How to start sending SMS messages

Hi Grace,

Thank you for asking, I’m happy to help!

These steps are best to follow first to get your account ready to send SMS messages:

1. Set up a Twilio account (if you don’t already have one!)
    
2. Set up a Twilio-specific Sender. You can’t use your own phone number to send SMS; you need to purchase a number from Twilio. If you already set up your sender number, you’ll select it when you compose messages.
   If you’re in the US, Canada, or the UK, you can use a short code: a 5- or 6-digit number that can send and receive SMS/MMS. Twilio can lease these numbers to you. Or, if you have a paid Twilio account with Alphanumeric Sending enabled, you can send messages from an Alphanumeric ID instead of a Twilio phone number.
    
3. Go to Data & Integrations > Integrations > Twilio SMS and add your Account SID and Auth Token. You’ll find these values in your Twilio dashboard. Note: Currently, we only support credentials associated with the US Twilio region.
    

Then you’ll need to add the phone numbers to your People’s profiles and make sure they are in the E.164 format. You can read more on this here.

If you already have phone numbers saved in your People profiles, but they are not in the right format... I highly recommend this community post to see how to change those.

Then you’ll be ready to add SMS messages to your workflows or create a broadcast as an SMS.
 

Before sending these to your customers, I recommend using the ‘Send test’ option to check the SMS looks how you intend it to.

Please let us know if you run into any issues or have other questions, otherwise, I hope this has pointed you in the right direction to start sending SMS messages! 

- Maddie