Sending bulk marketing SMS is a technique that allows you to reach a vast audience in just a few minutes! This marketing service is perfect for promoting special offers or communicating quickly with your customers. Sending bulk marketing SMS is very simple to do using Octopush services. Sending in bulk doesn't necessarily mean without personalization... In this article, we will explore the details of our technique for personalizing via PHP API.

Discover the API!

TheSMS API is a system that allows you to interact automatically with Octopush servers to perform certain operations. The API is notably available in PHP, which is one of the most widely used web languages on most sites.

How do you run a bulk SMS campaign?

To use the PHP API, an API key is essential. It is issued upon registration and is accessible in your client area. This API key will serve as an authentication code for all API calls. You must keep it safe and never share it with a third party. Octopush provides a special PHP class, which you can download from the technical documentation. This PHP class significantly simplifies professional broadcasts. For each one, you can initialize the data: broadcast mode (scheduled, instant), sender name, recipient numbers, sending type (premium, world, standard), as well as the professional text.

What is the mail merge option?

Mail merge is a feature that allows you to personalize your marketing SMS campaigns for each of your recipients. SMS personalization is done via variables: recipients_first_names (which corresponds to your recipients' first names, separated by a comma), recipients_last_names (which corresponds to your recipients' last names, separated by a comma), as well as custom variables (sms_fields_1, sms_fields_2, sms_fields_3). It can be done via GET (with a 2,000-character limit, which necessarily limits the total number of recipients), or via POST (no limit, but Octopush solutions recommend sending in batches of 400 to 500 numbers). Also note that your server may encounter limitation issues (script execution time limit, etc.).

How does it work without the mail merge option?

The most obvious advantage of choosing this option is speed! Thanks to an API, you can contact up to several hundred contacts on their mobile phones (at least via POST), but with a significant risk of connection reset and a risk of partial data transmission... The solution: sending in loops! This solution consists of sending in batches of recipients (for massive professional mailings, you can, for example, distribute the sending in batches of 200 numbers). With the PHP SMS API, this sending method involves using a few native PHP functions, such as:
do { // operation to perform } while { // condition to meet };
There are other functions (for...) but we will not detail them in this article. Feel free to consult the official Octopush technical documentation.
Before setting it up, be sure to check your PHP configuration settings, such as the maximum execution limit per script (limited by default to 30 seconds on an Apache 2 server). With a PHP SMS API, you must above all ensure that you do not desynchronize data or avoid partial data transmission.

How do you create a bulk SMS campaign?

Note that it is in your best interest to set up a system for collecting mobile phone numbers from your customers and all your contacts. To do this, you can, for example, use an order form. Currently, a large number of CMS platforms allow you to customize forms. On WooCommerce, this customization is extremely simple since you have access to custom fields. In just a few minutes, you can add one to your front office. As for other e-commerce CMS, the campaign customization service is also quite capable, particularly with platforms like PrestaShop or Magento.

Once the form is set up, you will need to develop your own plugin. Alternatively, you have the option to hire a specialized web developer. This will allow you to define the data essential for sending your SMS campaigns, starting with the message content, customer data, and more.