Creating Effective SMS and WhatsApp Campaigns with zkipster

With zkipster's Communications feature, available on the Professional and Enterprise plan levels, you can create and send SMS and WhatsApp text messages to your guest lists to invite them to your event, collect RSVPs, send an Event Reminder and more.

The text messages can be sent in addition to an email or just as a standalone text and users can include a QR Code or another image file as an attachment.

In this article, you can find an overview of the SMS/WhatsApp messages functionality and links to other articles that explain the feature in more details.
​
In summary, this article covers:

Please note: users need to purchase credit via the 'Plans & Billing' section of the account settings in order to be able to send SMS/WhatsApp messages. Before making a purchase, please refer to the SMS Compliance Considerations article to understand more about regional regulations that might prevent your message from being delivered to your guests.

From the Communications dashboard, click on the 'Create Campaign' button to select the template that best fits the type of campaign you want to create and send your guests.
​

​
On the next screen, you can select if you want to send your guests a campaign that includes:
​
- SMS/WhatsApp message only
- SMS/WhatsApp message + Email

- SMS/WhatApp message + New Response Form

​

​

​Read more about the different SMS/WhatsApp Campaign templates via this article here.

Once you selected a campaign template that includes a SMS/WhatsApp message, you can customize the message and include links to Response Forms via the 'Composer' tab:

​By default, when a new SMS/WhatsApp campaign is created, only SMS is enabled. If you want send the message via WhatsApp, turn the 'WhatsApp' toggle ON from the top left of the screen:
​

​You can choose to send guests that are not registered with WhatsApp a SMS message instead by opening the 'Settings' tab and selecting the option 'If phone number is not registered with WhatsApp send regular SMS':

Please refer to this article here to learn more details about how to customize and configure your SMS/WhatsApp message.

You can send one attachment file per SMS/WhatsApp message. The file is hosted online by zkipster, so your guests need to access the link sent via the SMS message in order to open the image file or QR Code file. On WhatsApp, the attachment is displayed as an image on the body of the message.

From the 'Composer' tab, click on the 'Attachment' section and turn the toggle to ON to include an attachment. You will be able to select if you want to send a QR Code, an attachment file (sent as an image file) or a PDF. version of your Email, in case your campaign includes also an Email.

Make sure to include the dynamic tag :attachment_url in your text message, as this is the tag that will turn into the link from where your guests will be able to access the attachment.
​

Please refer to this article here to learn more details about how to send QR Codes and other attachments via SMS or WhatsApp messages.

Once your campaign has been sent, you can view your SMS and WhatsApp deliverability report via the 'Summary' page of your sent campaign:
​

If your campaign included an email, by default that's the first report you will see, but from the top right of the Email report screen you can navigate through the different reports of your campaign. Click on the 'SMS/WhatsApp' link to open the report.

The graph shows a summary of the report, but from the bottom of the screen users can view the status for each individual recipient.

Please refer to this article here to learn more details about your SMS and WhatsApp delivery report, including the most common errors.
​