How do I get started with Broadcast?

This article provides info on how to set up an organization to begin sending broadcast messages 📢

Broadcasts are outbound campaigns where Hustle will deliver an initial message automatically to contacts in an organization who are targeted in a broadcast. Replies to broadcasts from contacts are available for review from the Inbox of the organization where the broadcast was launched. 

 

Skip to: 

• What do I need to know before I get started with Broadcast?
• How do I get Broadcast? 
• How do I set up my organization’s inbox? 
• How do I launch a broadcast?
• How do I schedule a broadcast? 
• How do I stop a broadcast?
• How do I enable broadcast reply workflows? 
• Where can I see my broadcast conversations?
• What data is available for my broadcast messaging?
• How can I retarget contacts from a broadcast goal?
• How do I add agents and admins to use Broadcast?
• How do I add contacts to message? 
• How do automations work with Broadcast?
• Broadcast best practices
• How do I share product feedback for Broadcast?

 

What do I need to know before I get started with Broadcast? 

Before getting started on Broadcast admins should consider the following:

• When Hustle Broadcast is enabled for a Hustle account, broadcast capabilities will be available to every organization in the account
• Only organization and account admins can launch broadcasts
• Only organization and account admins can access the inbox
• The inbox is only available when broadcast is enabled for the account
• There is only one inbox per organization and one phone number per inbox
• Once the inbox is set up, when a new contact messages or calls the inbox phone number, a new conversation thread will be created for that contact in the inbox. 
• Broadcast goals can only be launched with the applied TCR campaign is fully approved. 
• The inbox does not currently support sending or receiving incoming calls. 

 

How do I get Broadcast?

To enable broadcast for your Hustle account, see How do I get Broadcast?

 

How do I set up my organization’s inbox?

For Hustle accounts with broadcast enabled, organization and account admins will have the option to launch broadcasts from the Broadcast tab of the organization menu. In order to launch a broadcast, admins must first set up the organization's Inbox by adding a phone number and associating that number with an approved TCR campaign.

For organizations texting in the U.S. and U.S. territories only: If you have not yet registered a TCR campaign for 10dlc see: How do I register for 10dlc with Hustle?

To set up an inbox: 

1. Select the organization where you want to launch a broadcast
2. From the organization menu, go to Inbox > Setup Inbox
   
   
   
   
3. Select an area code for the phone number you want to send broadcasts from then Save
   
   
   

   Note: Phone inventory in specific area codes is not guaranteed. If an area code is not available, the page will display a warning.
   

   
   
   

4. Next, associate your new phone number with a TCR campaign from the Inbox Phone Settings. To apply a TCR campaign to the Inbox phone number, go to Settings > Inbox > Phone Settings > Edit > select a TCR campaign > Save
   
   
   
   Note: If the organization does not yet have an approved TCR campaign, you will not be able to complete the Inbox Setup. You may be able to select the TCR campaign, but if it is still awaiting carrier approval, the following banner will show, and broadcast goals cannot be launched until the campaign is approved. See: How do I register for 10dlc with Hustle? for more registration details.

Once Inbox Setup is complete and the TCR campaign is approved, organization and account admins can launch broadcasts from the Broadcast tab of the organization menu.

 

✨ For a deeper dive into how to use your inbox, check out our related article: How do I use the Inbox?

 

How do I launch a broadcast?

Once Broadcast is enabled for the account and Inbox Setup is complete, organization or account admins can launch broadcast goals in an organization. 

To launch a broadcast: 

1. From the admin panel, go to the organization where you want to send a broadcast 
2. From the organization menu select Broadcast > Add Broadcast Goal
   
   
   
   
3. From the Broadcast goal form, admins give the broadcast a name, apply targeting filters to segment audiences, select the Start Date & Time for message sending, and draft the script of the text message.
   
