One of the ways to grow your business is to reach out to new audience. Most customer relationship management solution have feature called campaigns. This feature greatly augments the marketing efforts of the company. Out of the box, SugarCRM has a strong functionality to run email campaigns. However, depending on the business needs, campaigns can be done via other channels like SMS, Outbound Calls, Trade Shows, Billboards etc. Major decision factor in deciding the channel are
- Best Channel to connect with prospects – Depending on which channel is best to reach out to new prospects.
- Prospect information available – Sometimes, we have may certain data like mobile number or email address of prospect. Availability of information can also decide which channel will be apt for reaching out to them.
Why SMS campaign
Basically, you can run a campaign on your contacts/leads which are available in your CRM. If the contacts are having an email address then you can go for an email campaign. Sometimes, like contact information, you will have only contact number available. In such scenarios, you will be relying on the phone numbers for conducting the campaigning. Find the popular SMS Gateways listed below.
Process to run a SMS campaign in SugarCRM
To setup and run a SMS campaign in SugarCRM, required details are:
- Contact Number
- SMS service provider API details
Steps to conduct an SMS campaign
By default, SugarCRM provides campaign module. We required to create a campaign with available information. To create a campaign go to Campaigns->create the campaign. You can create two types of campaign one is Wizard another one is classic. Here in the example, we have created wizard campaign.
At the time of creating a campaign, we have added a target list having the list of contacts to whom we are going to send the SMS. Once a campaign has been created, let’s create a scheduler which will automate the campaigning process in the given time. Here we have created a custom scheduler which will execute the process of sending SMS to the contacts those are related to the campaign.
*Note: To create a custom scheduler you should have prior knowledge of SugarCRM customization.
Once the custom scheduler has been, it will be available in the scheduler list of SugarCRM. Here we have developed a custom scheduler called “SMS Campaign”.
After creating the scheduler, make it active to run the scheduler at a given time interval.
Once the scheduler is processed, it will execute the campaign which we have created earlier. When the campaign executed, it will send the SMS to the related contacts. Here we have kept the campaign description as the message content. So it will send the campaign description as SMS body to the contacts. Once the SMS has been sent to the contact, a note will attach to the contact with the SMS body as subject and SMS direction as outbound.
- By configuring the SMS campaign in SugarCRM the user can tract the campaign details over a report, log and history.
- With the help of the generated reports, it can be decided the chances of number of contacts / leads who are interested in your product or services.
Popular SMS Gateways
There are many SMS gateways which offer matured functionality. Due to nature of the campaign, there are chances that the same message can be blocked by service provider. It is usually better to use a short code while sending the messages. Some of the popular SMS gateways are listed below
| Platform Name | Details |
|---|---|
| Twilio | The platform can send voice, SMS, Video and WhatsApp messages to prospects. It has detailed documentation and developer guide in order to integrate the solution. |
| TrueDialog | TureDialog is a enterprise grade two way interaction platform. It enables sending and receiving messages from the prospect. |
| BulkSMS | The solution provides SMS solution across 200+ countries and over 800 service providers. |
Some of the our popular solution on SugarCRM are listed below
Territory management solution
The solution helps a company manage multiple sales territories within a single SugarCRM instance. It also handles sales hierarchy within SugarCRM and controls the access of records as per the territory / hierarchy matrix.
Real Estate Solution
The solution helps a real estate agent manage listing and inquiries within SugarCRM. It also automates the matching of properties with buyer preferences. It has evolved dashboards and features which streamline the operations of the realtor.
Customer loyalty management solution
The solution helps a retail company manage loyalty points. It also tracks the sales transactions and makes configuring loyalty point calculations easy. The solution also tracks the redemption of points.
Looking at automating your business processes – We can help
Reach out to us so that we can assess and plan a road-map for your CRM implementation. Let’s build a system, which you will use for years to come.
