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Can we use text messaging for marketing instead of e-mail? Most of my customers give phone # only.
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Square Marketing
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Posted 02-05-2021
Re: Can we use text messaging instead of email for Square Marketing?
Posted 02-05-2021
📳Hello Everyone!📳
I'm reaching out to those who've posted to this thread as we're hosting a question & answer session with the product team for Text Message Marketing on Wednesday, February 17th.
Have questions about setting up or feedback on how it's going so far? Please head over to this thread and let us know: Live Q&A: Ask us anything about Text Message Marketing!
You can get started by visiting Text Message Marketing on on the Square Dashboard.
Included are automated campaigns and ‘manual blast’ campaigns, where you can offer coupons, announce sales, promote events, and more.
While Text Message Marketing can be found and used within Square Marketing in Dashboard, you DO NOT need to be subscribed to Square Marketing to use Text Message Marketing.
Square Marketing users will likewise need to onboard to Text Message Marketing, and will be billed separately for text message use.
What does the Text Message Marketing do?
Opt-in Collection
- Build a list of customers to text BEFORE you pay a cent for the product
- Collect opt-ins via your point-of-sale (or via Loyalty enrollment)
- Text customers from a phone number unique to your business. This number will also allow customers to sign up via Text to Join, and can be promoted via in-store, online, or wherever else you’d like
Manual Campaigns
- Draft a message and send to customers, instantly*
- Offer a coupon, or include a link to an announcement, event, or online sale (which we automatically shorten to save characters)
- Send up to 600 characters per message, or 250 if emojis are used. This will separate out into up to 4 texts, BUT we’ll only be charging for one ‘message’ per customer per campaign.
*Note: Texts are sent in 15 minute increments, so if you draft and send a text at 2:05pm, the text would go out at 2:15. Texts can only be sent during business hours in the merchant's time zone (i.e. 9-5). After 5pm, merchants can schedule for texts that will be sent the next day.
Automated Campaigns
- Automatically text a customer with a qualifying event (similar to automated email marketing)
- General campaigns: birthday collection + birthday reward, lapsed customer.
- Loyalty-related campaigns like reminding about Loyalty rewards, and celebrating Loyalty anniversaries
What are the limitations?
Feature |
Current Limitation |
Texting: General |
No two-way texting (You cannot yet respond to Buyers by text, Sellers will not see Buyer responses) |
Texting: General |
No picture message (MMS) |
Opt-in: List Building |
No phone number list upload |
Opt-in: Loyalty Consent Specifics |
Due to the current Loyalty consent language (which permits ‘loyalty-related communication’), Loyalty sellers will be able to send automated messages to nearly all of their Loyalty enrollees. |
Seller Use Case |
Sellers who sell adult products, alcohol, tobacco, firearms, or CBD/cannabis are subject to a standard called SHAFT. This a self-regulation by mobile carriers that can block messages around these topics. |
What is the pricing?
Pricing is tiered pay-as-you-go: at the end of the month, a seller will be charged the tier corresponding with how many messages they sent. They will not be charged for months where they did not send any messages. We do not have established custom pricing eligibility or rates established for launch.
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Thank for sharing your feedback! We don't have a current timeline to send a custom one-time campaign at this time, but we understand it's the top feature request at this point.
The good new you can adjust the "Lapsed Customer" criteria within your customers menu on your Square Dashboard > Customers > All Customers > Lapsed > Edit Group in your directory.
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Hi Howard
I tried activating the Square Marketing and Square Loyalty programs to get going with the Marketing as per your post. I got re-directed to the Australian site which does not mention either. Is this feature only for USA clients?
Rewgards
Hugh
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Hi @Finesse! This feature is only available in the US as of right now as a beta but we will keep you updated on when/if it becomes available to other markets!
Community Moderator, Square
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Can we opt in to text message contact?
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Please enable on our account!
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Hi, We are interested in text messaging marketing. Please enable the feature for our account. Thanks.
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Super interested!! I have a ton of clients i am trying to reach that only provided a phone number! 🙂
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I am interested. I'm not sure if my post are getting through. I keep getting an error message. @Howard
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@Tier7 Thank you for your interest!
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I would love to opt into this feature and use it today. Is that possible?
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Due to the holiday and weekend we're not able to get your enrolled today, but our Beta team will be back on Monday to look in this for you.
I'll be sure to pass your info their way.
Technical Program Manager: AI
Square Inc
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me too please!
[Personal Information Redacted]
thank you
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glitter! skin studio, llc
[Personal Information Redacted]
sorry - left off company name - please include us too for text messaging marketing 🙂
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Thank you all for showing interest in testing Automated Test Message Campaigns for Square Loyalty.
I am excited to announce this feature is now available all sellers subscribed to both Square Marketing and Square Loyalty. Feel free to start a 30-day free trial if you aren’t using Marketing and Loyalty already.
With these campaigns, you will be able to automatically reengage your customers to drive them to come back to your business.
To enable Automated Text Message Campaigns:
- Visit the Marketing tab in your online Square Dashboard.
- Click Create Campaign and select text message.
- Select from the five different Campaign types.
- Edit the message and coupon you wish to send.
- Review and then select Activate Now to enable this campaign.
These text campaigns will be automatically sent to all customers who meet the campaign audience criteria. You can always edit or cancel these messages via the Campaign section in the Marketing dashboard.
Please review our Support Center to learn more about Automated Text Message Campaigns.
Thank you for sharing feedback and helping us improve the product!
Cheers,
Howard, Square Beta Team
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I thought I had seen the text feature a few days ago but it is gone now. Is it no longer an option already?
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Hi @Pawprints,
We actually have been running a soft-launched/beta version of automated text message campaigns over the last few months, which is what you saw in the Dashboard.
Based on feedback over the last two months, we have decided to pause this feature to make some important customer experience updates. We know automated text message campaigns are an important tool for your Loyalty program, and we apologize for the inconvenience.
The team is diligently working to make updates to this feature and will notify you when it is ready to use again.
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I see that you have "paused" this feature back in early August... any ETA on when we might see it again?
We capture more customer phone numbers than emails so texting would be much more useful to us.
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is there any update on this? Our shop really needs this feature. I used to be able to do 2-3x as much business from text with our old company versus the email marketing through square. We really need this functionality.
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Hi @Howard
Looking forward to this feature. We too find emailing a very poor form of advertising. People are just not interested. The same actually applies to SMS marketing. People are over it. I'm talking about pure marketing where your product is simply pushed out to customers.
Our specific need is to be able to sms an individual person from Square, not for marketing, but for communicating with them in terms of their order. At the moment we have to access Square, look up the mobile number and then send an SMS using a mobile phone. Being able to use messages within Square would be a huge win for us, our customers and for Square.
Many thanks
Hugh
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