Gecko supports one and two-way texting to domestic and international telephone numbers. We also fully support (and encourage!) the use of emojis ❤️😎⭐️🦎
Before you can send texts from Gecko, you'll need to do two things: create an SMS template and secure a VoIP number.
Templates represent the content you'll text students and can be created, edited or deleted by going to Settings > Email & SMS Templates.
SMS Templates
You can start building your first text template by heading to Settings > Email & SMS Templates and clicking + New Template in the top-right corner. Select the message type as SMS.
Give your template an internal Name and click Next.
Go ahead and compose your message to students. Remember, Gecko fully supports using emojis and template tags to personalize any aspect of your message.
The maximum text message length is 1,600 characters (though we recommend going nowhere near this limit! Texts work best when short and to the point!).
Every 160-character "block" will be considered an individual text message, though long gone are the days of students receiving longer texts 160-characters at a time. Any messages sent through Gecko will display as a single text message when viewed on the student's phone.
Gecko supports automatic opting out. Suppose a student replies to your text message with STOP, STOPALL, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, or QUIT. In that case, Gecko will automatically stop the student from receiving future text messages from the VoIP number that sent the text (or until the student responds with GO or START!).
If you want to include a URL in a text message, don't worry - Gecko will automatically apply a link shortener to make your link look more presentable.
Sending texts
Ready to start sending texts? Super! Before you go any further, be sure you have at least one VoIP number set up and that you've built the template you'd like to send.
You're able to send text messages to students in a vast number of ways:
SMS Chat Channel - Use the SMS channel your Chat account to have two-way conversations with students.
Manual (1 - 50 students at a time) - students can be messaged from the Contacts page. Click the checkbox to the left of the student's name and pick Actions on selected > SMS contact(s). Individual contacts can also be texted from within the contact record.
Automated - Workflows can automate sending the right SMS template at the right time. SMS workflows can be set on forms, events, broadcasts, call scripts, and call campaigns. Broadcasts can also be configured to run as campaigns that will pull in and send an SMS when contacts meet certain, pre-defined conditions.
Bulk/Mass - Gecko supports bulk texting to any number of students. This can be done via an SMS broadcast.
Sending text messages using an Engage VoIP Number is purely one-way only (students cannot reply, save for opting out). If you're looking to use two-way texting (where students can reply to your text, and you can have a back-and-forth conversation), be sure to set up a Chat SMS channel.
Getting an error when you try to send your text? Only users in a user group with the Send messages permission can email or text!
Troubleshooting
Here are some of the more common issues people run into when sending texts:
🔗 Consents
🔎 Issue: Understanding Message statuses
Messages sent from Gecko can have a range of different statuses. The following list should help you decipher their various meanings!
Clicked - the recipient of your email has clicked a link in your message template.
Delivered - Gecko has received confirmation from the recipients' email client/ telephone provider that the message has been successfully delivered.
Dropped - your email hasn't been sent, as we have dropped it due to the email address having a hard bounce within the last few months.
Duplicate - multiple identical messages have been sent to this contact in too short a time (24 hours), and Gecko has flagged this message as a duplicate. The recipient will not receive messages with this status. If testing a workflow, this status can be avoided by toggling on Test Mode.
Failed - the message has failed to deliver. This may be due to an invalid telephone number, network outages, recipient account suspension, account overflow, etc.
Hard Bounce - your email hasn't been delivered and has been permanently rejected by the mail server. This could be due to the mailbox not existing, for example.
No Consent - your message has not been sent because the contact hasn't consented to receive this message. This status can be avoided in several ways, including toggling to Ignore Consent Reasons when sending your message.
Opened - the recipient has opened your email. (note: some email clients send a false-positive status back to Gecko. As a result, a small percentage of messages with this message may not be accurate.)
Processing - your email/SMS is being processed by Gecko and will be sent shortly.
Sender not verified - your message has failed as the sender (the email address you're using to send your message) is yet to be verified.
Sending - your email/SMS message is being processed by AWS/ Twilio and will be sent shortly.
Sent - Twilio has had a request for the SMS to be sent by the nearest 'upstream carrier' accepted.
Soft Bounce - this is a temporary status. Your email has been rejected for many reasons, e.g., the recipient inbox may be full.
🔎 Issue: Why aren't my template tags showing?
Template tags only work when sent to a contact with a value in the field you're trying to pull into your template. The template tags will render a blank space where no value can be found.
Message templates using tags beginning with {{contact}} can be successfully sent from anywhere in Gecko. Message templates using tags beginning with {{event}} or {{response}}, however, will only work when sent from events or forms. Read more here.
🔎 Issue: Why is my message taking so long to send?
Depending on the region of the student you're messaging, please be aware that Gecko has pre-defined rate limits. Mass texts to students in the US/CA region can be sent at a speed of 1 text per second, whilst for students in the UK/Rest of the world, this increases to 5 texts per second.
This may mean that in a mass text to 4k students in Europe, student number 1 in the queue would receive their text around 13 minutes before student number 4,000 in the queue.
Potential options exist to increase this limit, though they incur an additional cost. Contact support@geckoengage.com to learn more.
Any questions? Start a live chat with our support team, or feel free to explore the rest of our Academy. Spotted an error or want to suggest a future article for the Academy? Let us know here.