Quick links
What are the character limits for SMS?
What are GSM and non-GSM characters?
How do you know if your SMS template contains non-GSM characters?
Can you add hyperlinks to SMS templates?
How can we manage unsubscribe requests via SMS?
How do we manage unsubscribe requests for email?
How do I add images to email templates?
How do I add hyperlinks to email templates?
How do I track link clicks within an email template?
Why are some merge fields appearing as blank when a template is sent?
How do I update a template used within a flow?
What are the character limits for SMS?
An SMS can consist of 160 GSM characters, after which additional characters will be split into segments of 153 characters. We recommend limiting your messaging to no more than 5 segments to ensure it is successfully sent and received by all carriers and networks.
What are GSM and non-GSM characters?
GSM characters are the standard character set for SMS, and includes letters of the English alphabet, numbers, and common punctuation marks or symbols such as !,'@%$=.?/().
Non-GSM characters consist of any characters with a different encoding to the standard character set for SMS (such as emojis). Introducing non-GSM characters to a template reduces the initial character limit of an SMS to 70, so keep messaging concise to avoid inadvertently sending multiple segments.
Messages sent with non-GSM characters can also be concatenated, once you send more than one non-GSM segment, your character limit reduces to 64 characters per segment.
How do you know if your SMS template contains non-GSM characters?
If a non-GSM character is detected within a a template, you will see this displayed as a callout in orange text within the template builder.
Can you add hyperlinks to SMS templates?
SMS doesn't provide the option to hyperlink words the way email does eg. click here. However, you can still send links via SMS by including the whole url within your template (most modern mobile devices will automatically recognise the url).
Depending on the size of the url, you might want to consider using a link-shortening service to minimise the character length of your message.
How can we manage unsubscribe requests via SMS?
You can define expected responses such as 'stop' and 'unsubscribe' within a flow in order to update a recipient's preference field if a matching reply is received.
All inbound responses are synced to Salesforce, so you can alternatively manage the opt-out process from there.
How do we manage unsubscribe requests for email?
If you have an existing preference centre, this can be easily included within marketing emails sent from Pendula as a hyperlink. Pendula also has a simple visualforce page solution packaged within our Salesforce integration which you can use to capture and update opt-out requests on Contacts and Leads.
Once communication preferences are captured within Salesforce, you can then reference this data within your flow criteria to ensure anyone who has previously unsubscribed is not included in any marketing communications moving forwards.
How do I add images to email templates?
You can add images to your email template by clicking and dragging an image block from the Add blocks panel onto your template. Images must be available as a publicly hosted url in order to be used within a template.
In order for an image to be supported by most email clients, it should be in either PNG or JPEG/JPG format.
See Email template builder: Add blocks panel for more information.
How do I add hyperlinks to email templates?
You can click and drag a link element from the Add blocks panel onto your template, or alternatively highlight text and click on the hyperlink icon from the quick formatting panel to link your selected text.
If you are adding a link to an image element, select your image and then enter your url in the Click through URL field on the Styles panel.
How do I track link clicks within an email template?
To track link clicks, select your link within the email template and ensure the Track clickthrough? box is ticked within the Settings section of the Styles panel.
Link clicks (unique and total) are reported on in the Performance tab of a flow.
See Flow performance for more information.
Why are some merge fields appearing as blank when a template is sent?
Merge fields will appear blank if there is no equivalent value on the record in your data source. When testing a template with merge fields, firstly ensure you are referencing the correct field in your data source as you may have fields with share the same label or a similar name within your data source.
Secondly, ensure the recipient record which triggered the communication has values in any fields you are using as a merge field within your template.
How do I update a template used within a flow?
If you need to make changes to a template used within a flow, you'll need to edit the flow itself and then make your changes directly to the wording within the outbound SMS or email node, or re-populate them with a new template you have created or edited.
Editing an active flow means you'll need to pause it first in order to make any changes.
See Managing existing flows for more information.