SMS Studio
Write a text message, check it, review it with your team, send yourself a test, and send it to an audience – all on the same document. Every save keeps a copy in your library, where journeys pick it up.
Open it from Studios → SMS & Messaging → SMS Studio, or from the journey SMS step ("or write it in SMS Studio").
Write
The header carries the text itself: its name (click to rename), its review status, the brand it belongs to, and Send and Save. The chevron next to the name opens recent texts, a new one, or a starting point.
A new text opens on Describe the text: say what the message should
do, choose Marketing or Service, and Write the text drafts one
message in your brand's voice (the voice set on the business profile) –
links come out as {link} for you to fill in, and nothing is invented. Or Start from a template (a
welcome, an offer, a come-back nudge, an event, a service confirmation,
a verification code) or Write it yourself.
The text sits on a sheet and is sent word for word. The toolbar above it
inserts where the cursor is: Personalize opens the same field
palette as e-mails – First name inserts {{p.first_name|there}},
which greets by name and says "there" when the name is missing, and
every column you imported is there too; Brand name fills in the
brand; Add a link takes an address and puts it in as a tracked short
link (theaicmo.com/l/…) – about 30 characters instead of a whole
address, and every tap counts in What's Working and can trigger a
journey. Links in the text are listed on the Message tab; a long raw
address can be shortened from there. STOP replies opt people out on
their own, so there is no opt-out line to add.
Under the sheet, the numbers a carrier counts: characters, parts, what is left in this part, and the messages billed for the chosen audience (people with a phone × parts). An accent or an emoji switches the text to Unicode – 70 characters per part instead of 160 – and the counter says so. When a text splits, Where it splits shows each part as the carrier cuts it, numbered, with its own count, so you see the seam before a recipient does.
Message tab: To, Marketing or service, Sends from
To is the audience this text goes to – one of your audiences from Customer Intelligence → Audiences, with how many people it holds and how many have a phone number (only they are texted). New audience opens the builder – from an event, a profile attribute, or both. The audience is saved with the text, and Send starts from it.
Marketing or service says what kind of text this is. A marketing text goes only to people who agreed to marketing, and a STOP reply ends it. A service text – a confirmation, a code, a notice the person is waiting for – reaches people who opted out of marketing and leaves from your service sender (or from the marketing sender, until a service sender is connected; the studio says so).
Sends from shows the sender a real send uses: the number or sender ID connected under Connections → SMS sending. It is not typed per text. With no verified sender, a real send does not go out.
On the phone shows the text as a phone would, with sample values in place of each recipient's own – one bubble per part when it splits.
Quality
The Quality tab reads the text before it ships: how many parts it
is and why, placeholders still to fill, a plain http link, opt-out
wording you can leave out, marketing wording inside a service text, a
missing brand name (the recipient only sees a number), and fields
without a fallback.
Review
The Review tab carries the text's status – Draft, In review, Changes requested, Approved – and the comment thread your library uses: @-mention a teammate, reply, resolve. Approval works the way it does for e-mails: off by default, turned on per brand under Brand → Messaging → Review & approval, where you also choose who approves. A service text needs no approval.
Send a test
Send a test text under More sends one copy to one phone from your verified sender, prefixed [Test], with sample values filled in. The number is remembered per brand. A number on a block-all blacklist gets nothing, test or not.
Send
Send is a one-off send: everyone in the To audience with a phone number gets this text once. It opens the text as a one-step journey – the audience enters, the text goes out. Publish it there, send yourself a test from the SMS step, then Run now sends to everyone. Opt-outs, the blacklist, the weekly cap and your budget apply; a large audience goes out in batches and continues on the next run until everyone has been reached; every send is logged and shows on the calendar.
Recurring or multi-step texts – a reminder series, a text after an event – are journeys. Use in a journey under More opens the journey builder with this text as a step; you choose the trigger and the timing there.
Performance
Once a journey has sent the text, History shows sends and parts per journey. Carriers report delivery, not reads; tests are left out.