How To Send SMS Notifications To Members When They Receive a Lead
Overview
Members of sites receive an email notification whenever they receive a lead through a Brilliant Directories website. But depending on the industry and target market of the directory, sending an SMS (text message) notification to the member's mobile phone can be useful as well. This article describes how to setup this functionality in conjunction with a 3rd party Email-To-SMS platform.
To Get Started
To get started 2 items are needed in addition to the Brilliant Directories website:
- The Automatic Lead Matching Add-On for the Brilliant Directories website.
- A subscription to an Email-To-SMS platform of choice.
We recommend TextMagic.com and will use this platform as an example in this tutorial.
Email-To-SMS Settings
Allowed Email
Make sure that the Default Website Email of the Brilliant Directories website is listed as an "Allowed Email" in Text Magic. The Default Website Email is the email account that will be sending the emails we want converted into SMS messages, and this email account must be authorized to do so in the Text Magic account.
Register the email address on this page and start texting by sending emails to [email protected] (e.g. [email protected] for +18123123456).
TextMagic Support: https://support.textmagic.com/
Email Address Format
Next, note the Email to SMS phone number format used for the Email-To-SMS platform. This is the email address the messages must be sent to in order for the platform to know which phone number the body of the email should be forwarded to.
The email address format for Text Magic is: [email protected]
For example, if I wanted to send the message "This is a test" to the phone number 1-333-555-7777, then I would send an email to [email protected] with "This is a test" as the body of the email (the subject of the email generally doesn't matter).
At this point it is generally a good idea to test out the info gathered for the Email-To-SMS system at this point by sending a test email to the email address using a personal mobile phone number to make sure the email is successfully sent as a text message. Once this is confirmed working, continue with the steps below.
Brilliant Directories Lead Settings
Go to the Lead Settings: Leads » Lead Settings » Additional Notifications Settings
On this page, there will be at least one Main Action, and possibly additional Actions depending on how the Lead Settings have been setup on the site. The following steps must be taken for any of the Actions that will send out SMS messages to the members.
Click on the Action that will receive SMS notifications:
Navigate to Additional Notifications » Third Party / SMS:
Scroll down to the "3rd Party Lead Matched Notifications (SMS)" section and choose the following settings:
- 3rd Party Lead Matched Notifications
Set this to "Yes" to enable these emails to be sent. - 3rd Party Lead Matched Template
Choose the template that should be sent to the Email-To-Text platform to be converted into an SMS message. The "member-lead-sms-notifications" template is the recommended template to use for this purpose. - 3rd Party Email Addresses
Enter a comma-separated list of email addresses the email template should be sent to. For the purposes of this tutorial, we only want an email sent to the Email-To-SMS platform email address, including the member's phone number that the SMS should be sent to. Following our example, the correct format for this is:
%%%sms_member_phone%%%@textmagic.com
The %%%sms_member_phone%%% variable used here will insert the member's phone number, stripped of all non-numeric characters (parenthesis, dashes, etc). So if the phone number of the member who receives the lead is 1-333-777-9999, entering the above email address will result in an email being sent to:
[email protected] - Copy Admin On This Email
Generally, it is not very useful for the Admin to receive a copy of this email as it is just for SMS notification purposes, so we recommend leaving this set to "No".
Once all of the settings have been chosen, click on "Save" to save the changes. Repeat the steps above for any other Actions that should send SMS notifications as well.
Setting Up a Unique Mobile Number to Receive SMS Messages
In some cases, members may have a Phone Number they want displayed on their profile or treated as their main contact number, but have a separate mobile number they would like to receive SMS notifications to.
In this case, edit the "Listing - Contact Details - Member" or "Listing - Additional Details - Member" forms (the forms filled out by members when they login to their account) to include a separate field for this purpose.
» How To Customize a Form
Add a new field with the Variable Name sms_member_phone and this number will be used to send SMS messages rather than the number entered into the default phone_number field found in the Contact Details form.
Here's an example of the field being added below the phone_number field in the Listing - Contact Details - Member form:
Disable Lead Matched Notifications (SMS) Fallback
This setting controls whether the system should send an SMS to the main phone number if an SMS-specific phone number is not provided. So, if the SMS phone number is missing, the system will use the main phone number as a backup to ensure the notification is still delivered.
It can be found under Settings >> Advanced Settings >> Disable Lead Matched Notifications (SMS) Fallback:
When the setting is OFF (default), the system will use the main phone number as a fallback if the member does not have an SMS phone number saved.
When the setting is ON, notifications will only be sent to the SMS phone number and will not fall back to the main phone number.
How to Verify if it was Set Up Properly?
- First, make sure to follow the Text Magic Tutorial:
- Make sure the allowed email was correctly added inside TextMagic, it should match the Default Website Email:
- Double-check that "Yes" was selected for the 3rd Party Email Addresses setting.
- The email variable "%%%sms_member_phone%%%@textmagic.com" was added the field, 3rd Party Lead Matched Notifications:
** Select the email template: member-lead-sms-notification ** - Make sure that you are adding the proper input and settings here:
- On the member Contact Details form, check that Country Code + Area Code (if applicable) + Phone Number are being added:
- Send a message to test this functionality:
- Finally, access Text Magic History Tab:
https://my.textmagic.com/online/messages/sent - If the Lead Message appears under "Message" it is because the system sent the SMS notification properly:
