SMS with ClickDimensions allows you to send marketing text messages to your Leads, Contacts, and/or Accounts via integration with your Twilio account. You'll need your Twilio account information to configure the SMS settings and begin sending text messages. All charges for SMS messages are paid by you directly to Twilio.
Getting Started
Before you start setting up your connector, please review the following to ensure that your Twilio account and Dynamics environment are ready to use the connector.
- Your company must have a paid Twilio Account in order to use this ClickDimensions SMS feature. Twilio is the service that will be sending your text messages. Trial accounts will not allow the API calls that our connector makes.
- Twilio has informed us that they are no longer able to send to US numbers from international numbers. In other words, if a Twilio connector is set up using a non-US phone number, it will not be able to send SMS messages to recipients with US phone numbers.
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If your Dynamics environment is installed on-premise and your firewall is restricting access from outside applications, you will need to ensure that the IP addresses listed in this article are permitted access through the firewall to your Dynamics server. SMS will not work if the SMS IP address listed in the article cannot connect to your Dynamics environment.
- You can have multiple Twilio connectors in an environment, but each connector must use a different long number.
Caution: If you are reconnecting a Twilio connector to use SMS 2.0 after having used our legacy SMS features, then you may receive an error stating "Number is currently in use and is not available." If this error occurs, then please check and remove any existing webhooks associated to that Twilio number and retry the process.
To remove webhooks, please log-in and check the Active Numbers section of your Twilio Console, select your associated Twilio number, remove any existing webhooks associated to that number, save, and then re-add the webhooks.
Navigate to Connectors
Go to Settings and Support > ClickDimensions Settings > SMS Connectors.
Choose Add New.
Then choose Twilio.
This will open the window where you are going to be establishing which fields you want to use as the mobile number fields in your Lead, Contact, and Account records and entering the necessary account information in order to send Text Messages.
The Connector Name field allows you to enter a name to help identify this connector. The Notification Email field lets you enter an email address to be notified when the connector encounters issues. The Default campaign automation connector lets you designate this connector as the one that will be used for SMS activities in your Campaign Automations.
Mobile Number Fields
In the Mobile Number Fields section, you will specify which fields in your Lead, Contact, and Account records contain the phone number you want to send the text messages to. As you can see in the example below, we have selected the standard Dynamics Mobile Phone field for Leads and Contacts and Other Phone field for Accounts. These are fields that are already in your Dynamics records. Also, it is important to remove any dashes and parentheses from the selected phone field to ensure that the number is in the correct format to prevent issues when sending.
Country Code
For the Country Code field, select your country code from the drop down menu. You must have a country code in order to send Text Messages.
When your Country Code field is set to World-Wide, then a plus sign (+) and the appropriate country code will need to be included directly within the recipient's phone field in order to send properly. In the event that a phone number in your Dynamics field does not have a country code at the beginning of the number, we will not append the selected code here to that number. If the phone number in your Dynamics field does not follow the "+country code-area code-number" format, then the message will fail to deliver.
When your Country Code is set to a specific country, then it will be appended to any number that does not begin with that country code. For example, this phone number in the Mobile Phone field does not contain a country code. This means the specified Country Code (in this example, United States is +1) will appended to the number when the text message is sent. So, the resulting phone number will be +11112223333.
In another example, the phone number entered in the Mobile Phone field already contains a Country Code - United Kingdom (+44). Even though the Text Message settings specify that the country code is for the United States (+1), we will not append the United States code to this phone number, because it already contains a Country Code (this is contingent upon the + in the field). The text message will be sent to +445556667777.
Click Save under the Country Code field to save any changes in the Mobile Number Fields section.
Twilio Account Information
NOTE: Your company must have a paid Twilio Account in order to use this ClickDimensions SMS feature. Twilio is the service that will be sending your text messages. Trial accounts will not allow the API calls that our connector makes.
If you need additional resources to help you create your Twilio account, you can also go to Twilio's help page. Once you have established your login credentials, the Account SID and the Authorization Token can be found in the Twilio Console.
Numbers
After entering your account information and saving, a Numbers section will appear:
The Code Type selection lets you choose whether this connector will use a Long Number or Short Code from your Twilio account. Twilio will give you a long number that will be used to send text messages. The Short Code is an optional additional cost that can send messages at a higher rate per secord versus the Long Code.
After selecting a Code Type, the section will update and you can select one of your existing Long Numbers or Short Codes for the connector to use.
If you use a Long Number, then you also have the option to Enable Sender ID which allows you to send from a personalized alphanumeric Sender ID instead of from your Twilio phone number. The Sender ID has the following restrictions:
- Maximum of 11 characters
- Can use Letters A-Z, a-z
- Can use Numbers 0-9
- Can use spaces
- Can use Special characters +, -, _ and &
NOTE: All SMS connectors offered by ClickDimensions are environment-exclusive, which means the long number incorporated with the connector settings will need to be unique for that particular environment; if you have multiple Dynamics environments each with an SMS connector, each will require a different long number.
Click Save at the bottom of the window to save any changes made in that section. Once everything is entered correctly, you are now ready to send text messages. Learn how to Send Bulk Text Messages or Send Individual Text Messages.
FAQs
Will ClickDimensions work with my Twilio Pay-as-you-go plan?
The ClickDimensions Twilio connector relies on the API credentials that Twilio provides you (as detailed above) and not on your plan type. So provided that your plan supplies the API credentials, you should be able to use our Twilio connector.
Please remember that a paid Twilio account is always required for use with the connector.
Feature Added: 12.11.0 |
Feature Updated: 12.11.0 |
ClickDimensions Version Needed: 12.11.0 |