Sending SMS messages for Admins
Introduction
There are two ways to send text messages in ContactDrive: using your own personal phone number for small P2P text campaigns, or using a Twilio phone number for larger campaigns with multiple users.
For both options, the user can go to https://app.contactdrive.io on their phone’s web browser, then navigate to Lists and use the green Contact button to start contacting people on a list. More details for users sending SMS messages can be found here.
What about sending bulk text message campaigns? Bulk texting is currently not supported in ContactDrive because it requires a double opt-in from the recipients and a lot of other back-and-forth rigamarole.
Small lists with individual cell phones
The first option is for small batches of text messages using a personal cell phone number. In this case (the default method), when they click “Text”, ContactDrive will open a draft text message on their phone’s messaging app, which they can then send, then return to ContactDrive to mark the text as having been sent. Text messages must be sent from a mobile phone.
Large lists with Twilio integration
The second option is for larger lists of text messages using the app directly. In this case (using a Twilio phone number), when they click “Text” a box pops up with a draft text message (still within ContactDrive). They can then review this draft and send it, and ContactDrive will quickly move to the next contact. Text messages can be sent from any device, including mobile phones, tablets, and laptops.
The second option will only work with a new phone number from Twilio. It won’t work with an existing cell phone number unless you port the number from the cell carrier to Twilio, and that process takes weeks.
Once you have created an account with Twilio and setup the integration in ContactDrive, just follow the steps to create call lists and users are ready to go.
Summary
Long story short, if you have an existing cell phone number, you don’t need to do anything to send text messages from that number except login to ContactDrive on your mobile device and setup a List.
If you have multiple users sending to large lists though, you should setup a new number (which is very quick) and add a Twilio integration to your ContactDrive account.