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How to use placeholders in SMS campaigns?

Sometimes, you need to send some personalized information in SMS campaigns. Proactive Campaigns allows you to do this in a combination CSV upload + Placeholders (aka mail merges).

Let’s imagine that you need to send SMS campaigns with a personalized page link. Here are a few actions you need to take to do it:

1. Go to Admin Center -> People -> Configuration -> User fields. Click on Add Field button.

SMS Add Fields

2. Then, select the Text field and name it. Don’t forget to click Save.

SMS Temporary Link

3. Next, create a CSV file with links without https:// for proper field mapping. Save your file.

SMS CSV

4. Afterwards, start a campaign in the Proactive Campaigns app, choosing a CSV, and use field mapping to connect the Links column with Temporary link custom fields.

SMS Mapping

5. Finally, type the email body and insert a link placeholder (mail merge) instead of the <field_key>. In our case, the field key is temporary_link. So our placeholder looks like: https://{{ticket.requester.custom_fields.<field_key>}}

Need to learn how to use placeholders? Here is a detailed Zendesk Placeholder reference for business rules.

Field key

6. Consider that you need to disable link tracking before going to the next steps of your campaign.

SMS Dasable Tracking

7. Run the campaign and check email delivery.

So, that's it!  Now you are convinced that running personalized SMS campaigns can be done simply!

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