Video Walkthrough
Step by Step Instructions
Announcements allow you to send blind carbon copy texts to a group of multiple recipients. Not seeing this feature? You can contact Captivated Support to get it turned on for your business and for individual users within your account.
- Captivated may opt to not turn announcements on for your business. It is not to be used for any texts of a sales or marketing nature unless your business has an opt-in on file in which the contact has expressed prior written consent to receive these types of messages. Otherwise, announcements are to be used solely for informational purposes.
To send an announcement, select the green new message button in the right hand corner, then select the multiple recipients tab.
First, select the recipients you’d like to send an announcement to. You can select recipients that have a certain tag or multiple tags, or you can select individual contacts, searching for them by name or phone number. Once you select a tag(s) and/or contacts, the colored rectangles show you how many contacts are selected, how many are not deliverable and how many estimated recipients.
Next, you can compose your message, you can either type in your message on the fly or click the white sheet of paper to select a previously created template.
Use the “attachments” button to add any additional pictures or documents etc. Make sure to name your document something that defines your business as well as what the document is, while keeping the name as short as possible. It will show as a hyperlink at the end of the text message. If you plan to send an MMS, ensure that it is below 500kb in size for successful deliverability.
To give the message a more personalized feel, use the {{salutation}} field to address your recipients by their first name. You can also toggle on the option to include your signature at the end of the message if it isn’t included in your message itself.
You can also give your announcement a title so that you can easily locate it in the future.
Captivated will estimate the message length and segments. Note: One text message/segment = 160 characters. Keep in mind, that if you use include an emoji, the character count drops down to 80. Captivated charges you per segment.
Use this segment calculator to understand the length of your proposed announcement. As a best practice, announcements should be no more than two segments.
Customers will stop reading if the message is too long and on some devices it will split the message content into two bubbles in their message inbox.
Next, scroll down to choose the channel that you would like to send the announcement from. Captivated will calculate the estimated amount of time that it will take to send the entire message. Only send announcements during business hours.
You must agree to the terms and conditions before sending the announcement so make sure to toggle that on.
If you’d like to preview the message, hit “preview”. Note: If you have input {{salutation}} into your template, it will show as {{salutation}} and not the first name on the preview. But when you send the actual announcement using “send” it will include the customer’s first name.
Choose “send” to send immediately or hit “schedule” to schedule the announcement to send out in the future.
Once you have sent the announcement, you will see messages sent and messages failed. You can also download a CSV for reference.
If you’d like to add additional users to see announcement replies, hit the members button next to the complete button right after you send the announcement and they will be added to all replies from the announcement.
FAQ’s
If an announcement is already in the process of sending, it cannot be unsent.
The only exception to this if the announcement is scheduled to send in the future. If that is the case, change your conversation filters to “everyone” and “scheduled”. Then you will need to click into each scheduled message and hit the red trash can icon.
In theory, as many as you’d like. Note: Messages are throttled by SMS carriers, and only one message can be sent by your number per second. That said, it’s important to be mindful of the time you are sending your announcement as it could be a few hours before your entire batch of messages is sent. Time will vary based on the number of recipients in your announcement and the length of your message.
Per SMS carrier regulations, 160 characters is one full text message segment. If the text is over 160 characters long, it will be sent as multiple segments/messages. i.e. 320 characters = 2 text segments/messages sent x # of recipients; 480 characters = 3 segments, etc. This is why we highly recommend keeping your messages short and sweet (under 160 characters in total including your signature). We also recommend sending a test announcement to yourself and a couple other recipients to make sure the text looks and reads the way you want it to before sending to a larger group. Use the segment calculator to understand how many segments your message will be.
No, unlike group texting, where your phone can get blown up with responses from other people in the group, announcements are sent BCC (Blind Carbon Copy), so responses from contacts route back into Captivated in individual conversations.
We do this so that other Captivated users who may not have access to use announcements cannot hop into a conversation and send announcements on your behalf. That said, you can easily tag your recipients when drafting an announcement so that the next time you need to send one, you can quickly select your group of recipients.
Currently, this is not a feature we offer. We are always looking for ways to improve our software and value your feedback. Feel free to chat with our support team to put in a feature request.
- Questions? You can chat with Captivated's Support team using the "Support" option in the left-hand menu of our app or text Captivated Support at 317.316.3600