   
   Note: 
   • For targeting, broadcasts by default target ALL contacts uploaded to the organization that are not opted out. This includes contacts uploaded to archived groups. To target a broadcast to active contacts of active groups only, admins can use the Group targeting filter. 
   • For scripts, currently, the variable for “opt out language” included in scripts defaults to “reply STOP to unsubscribe”. Work is underway to allow admins to modify the opt out language included in scripts. Stay up to date from What’s new in Hustle.
     
     
4. When ready to begin sending messages to contacts targeted in the broadcast, select Launch at the top of the page. When launched, Hustle will automatically begin sending messages.
   
   
   

   Note: Currently, once launched, a broadcast will send messages until the scheduled end date and time. Please bear in mind that admins cannot make changes to a broadcast’s targeting or scripts after a broadcast is launched. Be sure to preview your broadcast, double check all links, liquid variable fields, and targeting filters before launching your broadcast! 
   
   

How do I schedule a broadcast?

Scheduling is now available so that you can set up a broadcast message to go out at a later date / time 🎉

When drafting your broadcast, set the Start Date and Time to the future date / time you'd like your broadcast to begin sending. 

How do I stop a broadcast?

When drafting a broadcast, admins have the option to set an end date and time for a broadcast to stop sending messages. When enabling this setting, admins must also choose a timezone.

Note: This setting cannot be changed after launching a broadcast.

 

Once the End Date & Time has passed, messages that have not yet been sent to carriers, will be marked as “expired”. The total number of broadcast messages that “expired” is available from the broadcast goal stats page. To see the goal stats of a broadcast, from the Broadcast page select the name of the broadcast. 

Note: Expired messages are not included in your bill 👍

 

If you've already launched your broadcast, click on Broadcast in the left menu to navigate to the Broadcast Goals page, then click the name of the broadcast you'd like to pause or end. 

For active Broadcast goals, you'll see the options to Pause Broadcast or End Now. 

If you select End Now, any pending messages will be cancelled. Messages on their way to phone carriers will still be delivered. 🚨 This cannot be undone. 🚨

 

How do I enable broadcast reply workflows?

Reply workflows are a way to organize replies from a broadcast goal, and use agents to send replies. Reply Workflows are now optionally available for all broadcast goals 🥳

To enable broadcast workflows for a goal, during setup on the goal form, you will see the option to select Agents. In the dropdown, you can select the Group(s) whose agents you'd like to use for your broadcast reply workflows. 

Once a broadcast is launched and replies start coming in, agents from the groups selected will see a new category available in the web and mobile apps called Reply Only Workflows. They can click on this tab to access broadcast reply workflows. 

Agents can go through this workflow and respond to replies as normal. There is one new option available to Archive a conversation thread. This option is intended for conversations that do not require any further response, and will clear out that reply from workflows. 

Where can I see my broadcast conversations?

Organization and account admins can manage replies to broadcasts from the inbox of the organization. To access the inbox, select Inbox from the organization menu. 

From the inbox, organization and account admins can view and reply to conversations as well as opt out contacts.

Pro Tip ✨ Admins can now opt out leads in bulk straight from the Inbox!

Details related to the contact’s profile are also visible including the contact’s name, phone number, tags, and any notes & follow up comments.

The Inbox is broken into three different views 👀:

• Replies: Contains the message threads of all the recipients who have responded to your broadcasts (as seen above), excluding opt outs.
• All: Contains the message threads for all of the recipients of broadcasts sent from your organization (excluding opt outs), including contacts who did not respond.
  
  
• Opted out: Contains only the message threads of folks that replied to a broadcast with opt-out language and were removed from future messaging. 

What data is available for my broadcast messaging?

Broadcast message data is available via the Account Usage Report, Organization Usage Report, and Messages Export. For integrated contacts, Broadcast messages will now sync to your VAN, Salesforce, and Blackbaud Luminate integrations 🙌

If you have questions about your remaining message allowance, contact your client success manager. If you do not know who your client success manager is, contact support@hustle.com 

 

How do I add agents and admins to use Broadcast?

When broadcast is enabled for an account, only organization and account admins will have access to the inbox and broadcast capabilities. 

To add an admin to the organization see How do I add an organization admin?

 

How do I add contacts to message?

