Use the “Send Message” action to send your contacts a message on their preferred channel when they reach a particular step in a flow.


In the example below, we create a “Send Message” action that asks students if they have questions about the application or scholarship program. Actions are created each time you drag a connection from the red circle at the bottom of each ActionSet.


Attach Media

Click the “Attachments” tab to attach media such as an image or video to your message.

Note the following:

  • Image attachments are limited to 500KB while video attachments are limited to 20MB. 

  • Outgoing media is displayed in-app for Facebook Messenger, Telegram, WebChat and text messaging channels. For other channels, media is converted to a link.

  • Our text messaging provider, Twilio, only supports Multimedia Message Service (MMS) in the US and Canada. It will convert a picture message into a Short Message Service (SMS) with linked media when sending to MMS-incompatible numbers.

  • Twilio will also automatically resize the images you send to meet your contacts' carriers' requirements. 


Advanced: Send to All Numbers Associated with Each Contact

Go to the “Advanced” tab and check the box “All Destinations” to send the message to each phone number for contacts who have multiple phone numbers attached to their profile.


SMS Character Limit

If a “Send Message” action exceeds 160 characters, it will automatically split and be sent as two separate messages. There is a character-counter beneath the dialogue box that shows the number of characters in your text / how many messages the text will be split into. In the example below, the message contains 155 characters and will send as 1 message.  


Conversely, this message contains 194 characters and will be split into 2 messages.


Unicode

Certain complex characters will trigger your messages to be sent using Unicode encoding instead of the standard form of encoding known as GSM7. Messages that contain characters from the standard GSM7 alphabet will, by default, have a limit of 160 characters. However, if you use characters that are not included in the GSM7 alphabet, the message gets sent using Unicode encoding and has a limit of 70 characters. 


Examples of characters that fall outside of the GSM7 alphabet are:

  • Letters with accents (e.g. é or î) 

  • Curly quotes (“quotes”), which are automatically generated by many word processors. Curly quotes should be exchanged for straight quotes ("quotes").

  • Emojis, which should be entered as their text if possible rather than directly pasted in, i.e. :-) instead of ?


Up Next: Wait for the Contact to Respond