MMS Campaigns

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This article will show you how to create MMS Campaigns, explain what you can do within the MMS Project Settings, and guide you through the integration process of MMS. Moreover, it elaborates on the SMS fallback and illustrates how the messages are tracked. Predefined templates are also introduced here.

MMS campaigns allow you to create even more personalized campaigns through multimedia messages. Adding images or videos to your campaigns can increase user engagement and brand awareness.

You can access MMS campaigns via the MMS action node in Scenarios. The message and media to be sent can be typed within a user-friendly editor with an option to include Jinja personalization. Similarly to SMS, the editor also displays a ‘characters counter’ and automatic highlighting of special characters within the UI, as well as the option to define fallback SMS with limiting automatic message splitting. You can preview your final MMS message or fallback SMS before actually sending it or test it for the selected group of your customers.

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Currently, MMS are handled only through the third-party provider Sinch. Sinch provides support only in the US, Canada, and Australia. Note that due to regulatory requirements, service to Canada is fairly limited.

Building MMS campaigns

1. Click on the MMS node in your Scenario.
2. After that, enter the Sender of the MMS. It can be short-coded (in the US), a toll-free number (in the US and Canada), a 10DLC number (in the US and Canada), or a long number (In Canada and Australia).
3. Then, fill out the Subject of the MMS.
4. Then, write your MMS text.
5. You can insert the media URL. There are 3 supported media types:
   • Image (GIF/JPG/PNG)
   • Video (3GP, MP4, MPEG, MPG, AVI, WMV)
   • vCard - VCF
     You can read more about best practices later in this section of the article.
6. Configure SMS fallback where you enter the fallback message and enable automatic message splitting.
7. You can add Jinja personalization by accessing the user-friendly copy-and-paste personalization editor.
8. Lastly, you can preview how the rendered message will appear to a specified customer for both MMS or fallback SMS.

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Limitations

• Subject can have up to 80 characters and should not contain emojis or Unicode characters.
• Maximum allowed size of the message text is 1600 characters per message.
• The maximum recommended size of the media is 1MB.
• In the case of the fallback message, the single message can consist of 160 characters, and longer messages will be split into multiple messages.
• MMS messages are sent using the customer attribute phone. It is required to have the customer attribute phone set to a phone number in an international format (either starting with "00" or with "+").
• Maximum number of predefined senders 100 per one single project.

MMS Best Practices for Media Files

There are several recommended practices regarding sizes, files, and design considerations of media:

• Recommended file formats are .jpg for images, .gif for animations, and .mp4 for videos.
• Regarding various media sizes and other recommendations, please read this article by Sinch.
• It is not recommended to use any transparency in your designs as the actual colors of images would be unpredictable.
• We recommend testing your MMS to ensure the images/animations/videos/contact cards are displayed correctly.
• The supported media type for contact cards is text/vcard, read more about the standards of this format. Other media types such as text/directory, text/directory; profile=vcard and text/x-vcard are deprecated in favor of the text/vcard format.

Testing

You can test your MMS message through the editor by clicking on the Send test MMS. Here, you have 2 options:

1. You can send it to a specific provided phone number (e.g., you can send it to yourself).
2. You can send it to the previewed customer.

Settings

Within the settings tab, you can configure the following:

• Frequency policy
• Consent category
• Custom campaign tracking
• Link shortener and Transfer identity to URL links (if link shortener feature is enabled)

MMS Project Settings

You can access MMS Project settings under Project Settings -> Channels -> SMS/MMS. Here you can set up the following:

• The default MMS Provider
  • The selected MMS integration will send messages in all new and existing campaigns. That means when the default integration is changed (and settings are saved), all MMS nodes from all existing scenarios will automatically change the integration for sending the messages.
• Two-way SMS/MMS messaging
  • You can configure how the system handles the incoming MMS messages. You can read more about it in this article.

MMS Integration

You have to configure the integration with the provider so the MMS campaigns would work. At the moment we offer one MMS provider - Sinch MMS. This is commonly set up by the CSM.

To do the integration, follow these steps:

1. Go to Data & Assets -> Integrations -> Sinch MMS.
2. Select Sinch as your MMS provider. Here, add your Service plan to your project. Remember that each service plan comes with a rate limit and gets its own message queue. The integration includes tracking of enqueued messages.
3. Set up a Service Plan ID that is provided by Sinch.
4. Set up the API Authentication Token provided with each service plan.
5. Choose your endpoint region based on your data protection requirements. Currently, it is available only in the US.

SMS Fallback (Sinch)

Sinch converts the MMS into a fallback SMS for the scenarios listed below:

• If MMS submitted is a greater size than the destination mobile network operator.
• If the Content-type submitted is not supported by the end carrier MMSC.
• If the Sinch Platform determines that the end-user device is not MMS compatible for the content to be delivered. For example, Android Devices do not support PDF and ICS file formats.

If any of these scenarios are met, the Sinch MMSC Platform sends the fallback SMS instead of the MMS message. . Fallback SMS is charged and priced as an SMS.

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Important notes

• SMS fallback is only triggered in the case where any of the above listed criteria are met.
• For carriers not supported by Sinch or where Sinch does not have MMS reach, SMS fallback does not happen.
• Sinch is able to obtain handset type information from delivery receipts and store the record in a handset cache for later use.
• Sinch has a database of attributes which we manually match to every new handset in the cache so we can adapt the content during MMS delivery.
• SMS fallback is currently supported in the US (United States) on Short Codes.

MMS Tracking

By default, MMS campaigns tracks campaign event with action_type = "mms". Events can be mapped to a different event name in Project settings -> Campaigns -> Mapping -> Campaign events.

Send to provider tracking

When Bloomreach Engagement sends a message to the MMS provider, it immediately tracks the response to the attempt. Either the MMS provider accepts the message for delivery or rejects it, Bloomreach Engagement follows the campaign event with these properties and standard campaign event properties:

Delivery reports tracking

The provider calls Bloomreach Engagement callback with delivery reports as statuses delivered or failed when the recipient's operator responds about the delivery. The delivery and content may change based on the provider. At the moment, we only support Sinch as an MMS provider.

Successful delivery

Delivered message tracks status=delivered with attribute type=mms/sms defining whether the message was delivered as MMS or fallback SMS.

Failed delivery

Undelivered messages track status failed with attribute type=mms/sms defining whether the message was failed as MMS or fallback SMS.

Predefined senders

If you are using multiple senders in a single Engagement project, you can now store them as "Predefined senders". To access its settings, go to Project Settings > Channels > SMS/MMS.

After setting it up, senders are immediately available in the MMS action node of the scenario. The benefit of using predefined senders is that it helps to create more effective and error-prone MMS campaigns.

Two-way Messaging and Keyword Auto Response

MMS campaigns include support for Two-way messaging and keywords auto responses. In case a user replies to your MMS in the form of an MMS, we will process the messages and scan them for keywords. However, it will be more common that a user will reply to an MMS in the form of an SMS.

An MMS mobile originated message from a user to your short code/number can also contain images or multiple text parts. Any text part of the MMS will be checked for keywords at the beginning of the message. If you want to know more, read here.

Usage Dashboard

You can view the overview of all outgoing MMS messages on the account or project level within the usage dashboard. In the Communications section, you can see the number of sent MMS communications under ‘MMS’ or fallback SMS under ‘Fallback SMS’.