When an end user subscribes to the Alertline the system will send an SMS Reply to the subscriber confirming that there have successfully subscribed. By default Alertline uses the following text “Thanks for subscribing. Reply STOP to this number to unsubscribe”. If needed the SMS Reply text can be changed. When changing or editing the SMS reply please keep in mind that you are obliged to inform subscribers how to unsubscribe from the Alertline so its important that the unsubscribe info is included in your SMS Reply.
Here are the steps you need to follow to alter the SMS Reply message.
- Navigate to the Space where the Alertline is located.
- Go to 'Communications' > 'Alertline'.
- Press the ‘Manage’ button for the Alertline you wish to edit.
- Then select the button labelled ‘SMS Reply’ in the ‘Actions’ section.
- Add the text you wish to use for the SMS reply.
- Press the ‘Save’ button.
Billing Info SMS Reply
A SMS Relpy is made up of one or multiple message segments depending on how long or short the SMS Reply is. Alertline SMS' are billed on a per message segment basis. A message segment is roughly around 152 characters in length depending on the message content i.e. emoji's take up more characters than plain text. If a SMS Reply was over 400 characters in length the SMS Reply sent by Alertline would be made up of three message segments.
We advise that the SMS Reply is kept within one message segment or as short as possible.
If a SMS Reply is sent out to a large number of subscribers the total billable SMS message segments can quickly escalate as each subscriber would receive a SMS Reply consisting of X amount of message segments. For example, if the SMS Reply spans over three segments and 10,000 subscribers subscribed to the Alerline, the Alertline would be billed for 30,000 message segments.
Here is the calculation that Alertline uses
number of subscribers X number of message segments = number of billable sms messages
I will now add the data from the above example into the calculation.
10,000 subscribers X 3 message segments = 30,000 billable sms messages
When writing the SMS Reply the console will give you real time information relating to how many message segments the SMS Reply would use.