one.

  2. Add an action to Set contact as a marketing contact within the workflow.

  3. This will automatically designate contacts as marketing contacts when they meet certain criteria, helping you streamline your marketing efforts.

  • Review your SMS scheduling options

By default, you can only send SMS messages from 8 a.m. to 7:59 p.m. in contacts' local time zones. This applies to individual SMS campaigns as well as sending an SMS message via a workflow. If you attempt to send or schedule a message outside of this period, HubSpot will defer sending your message until waking hours begin in the subscribers' timezone.

  • Send now: Your message will be sent immediately.

  • Schedule for later: You can schedule your SMS to be sent at a specific date and time.

Understand SMS quiet hours

 5. Send or schedule your message

When you're ready to send or schedule your message, click the Send or Schedule tab.

  • Configure your recipients

    • Click the Send to dropdown menu and choose lists or individual contacts to include in your recipient list. Only contacts set as Marketing Contacts will be eligible to receive SMS messages.

Manually Set Contacts as Marketing:

  1. Go to your Contacts in HubSpot.

  2. Select the contacts you want to mark as "Marketing."

  3. Click the Actions dropdown and choose Set as marketing contacts

Automatically Set Contacts as Marketing Using Workflows

  1. Create a new workflow or use an existing one.

  2. Add an action to Set contact as a marketing contact within the workflow.

  3. This will automatically designate contacts as marketing contacts when they meet certain criteria, helping you streamline your marketing efforts.

  • Review your SMS scheduling options

By default, you can only send SMS messages from 8 a.m. to 7:59 p.m. in contacts' local time zones. This applies to individual SMS campaigns as well as sending an SMS message via a workflow. If you attempt to send or schedule a message outside of this period, HubSpot will defer sending your message until waking hours begin in the subscribers' timezone.

  • Send now: Your message will be sent immediately.

  • Schedule for later: You can schedule your SMS to be sent at a specific date and time.

Understand SMS quiet hours

âś… đź“„ Step-by-Step Instructions to Manage and Reply to Marketing SMS Messages

 How to Manage and Reply to Marketing SMS Messages

1. Access the Conversations Inbox

In your HubSpot account, navigate to CRM > Inbox > Select your college’s inbox.

image-20241016-200543.png

2. Viewing SMS Conversations

  • All SMS messages received from marketing campaigns will appear in the inbox. Each message will display details such as the sender’s phone number, contact information, and the content of the SMS. To better manage conversations, you can create custom views by filtering conversations based on specific criteria. For example, you can create views for unassigned conversations, high-priority inquiries, or messages from specific channels (like SMS).

To create a custom view for SMS messages:

  1. In the bottom left, click the Actions dropdown menu, then select Create a view.

  2. In the right panel, enter SMS for the view name, then click Next.

  3. In the Filter type section, select Conversations properties.

  4. In the search bar, search for and select Source.

  5. Click the is any of dropdown menu, then search for and select SMS.

  6. Click Apply filter, then click Create view.

The new view will appear below the other default inbox filters and views.

image-20241016-201834.png

3. 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.

4. Track Conversations

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

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

Additional Features

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