Text messaging

With your own texting number, you can send text campaigns, add text steps to workflows, text event updates to guests and reply to customers by text from your inbox. Phone carriers require every business number to be registered by hand, so the Lahuta team sets yours up for you.

Go to Settings → Connections → Texting. Its subtitle reads "Your organization's own numbers for texts, and who has asked them to stop."

Get your numberCopy Anchor Link

More than one numberCopy Anchor Link

If the Lahuta team set up more than one number for you, each one is listed under Numbers on Settings → Connections → Texting. To get another, select Request another number. Admins can open the ⋯ menu on a number to:

• Rename it to something like "Sales" or "Support", up to 40 characters. The name shows next to the number here and in the inbox and campaign pickers. Clear it to go back to just the number.
• Make default, so contacts nobody has texted yet hear from that number.

The default number has a Default badge. A number still being set up shows Not ready, and you can't pick it or make it the default until it's Enabled.

Each contact hears from one of your numbers, so your texts stay in one conversation on their phone:

• The first number that texts them, outside a campaign, is the one they stay on.
• If they text a different one of your numbers, replies and later texts come from that one.
• If you pick another number when you reply in the inbox, the contact moves to it.
• If a number can't take a new contact right now, the text goes from another of your numbers, and the contact moves to that one.
• If a number is removed or switched off, its contacts move to another of your numbers the next time you text them.

Campaigns work differently. Every text in a campaign goes from the number in its From field, or from your default number if you leave it on the default. If that number can't reach someone, they count as Failed in the report and don't get the text from another number. A campaign never moves anyone to a different number.

iMessage linesCopy Anchor Link

Some numbers are iMessage lines. Under the number, Settings → Connections → Texting says iMessage and SMS, and in the inbox and campaign pickers the line has a blue dot. Texts from it show blue on an iPhone, and green when they go by SMS.

Limits on new contactsCopy Anchor Link

An iMessage line can only start so many new conversations: about 15 an hour and 50 a day. The daily count starts again at 3 AM Eastern time. A new contact is someone the line hasn't texted with, either way, in the last 30 days. Replies, and texts to people the line already talks with, don't count.

Settings → Connections → Texting and the inbox and campaign pickers show how much of each limit a line has used, like "3/15 new this hour · 12/50 today".

When a line is full, texts to new contacts wait and go out by themselves once it has room. Nothing fails because of the limit:

• A campaign keeps going, over hours or days, until everyone in it is texted. Its report says "Waiting for room on its iMessage line" and when it carries on. Until then, Cancel send stops the texts that haven't gone.
• A text you send from the inbox shows "Waiting for room on the line" with the time it goes.
• Workflow and booking texts go from another of your numbers if one has room, and wait otherwise.

Before someone repliesCopy Anchor Link

Until a person replies to an iMessage line, texts to them:

• can't include links, pictures, phone numbers or email addresses,
• can be at most 300 characters,
• stop after 6 that got no reply.

The campaign composer, and the inbox until the person replies, warn you when a text breaks these rules. A text that breaks one fails, and its status says which rule.

What needs your own numberCopy Anchor Link

Welcome and ticket texts to guests who register for an event don't need your own number. Until you have one, Lahuta sends them from a shared number. Once your number is enabled, they come from yours.

Consent to marketing textsCopy Anchor Link

Text campaigns and text steps in workflows are marketing. They only go to numbers that agreed to get marketing texts from you. Everyone else in the audience is skipped.

A number agrees when:

• A visitor ticks the box on your Express Page Subscribe block.
• Someone who gives their phone number when they register for an event, book a time, or buy from your shop also ticks the box that asks for your marketing texts. The box is optional. Without it, their number is used only for that registration, booking or order.
• Your website records it through the Org API, after the visitor ticks a box on your own form.
• An admin records consent you got yourself, like on a paper form, from a contact's panel, for a selection of contacts, or for a whole imported file.

Lahuta keeps what they agreed to, the page, and when, in case anyone asks later.

Texts about something the person did don't need this consent: booking confirmations, tickets, event updates to guests, and replies from your inbox. They still stop if the person replied STOP.

Ask new numbers to reply YESCopy Anchor Link

Anyone can type a phone number into a form, including someone else's. To make sure the number's owner agreed, turn on Ask new numbers to reply YES on Settings → Connections → Texting. It shows once your own number is enabled, and only admins can change it.

With it on, a number that agrees on a form or through the API gets one text from you: "Northside Pottery: reply YES to get our marketing texts." Until they reply YES, the number shows Waiting for YES on their contact and your marketing texts skip it. A reply of YES or START confirms it. A number is asked at most once a day, however many times the form is sent with it. Numbers that already agreed aren't asked again, and consent a team member records isn't asked either.

Opt-outsCopy Anchor Link

Texts go out as you write them. A new text campaign, workflow text or event update starts with your organization's name and "Reply STOP to opt out", and you can reword both. A campaign or workflow text that no longer says how to stop gets "Reply STOP to opt out" added at the end. Inbox replies go exactly as you type them.

When someone replies STOP, or a similar word like UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, QUIT or REVOKE, to any of your numbers, all your numbers stop texting them. In the Inbox, their thread's message box says they texted STOP and can't be used, and a reply already on its way when the STOP arrives is held back and marked Failed. Agreeing to marketing texts on a form doesn't undo a STOP. Only the person can, by texting START.

The Opted out section on Settings → Connections → Texting lists the numbers that asked one of yours to stop. Filter it by reason:

The list is read-only. You can't remove anyone from it, because only the person can take back a STOP. They do it by texting START to any of your numbers.

People who reply STOP to Lahuta's shared number don't appear on your list. That list covers every organization that texts through the shared number.

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