Businesses love and trust Textline because of our advanced reliability for delivery and ability to stay compliant with complex texting regulations. See why customers love us for yourself.
<span class="platform__quote"><q>Communication is faster, easier, and more successful. <span class="platform__quote--blue60">It's the perfect tool for the job!</span></q></span>
<span class="platform__quote__author">Jack E.,<span class="platform__quote__author--blue60"> Capterra</span></span>
Automated text messages are pre-written messages scheduled to send automatically and without manual intervention when a specific condition is met. They include mass texts that automatically send one consistent message to thousands of customers at once or auto-replies that are triggered by a set of rules.
Most frequently, text automations are triggered by conditions like date, time, status change, or a specific word texted in. But, automated texts can also be fired off using an SMS API. With an API, you can efficiently automate notifications, one-time passwords, reminders, alerts, and more, with conditions that best meet your needs.
Overall, automated messages help streamline a company's communication workflow to save time and effort so employees can focus on the connections and conversations that matter most.
Try scheduling an automated text with Textline and see the results for yourself. Start your 14-day free trial with Textline today. No credit card required.
Textline prioritizes security and compliance above all else. Our SMS automation service has the necessary safeguards in place to protect your business and help you comply with the increasingly complex compliance requirements across industries.
There are several reasons we’re the gold standard:
Don’t waste time or effort by manually sending or replying to each and every text. Instead, set up automatic messages to eliminate redundant communications and labor. This can include setting up automatic replies or scheduling a mass text to many customers at the same time. Setting these up will boost efficiencies and may help cut costs.
Automating SMS guarantees your messages are timely and relevant. That's because these messages can be scheduled to send at the right time and around the clock. This also ensures you’re reaching customers when you are not available. Consider using automated texts when you're experiencing a long ticket queue or if a customer texts in outside of business hours.
With automated messages, you can reply to inbound messages or inbound leads within seconds. It is often faster than replying manually. This reply speed can help you reach leads quicker to close more deals, boost customer satisfaction, and boost revenue.
Texts have a 98 percent open rate and 45 percent response rate, ensuring that more customers get your message whether it is automated or not.
There’s a lot to consider when choosing an automated SMS platform for your business. Here we break down a few things to keep an eye out for, especially when you want to incorporate automated text messages into your workflow. Textline’s robust features and capabilities ensure you are set up for success when it comes to automation.
<div class="platform__mb40">Find a provider that allows you to customize your automations to fit your business needs. This includes being able to write rules to trigger automation or set customizable workflows to improve team efficiency.</div>
<div class="platform__mb40">Make sure you can set up auto-reply messages. Auto replies can be used to keep your response time down or when you are out of the office to keep customers in the know. A fast response time is key to improving customer satisfaction.</div>
<div class="platform__mb40">Cut down on time spent typing out recurring, detailed messages. Pick an SMS service provider that allows you to create and store your own message templates for automated messages.</div>
<div class="platform__mb40">Ensure your SMS service provider allows you to schedule text messages around the clock. That way, you ensure your customer is getting the message at the right time.</div>
<div class="platform__mb40">Another feature to keep an eye out for is mass texting or bulk texting. This allows businesses automatically send one consistent message to many contacts at the same time. Textline has a feature called Announcements, which allows you to schedule mass text messages at the right time.</div>
<div class="platform__mb40">Smart SMS is a feature that automatically sends bulk SMS messages from numbers that match the area code of the message recipient. </div>
<div class="platform__mb40">Select an automated message service that allows customers to easily opt in and out of messages with terms like “START,” “STOP,” and “UNSUBSCRIBE.” This capability helps you legally text your customers and is a great built-in automation.</div>
<div class="platform__mb40">Another feature to look for is auto-assigning conversations. This is a great feature for businesses that deal with high volumes of inbound conversations. It can boost efficiency.</div>
Another helpful automation feature is auto-labeling contacts. This allows businesses to automatically label and categorize contacts into groups for internal purposes. Textline offers this auto-tagging feature to save your team time.
<div class="platform__mb40">Pay attention to the integrations the texting service has available. When software allows integrations, it can increase productivity, reduce costs, and automate workflows.</div>
<div class="platform__mb40">Webhooks are one way two disparate software applications can communicate with each other. They are HTTP callbacks that fire when an event occurs to send data to a location of your choosing. They can be helpful when you want to automate parts of your workflow. They allow one-way data sharing.</div>
<div class="platform__mb40">APIs are software intermediaries that allow two applications to talk to each other and share data. APIs allow the data to automatically transfer between different applications and systems.</div>
<div class="platform__mb40">Find an SMS provider that makes it easy to send automated messages. Plus, pick one that will help you set up your first automated message to ensure it goes off without a hitch.</div>
<div class="platform__mb40">Keeping messages personalized will boost customer engagement and satisfaction. As a result, find a provider that allows you to personalize automated messages. With Textline, you can use variable fields to pull specific customer information, such as name, company, job title, date, time, and more into your automated texts.</div>
<div class="platform__mb40">Since texts have a high response rate, select an SMS provider that enables two-way texting. Textline was built for two-way communication, ensuring you can always reply to a customer that responds to your automated message. This allows you to have personal interactions and build longer-lasting relationships.</div>
<div class="platform__mb40">Ensure your provider is familiar with the compliance requirements for SMS messaging.</div>
Find an automated text service that allows users to track automated message performance with ease.
Textline is an industry-leading business texting platform for automation. With out-of-the-box integrations and top-notch support, Textline equips companies with the tools to enhance sales, marketing, customer service, and internal team communication. What makes Textline stand out?
Textline takes pride in its enterprise-grade security. It’s the most secure business texting platform on the market. We follow strict security protocols, so you will never worry about your company or customer data.
