In order to start defining an SMS message sent to the customer after he has been added to the waiting list, click on the “Add” button next to the “Waitlist Confirmation” label inside the SMS messages screen (see Figure 379). The following screen will be displayed.
Figure 382: Defining Registration Confirmation SMS (step 1/2)
This contains two fields:
Message Text – field for defining the contents of the SMS message which can be used in combination with merge fields to further customize the message for each user
For example: you can define a message such as displayed in Figure 290 where you can address each user by his first name by inserting %%First_Name%% merge field; you can also enter information such as “You have been successfully added to the waiting list” and then add the event name merge field so that the customer would receive an SMS message containing the name of the specific event that relates to that customer (%%Event_Name%%)
Note: the maximum number of characters which can be defined is 160; this limit applies to the SMS with the values extracted from the merge fields, not the merge fields itself; in other words if you put %%First_Name%%merge field, the limit will apply to the person’s name e.g. John; therefore it is recommended to keep the SMS as short as possible because if they become longer than the limit they will not be sent
Merge Fields – as discussed above, the merge fields are used for further customizing the contents of the SMS message so that each customer would be addressed by his first or last name; these fields are also used for entering specific event related information for the customer such as starting date, event location, event name, etc; in order to insert i.e. apply a desired merge field double click it inside this list and it will appear inside the “Message Text” area
After defining the SMS message click on the “Create” button and the following screen will be displayed.
Figure 383: Defining Registration Confirmation SMS (step 2/2)
At this point the SMS message “Waitlist Confirmation” has been defined and enabled. You can use this screen to define the time for sending an SMS i.e. whether it should be sent immediately after the user registers for the event or day after. Choose the desired value from the pull down menu.
Other available options after the SMS has been defined are:
Modify – use this option to modify the contents of the SMS message at any time
Delete – use this option to delete i.e. disable sending of the SMS message after a user registers for an event