Send or schedule a blast

A blast is one text sent to everyone on the lists you choose.

Write and send

1. Go to Blasts and click New blast.
2. Give it a name. Only your team sees the name.
3. Pick your texting number and the list or lists to send to.
4. Write your message. Click {first_name} to insert each person’s first name.
5. Choose Send now or Schedule and pick a date and time.
6. Click Review & send, check the number of recipients, then click Yes, go.

The preview on the right shows how the text will look and how many messages it uses.

How long can a text be?

One text holds 160 characters. Longer messages are split into parts, and each part counts toward your monthly limit. Emoji and some special characters (like curly quotes) cut each part to 70 characters. The counter under the message shows how many messages each person’s text will use.

Things SMS Blast does for you

• Opt-out line: the first text each person gets from your number ends with Reply STOP to opt out.
• Opt-outs skipped: anyone who has opted out is left off automatically.
• Quiet hours: texts only go out between 8 AM and 9 PM in your time zone. If you click Send now (or schedule a time) outside those hours, the confirm step and the blast page say “Starts at 8:00 AM (quiet hours)”.
• Monthly limit: if a blast would go over your plan’s limit, SMS Blast tells you before anything is sent.

Add a picture

Click Add a picture and choose a JPG, PNG or GIF up to 1 MB. You see it in the phone preview, and Remove takes it off. The blast goes out as a picture message (MMS), which counts as 3 texts toward your monthly limit.

Links in your text

Links are swapped for short links so you can see who clicked them. Uncheck Track links to send them exactly as typed. See Link tracking.

Templates

Send the same kind of message often? Save it under Templates, then pick it from Use a template when writing a blast.

Tip: The merge-field buttons insert where your cursor is. If you type a field SMS Blast doesn’t know (like {firstname}), you get a warning so the text doesn’t go out with a blank.

Check how a blast did

Open a blast from Blasts to see how many texts are waiting, sent, delivered or failed, and how many people were skipped because they opted out. Click a status to see the numbers in it.

A scheduled blast can be canceled until it starts. A blast that’s sending can be stopped, and texts that haven’t gone out yet won’t be sent.