Admins can broadcast messages to contacts in an organization. There are a number of ways for contacts to be added to an organization: 

• Admins can upload contacts to groups individually 
• Admins can upload contacts to groups via csv
• Admins can upload contacts to groups via integration
• Admins can import contacts via the api
• Contacts can call or message the inbox phone number

For more information see: How do I add contacts to Hustle?

 

How do automations work with Broadcast?

For Broadcast goals, admins can set up automations that use Keyword, Group, and Tag initial triggers and select an inbox to use an automation. Inboxes that are fully configured are equipped to automatically send messages to contacts based on keywords. 

Check out our help article to learn more: How do I use Keywords and Automations?

Admins can also view data about their Automations here: Using Reports as a Hustle Admin

 

How can I retarget contacts from a broadcast goal?

Let's say that you launch a broadcast goal and based on the sending window you set (Start Date & Time - End Date & Time) a certain amount of messages are not sent out. They will be marked 'Expired' on the Goal Performance page of that broadcast.

You want to be sure you can send the messages to those who didn't receive them, what do you do?
To retarget contacts in a broadcast you'll pull the data from your organization exports. 

1. You can go to your organization exports page -- the link will look like this: https://admin.hustle.com/a/xxxxxxxxxx/o/xxxxxxxxxx/exports and select 'Run Export'
2. There will be a zip file under Broadcast Messages and you'll download that file: 
3. Then you can filter by ' goal_id'  (which is the 24 character series of numbers & letters at the end of a Broadcast goal: link:   https://admin.hustle.com/a/xxxxxxxxxx/o/xxxxxxxxxx/broadcast/goals/00xx0xxxx000x0x00xxxx00x )   and then filter by ' message_status ' and select  expired. 

 

That will provide you with a list of everyone who didn't receive a message in this goal. You can then create a new CSV with those contacts to upload into Hustle either into an existing group with a new tag so that you filter for these folks specifically or create a new group with these contacts, however you prefer to target contacts for Broadcast 🎉
 

Broadcast best practices

Be sure to keep these best practices in mind when you go to launch your broadcast. 

• Brevity is important for driving engagement and activity. You can save scripts that contain up to 500 characters, but do your best to keep messages under 300 characters for the best deliverability and performance. 
• Longer messages take longer to deliver, so consider how many people you want to message. If you launch broadcasts to large audiences with lengthy messages, plan to send them earlier in the day as they may need more time to reach your audience.
• Messages that contain emojis take twice as long to deliver. Crazy right?! Who knew!? Emoji’s are great for humanizing your message and improving engagement, but consider this when you go to launch your broadcast.
• MMS, or messages containing media (images, gifs, jpegs, png files), can take longer to deliver. Due to carrier limits, estimate that roughly 10K MMS messages can be delivered per hour when broadcasting a message. That’s still plenty of messages for most campaigns, but if you’re launching a major one, something to keep in mind!
• Be mindful of T-Mobile's daily segment limit. As a reminder, a Hustle message can contain multiple segments depending on the length of the message and whether it includes an emoji. Messages containing media (images, gifs, jpegs, png files et al.), on the other hand, are delivered as a single segment.
• One segment without an emoji = 160 characters
• One segment with an emoji = 70 characters
• One message with a media file or image = one segment with or without an emoji
• Avoid redirect links and public domain links like bit.ly and tiny.url. Carriers often block these kinds of messages. Hustle’s script editor will warn you when your message contains a redirect link. 
• Include the name of your brand/organization in the message. Increasingly, carriers are blocking traffic that does not include some sort of identification that lets audience members know who is messaging them. 
• Sound human. No one wants an email in their text threads. Text is informal, abbreviated, familiar, authentic, and fun!  
• Make time to be responsive if you can. Most replies from audience members will be in the first few minutes after a text is received. Our data suggests that audiences that are engaged in conversation will continue to engage more often in the future. 
  
  

How do I share product feedback for Broadcast?

Broadcast is new and we’d love to hear what you think! Let us know at product@hustle.com.