Textline’s support team is always ready to help customers. Your success with SMS is our priority. Whether you need help setting up a particular feature or resolving an issue, you can expect fast and effective replies.
Textline is built for teams. Our multi-user platform enables teams to collaborate and efficiently manage text conversations. Easily add users, departments, and automations.
We constantly add new integrations and features based on customer feedback, so we’re at the forefront of the business texting landscape.
Businesses across the globe use auto SMS in many ways. Here are a few examples:
Don’t keep your customers waiting if you’re out-of-office or unavailable after hours. Instead, schedule an auto-reply message that gets sent to any customer that texts you during these unavailable hours. You should let them know you will respond ASAP during business hours the next day or when you return to the office.
Send each new customer a welcome message automatically.
<span class="chat-bubble"><span class="chat-bubble__text">Welcome to our business, {{contact.name}}. As a welcome gift, use code 7777 to get a 10% discount off any order! Text us STOP to unsubscribe.</span></span>
Send an automatic text when a customer joins your SMS subscriber list. Set a condition that when they opt-in, they get a personalized message that confirms their opt-in choice.
<span class="chat-bubble"><span class="chat-bubble__text">Thanks for subscribing, {{contact.name}}! To confirm your subscription choice, respond Y.</span></span>
Automated texts can come in handy for sending appointment or service scheduling reminders. Send a pre-scheduled message to customers about an upcoming appointment or remind them to schedule a future appointment. For example, a dentist could schedule dental appointment reminder texts or send patients reminders to schedule their next cleaning service.
Another use case for automated messages is sending payment reminders. For example, try a recurring monthly reminder to residents announcing rent is due tomorrow.
Another way businesses use automated messages is to send surveys to customers. For example, you could set a condition to automatically send a text message survey after a customer support interaction is resolved.
Businesses also use automated messages for order confirmations. Set the automated message to send to a recipient's phone after they place an order.
Set an automated text to send to all customers who left items in their carts.
Speed to lead is key to closing deals. As a result, some sales teams use automation to schedule messages to send to leads as soon as they fill out a form.
<span class="chat-bubble"><span class="chat-bubble__text">Hi {{contact.name}}! Thanks for requesting more a quote about our services! Our team is working on a quote for you now and will be in touch via email before the end of the day.</span></span>
Sales lead nurturing is another great use case for SMS automation. Set up scheduled messages as part of a drip campaign via SMS. You can set scheduled messages to send to leads on particular days over a month to help you nurture them with relevant content.
You can set an automated message to send to customers after a set time to maintain a low average response time. For example, if your customer support team is slammed, you could have an automated text send.
<span class="chat-bubble"><span class="chat-bubble__text">Thanks for reaching out {{contact.name}}! Our support team is working hard to get to your message. In the meantime, here’s a link to our help center: helpcenter.com.</span></span>
Another way to use automated messages is to send a “thank you for your business” message after a customer uses your service or makes a purchase. Here’s a list of thank you messages you could send to your customers.
Account managers can set up automated messages to send to a group of customers every few months to check in and see how they are liking the product or service.
Try Textline for free for 14 days. No credit card required.
It is legal! But there are several rules businesses must follow to comply with the laws that regulate all types of texting, including automated. One main component of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 is getting consent to text your contacts. Read more about how to obtain opt-ins here.
You must also provide a way for your contact to opt-out of receiving messages from your business. This includes when you send automated messages.
See more about how to ensure you are legally texting your customers.
An SMS API allows businesses to seamlessly integrate SMS messaging into their existing software platforms. It helps businesses set rules and conditions to automate more messages. Once an SMS API has been integrated, you will no longer need to manually log into that application to send SMS messages, instead, the protocols used will make the process automated.
Businesses can use APIs to automated messages in many ways, including:
Yes! We have an API, which businesses can use if they have the Standard or Pro Plan. You can find our API documentation here.
No! There are certain automations that Textline offers without using an API. This includes auto-responders, mass text messaging, and automated routing of messages. Read more about automation here and more advanced features like routes here.
Yes! With Textline, you can use variable fields to pull specific customer information into your automated texts. This includes fields like name, company, job title, date, time, and more.
The cost depends on your SMS platform. Textline offers three different pricing plans. All plans start with a 14-day free trial so you can test out our features. Plus, automated messages don’t cost more than manual ones.
All Textline users can send automated messages to their customers. Our Pro Accounts have access to more workflow automation features, like timer automations.
You can send automated texts to anyone who opted to receive text messages from your business or messaged you first.
There are a few key steps to follow to send an automated text message on Textline.
You can read more about our automations here.
With Textline, you can ensure your automated messages are sent when you want them to. You can schedule messages to send around the clock and set automated messages to send whenever specific conditions are met.
Yes! A customer can reply to automated text messages. Plus, Textline allows you to respond to their reply, too.
With the auto-reply feature, your automated message will come from the same number you use to communicate with customers on Textline. If you’re using our Smart SMS feature to send scheduled mass messages, customers will get the text from a number that matches their local area code.
There are several things to keep in mind when automating texts. Here are a few:
Chances are, yes! The Textline team is happy to help you understand how your business can best use automated text messaging to enhance efficiencies. Sign up for a free demo here, contact us here, or text us at +1 415-849-4349.
Yes! Textline supports adding attachments to automated texts. This is also known as MMS.
Yes! Textline supports emojis.
Textline is more than happy to help you set up and schedule your first automated message on our platform. You can text us at +1 415-849-4349 to get started.
Generate substantial efficiencies by integrating Textline’s automated texting with your business tools. Textline offers seamless integrations with popular CRM, help desk, and marketing platforms. Connect Textline to HubSpot, Slack, Zendesk, and more, in just a few clicks.
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