Types of SMS
Direct SMS: Kixie users can send and receive SMS messages via their direct Kixie agent number.
Team SMS: Teams of users can receive and reply to SMS messages sent to your main company numbers, and respond in kind.
SMS Best Practices
SMS Best Practices to Avoid Being Blocked/Flagged
Character Limit for SMS
- 1600 characters if no unicode characters are present in the message.
- Note: Receiving devices will only present text messages up to 160 characters long, so your 1000 GSM character text would be delivered to the receiving device in 10 messages of 160 characters each.
- 737 characters if at least one unicode character is present in the message
- Note: Receiving devices will only present text messages up to 70 characters long if at least one unicode character is present, so your 737 unicode character text would be delivered to the receiving device in 11 messages.
- You can use this tool (click here) to verify whether or not your message contains any unicode characters or not.
Click-to-Text
Just click on the SMS icon to send a text message to a number in your CRM or anywhere else in Chrome.
Sending An SMS, Review SMS History, and Templates
SMS Pricing
Sending an SMS text message to a US or Canada phone number costs between $0.01 and $0.013 depending on which carrier you are sending the SMS to – so it would cost around $10.00 to $13.00 to send 1000 texts. However, longer texts can cost more, because cell phone carriers break longer texts into multiple shorter texts. All incoming texts are free.
If a text message contains only standard characters – letters, numbers, and punctuation only, excluding ellipsis ( … ) – the character limit is 160 characters because it's sent using GSM encoding. A text with 161-320 characters would count as two SMS messages; a text with 321-480 characters would count as three SMS messages, and so on. The maximum character limit for a GSM encoded SMS is 1600 characters, and the resulting SMS would be delivered to the receiving device in 10 messages.
If a text message includes special characters – emojis and symbols (🙂 , 📈 , ❌ , etc.), non-English characters (æ, é, 전화 판매, 电话销售, etc.), or ellipsis ( … ) – the character limit is reduced to 70 characters because it's sent using UNICODE encoding. If it has any of these special characters, a text with 71-140 characters would count as two texts, 141-210 counts as three, and so on. The maximum character limit for a UNICODE encoded SMS is 737 characters, and the resulting SMS would be delivered to the receiving device in 11 messages.
This applies to automated SMS text messages, SMS templates, and texts sent manually through the dialer. To learn more about how to optimize your SMS messages for the best response rate and delivery rate, please see our article on SMS Best Practices.
Opt-out/in SMS Options
("STOP," "START," "HELP")
OPT-OUT: End users receiving SMS messages can opt out from future texts from numbers on your account by replying to the text message with one of the Keywords mentioned below.
Once opted out, all calls and texts made by any user (or automation) on your account to this number will be blocked and users will see and hear a message informing them the number is blocked.
Keywords to Opt-Out:
- STOP
- END
- QUIT
- CANCEL
- UNSUBSCRIBE
- UNSUB
- STOP ALL
OPT-IN: End users who have decided to opt-out of SMS messages from a number can opt-in by replying with one of the keywords mentioned below.
Keywords to Opt-In:
-
START
-
YES
-
RESUME
-
RESUME ALL
-
UNSTOP
-
GO
HELP Message:
If the end user replies with “HELP” the following message will be sent:
Text “STOP” to stop receiving any messages from this number. Text “START” to start receiving messages again from this number.“
Note: Opt out/in only applies not just to the number being texted, but to all phone numbers across your Kixie account.
Please live chat us or email support@kixie.com for questions.